World News Quick Take

The government and ruling coalition are considering nearly doubling defense spending over the next five years as part of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s push to strengthen the nation’s military capabilities, two people familiar with the matter said. If adopted, defense buildup spending for the five years from April next year would be set at ￥70 trillion to ￥80 trillion (US$444 billion to US$508 billion), up about 1.8 times from about ￥43 trillion allocated under the current five-year plan, which began in fiscal 2023. The figure could still change as the government compiles the budget toward year-end and revises its three security-related documents. The Ministry of Defense said it had no comment at this point.

UAE

World energy buffer eroded

The world has eroded its supply buffers by draining nearly 1 billion oil barrels from global inventories since the US-Israeli war on Iran disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil company ADNOC, said yesterday. Diesel stockpiles in some areas are at 35-year lows for this time of the season, while others face an liquefied natural gas supply gap of 600 billion cubic feet, he said at the ADIPEC conference. “We need expanded strategic storage, larger stockpiles of products, and flexible refining capacity closer to consumer markets,” Al Jaber said. “Infrastructure must be built before it is needed and enabled by advanced logistics.”

INDONESIA

Court voids VP credentials

The Supreme Court invalidated a high-school equivalency certificate submitted by Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka as part of his candidacy in the 2024 election, raising questions about his ability to remain in office or run again in 2029. The court on Friday granted an appeal filed by lawyer Subhan Palal against the Ministry of Education and Culture, overturning two lower-court rulings that had rejected his lawsuit. The decision annulled a government certificate issued in August 2019 that was used to establish that Gibran met the minimum educational requirement for his 2024 candidacy. The court also granted the plaintiff’s request to have the document withdrawn and destroyed. The move revives questions about Gibran’s eligibility to remain in office, his ability to run for office in 2029, and whether he could face impeachment or other proceedings aimed at removing him. Any removal would require separate constitutional proceedings.

UNITED STATES

Nine dead in plane crash

A Learjet on Sunday plummeted into a neighborhood in southern Florida, about 11km from President Donald Trump’s resort home Mar-a-Lago, killing all nine people on board, officials said. Several unverified clips posted to social media depicting the deadly crash showed an aircraft nearly vertical slamming at high speed into the ground, creating a large fireball and leaving a flaming crater near a busy roadside. “Today’s plane crash in Palm Beach County, Florida is a horrific tragedy,” Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said in a statement, confirming that all nine people on the aircraft were killed. “Obviously this is a cataclysmic plane crash,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters near the scene. “It looked like a missile going down,” he said, adding that there were no reports of anyone on the ground being injured. Duffy said the plane, a Learjet 60, had departed from Austin, Texas, and was headed for the Bahamas.