Macau’s gambling sector is facing a new reality. After years defined by explosive growth, abrupt collapse during the pandemic, and gradual recovery once borders reopened, the region’s industry may be entering a more mature phase. Operators must now adapt to slower revenue growth, tighter regulation, and a shifting customer base.
Macau Now Relies on High-Spending Mass Customers
Analysts from S&P Global Ratings reported that Macau has entered a new growth phase following the region’s post-pandemic recovery. However, this new chapter may be limited by capacity and softer consumer spending. Gross gaming revenue growth has slowed down, reaching 9.1% in 2025. This figure reflects weaker spending and limited casino capacity.
However, Macau’s outlook is far from bleak. Analysts expect continuous EBITDA growth among major concessionaires, supported by stable demand and promotional activity. Overall, operators will likely enjoy steady growth, relying on efficiency and higher-quality customers rather than sheer volume.
The end of junkets has reshaped Macau’s identity. Total gaming revenue for the region remains below pre-pandemic highs, as the high-volume, low-margin VIP market has largely disappeared. The region’s new business model combines tourism with entertainment to attract high-spending mass customers, supported by non-gaming amenities and closer regulatory oversight.
Problem Gambling Emerges as a Rising Concern
Macau has enacted key structural changes. The closure of the Landmark Casino at the start of this year ended the satellite casino system that allowed smaller venues to operate under the licenses of larger concessionaires. At its peak, Macau had more than 40 casinos. That number has now fallen to 20, all linked to the six licensed concession holders. The market has become more tightly regulated, aligning with Beijing’s aims to ensure greater control.
However, Macau’s consolidation may have caused some unintended consequences. S&P warns that market pressures could push aggregate discretionary cash flow into deficit by 2026, even if operating performance remains robust. The agency warns that a full return to pre-pandemic credit ratings would require sustained confidence that operators can keep balance sheets in check.
Macau’s transformation has also affected the region’s social structure. Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau data show that casino exclusion applications increased by 68% compared to the previous year. Such data indicates growing awareness of gambling harm as casinos focus more heavily on mass-market play. However, the sudden spike raises some concerns around accessibility and problem gambling.
SEOUL, Jan 22 (Reuters) – South Korea’s special prosecution team said on Thursday it has filed an appeal after a court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol on charges including obstructing attempts to arrest him following his failed bid to impose martial law.
The Seoul Central District Court last week sentenced the ex-president to five years in prison in the case. Yoon could have faced up to 10 years in jail over the obstruction charges.
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 21 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had accepted his invitation to join Trump’s Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts, a statement that Putin quickly countered, saying that the invitation was only under consideration.
“He was invited. He’s accepted,” Trump told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland after meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte.
Soon after Trump’s comments, Putin told the Russian security council that the foreign ministry was still studying the proposal and would respond in due course.
(Reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov, Jeffrey Dastin and Ronald Popeski; Writing by Ryan Patrick Jones; editing by Scott Malone)
Shenzhen has historically been associated with innovation, emerging as it did from an unusually open encounter between East and West. Established as a Special Economic Zone in 1980 and located near Hong Kong, the city served as an experimental interface between socialist planning and capitalist market logic—a relentless engine of production defined by technological advancement, rapid iteration and large-scale implementation, as well as a testing ground where global cultural forms were subjected to extreme conditions of speed, density and technological proximity. Consequently, since at least the 1990s, Shenzhen’s markedly progressive music and art scene has reflected its broader role as a bridge between geographies shaped by global cultural flows.
This trajectory makes Shenzhen a particularly compelling site for a new museum dedicated to art and technology. Announced today (Jan. 20) and slated to open in late 2027, the new JD Museum aims to carve out a niche in contemporary visual and performing arts. Backed by the Chinese e-commerce and technology giant jd.com, the museum will be housed in the company’s new headquarters at the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base. The building itself—designed by Büro Ole Scheeren and described as a “Scenic City,” with spatial design by Neri&Hu Design and Research Office—embodies a promise of innovation with future-oriented aesthetics.
JD.com’s operations span retail, logistics, technology, healthcare, industrial services, property development and international markets. Rooted in JD.com’s mission of “Making Lives Better through Technology,” the namesake museum’s program will explore creative and imaginative possibilities at the intersection of art and technology, making it one of the first major examples of a technology firm investing in a cultural institution with a tech-forward mission.
When asked about the museum’s programming, Peckham said that while the museum will host the kind of immersive exhibitions typically associated with art and technology, it will also explore how traditional crafts are carried forward in contemporary contexts and how the human body both generates and responds to performance-based environments. Dedicated facilities for these different approaches are already in the works, he added, in a 10,000-square-meter complex that will include spaces for live performance, immersive installations, exhibitions, participatory workshops and creative retail.
Embracing art as an inherently cross-disciplinary experience, JD Museum will address some of today’s most pressing issues—technology, ecology and urbanism—through a balance of technological inquiry and tactile human experience, to become a living laboratory for envisioning, reimagining and reengineering new solutions.
The museum’s first public initiative, “Unboxing JD Museum,” will launch in 2026 ahead of the institution’s official opening. Conceived as a “community art initiative,” it will take the form of pop-up workshops and exhibitions using JD.com’s iconic delivery boxes as both material and framework, inviting creative contributions from artists, curators, architects and the broader JD.com community, including employees and their families and friends.
“Technology has become one of the shaping forces throughout society today, as a consumer or as a producer, in China or in the West. This is something that art can engage with on many levels: as a tool, of course, but also as a horizon,” Peckham reflected. “Our intention is to think through all of this critically, offering a window into what our futures might look like by bridging the discourses of contemporary art, digital culture and new media and the tech industry,” he added. The vision is to make JD Museum a platform for conversation, speculation and experience on the most important intersection that is shaping our daily and future lives.”
LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) – British prosecutors sought to reinstate a terrorism charge against a member of Irish rap group Kneecap on Wednesday for displaying a flag of Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah at a London gig, after a court threw out the case last year.
Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, whose stage name is Mo Chara, was accused of having waved the flag of the banned militant group Hezbollah during a November 2024 gig.
The charge was thrown out in September after a court ruled it had originally been brought without the permission of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General, and also one day outside the six-month statutory limit.
But the Crown Prosecution Service said it would challenge the ruling and its lawyer Paul Jarvis told London’s High Court on Wednesday that permission was only required by the time Ó hAnnaidh first appeared in court, meaning the case can proceed.
Kneecap – known for their politically charged lyrics and support for the Palestinian cause – have said the case is an attempt to distract from what they described as British complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Israel strongly denies committing a genocide in the tiny coastal territory.
J.J. Ó Dochartaigh, who goes by DJ Próvaí, was in court but Ó hAnnaidh was not required to attend and was not present.
KNEECAP SAYS PROSECUTION A DISTRACTION
Ó hAnnaidh was charged in May with displaying the Hezbollah flag in such a way that aroused reasonable suspicion that he supported the banned group, after footage emerged of him holding the flag on stage while saying “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah”.
Kneecap have previously said the flag was thrown on stage during their performance and that they “do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah”.
The group, who rap about Irish identity and support the republican cause of uniting Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, have become increasingly vocal about the war in Gaza, particularly after Ó hAnnaidh was charged in May.
During their performance at June’s Glastonbury Festival in England, Ó hAnnaidh accused Israel of committing war crimes, after Kneecap displayed pro-Palestinian messages during their set at the Coachella Festival in California in April.
Kneecap have since been banned from Hungary and Canada, also cancelling a tour of the United States due to a clash with Ó hAnnaidh’s court appearances.
BEIJING, Jan 8 (Reuters) – China on Thursday said it was against “politically motivated disinformation” in relation to reports of Chinese hackers targeting staff in United States congressional committees in an email breach.
“We have always opposed and lawfully combated hacker activities, and we are even more opposed to spreading false information related to China for political purposes,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular news briefing when asked about the cyberattack.
The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that a Chinese hacking group has compromised emails used by staff members of powerful committees in the U.S. House of Representatives, citing people familiar with the matter.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen; Writing by Liz Lee; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
Jan 7 (Reuters) – Cambodia said on Wednesday it had extradited three people to China at the request of Beijing following a months-long joint investigation into transnational crime, among them an individual named Chen Zhi.
In a statement, the interior ministry said those extradited on Tuesday were all Chinese nationals. It did not provide further details on Chen Zhi or the alleged crimes, but said his Cambodian citizenship had been revoked.
The United States and Britain in October sanctioned the Prince Group of businesses headed by a Cambodian-Chinese tycoon named Chen Zhi, accusing it of operating large-scale online “scam centres” that used trafficked workers to defraud victims globally.
It was not immediately clear if the Prince Group chair was among the individuals extradited. China’s foreign ministry and its public security did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Cambodia’s interior ministry said in a statement it had arrested Chen Zhi and two other Chinese nationals, Xu Ji Liang and Shao Ji Hui, and had extradited them to China “within the scope of cooperation in combatting transnational crime and pursuant to a request from the relevant authorities of the People’s Republic of China”.
Parts of Southeast Asia, including the border areas between Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia, have become hubs for massive online fraud, with criminal networks earning billions of dollars from illegal compounds where trafficking victims are often forced to work.
British sanctions targeted six entities and six individuals, including Chen Zhi, whom the U.S. and Britain accused of having overseen the construction of compounds used for online scams.
The U.S. Treasury Department said it had taken what it described as the largest action ever in Southeast Asia, targeting 146 people within the Prince Group.
(Reporting by Reuters Staff; Writing by Martin PettyEditing by Gareth Jones)
BEIJING, Jan 6 (Reuters) – China and South Korea agreed to carry out cultural exchanges in an orderly manner, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Tuesday, when asked if Beijing would welcome South Korean culture exports in the future.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Monday, seeking to restore ties between the two neighbours.
The two countries would “gradually” increase exchanges of cultural content and hold working-level talks on movies, dramas and others, Wi Sung-lac, Lee’s security adviser, told a press briefing after the leaders’ summit.
(Reporting by Liz Lee; Editing by Christian Schmolinger)
TOKYO, Jan 6 (Reuters) – An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 hit western Japan on Tuesday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The epicenter of the earthquake was the eastern part of Shimane Prefecture, the agency said, adding that a tsunami warning had not been issued.
(Reporting by Satoshi SugiyamaEditing by Chang-Ran Kim)
BEIJING, Jan 5 (Reuters) – The agreement between Thailand and Cambodia on a ceasefire is being “gradually” implemented, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday.
China hopes both sides will ensure a “comprehensive” and “lasting” ceasefire, said ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a regular news conference.
Thailand has returned 18 soldiers to Cambodia, Lin also said.
Thailand and Cambodia agreed a second ceasefire at the end of December, ending weeks of border clashes that amounted to the worst fighting in years between the Southeast Asian neighbours.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Xiuhao Chen; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
BEIJING, Jan 5 (Reuters) – China is ready to strengthen strategic communication with Ireland and expand practical cooperation, while aiming to achieve mutually beneficial results, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin on Monday.
Xi did not elaborate on what cooperation China was interested to further in his opening remarks at their meeting held at the Great Hall of the People, but he emphasised mutual respect and achieving win-win outcomes as “valuable experiences for the long-term, stable development of China-Ireland ties”.
Martin, the first Irish Taoiseach to visit Beijing in 14 years, said that Ireland recognises China’s “indispensable role” in the world, underlining China’s peacekeeping efforts, and stressed Ireland’s stance on open trade.
(Reporting by Liz Lee; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, Jan 4 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said he did not believe that an alleged Ukrainian strike on President Vladimir Putin’s residence took place as claimed by Russia.
“I don’t believe that strike happened,” Trump told reporters on Sunday aboard Air Force One en route back to Washington, D.C., from Florida. “There is something that happened fairly nearby, but had nothing to do with this.”
Moscow accused Kyiv on Monday of trying to strike a residence of Putin in Russia’s northern Novgorod region with 91 long-range attack drones, and said Russia would review its negotiating position in ongoing talks with the U.S. on ending the Ukraine war.
Ukraine and Western countries have disputed Russia’s account of the alleged attempted strike.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery aboard Air Force One and Lawrence Delevingne in Boston; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
VILNIUS, Jan 4 (Reuters) – An optical cable belonging to a private company has been damaged in the Baltic Sea, Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Silina said in a statement on Sunday, adding that the circumstances of the incident were under investigation.
The cable connects Lithuania and Latvia, and it was not immediately clear what had caused the incident, Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre said in a separate statement.
The Baltic Sea region is on high alert after a string of power cable, telecom link and gas pipeline outages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and the NATO military alliance has boosted its presence with frigates, aircraft and naval drones.
The latest incident is made public five days after Finnish police seized a cargo vessel en route from Russia to Israel on suspicion of sabotaging an undersea telecoms cable running from Helsinki across the Gulf of Finland to Estonia.
(Reporting by Andrius Sytas, editing by Terje Solsvik and Gwladys Fouche)
SEOUL, Jan 4 (Reuters) – North Korea has denounced the U.S. strikes on Venezuela as “the most serious form of encroachment of sovereignty,” state news agency KCNA said on Sunday.
“The incident is another example that clearly confirms once again the rogue and brutal nature of the United States,” KCNA said, citing a spokesperson for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry.
The statement came after North Korea launched ballistic missiles earlier on Sunday, the day the leader of South Korea begins a state visit to China, Pyongyang’s chief ally.
Pyongyang said the current situation in Venezuela “caused a catastrophic consequence to ensuring the identity of the regional and international relations structure.”
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
SEOUL, Jan 4 (Reuters) – North Korea fired a ballistic missile towards the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement on Sunday.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Jack Kim; Editing by Diane Craft)
Macau has quietly ended one of the most distinctive chapters in its gaming history with the shutdown of the Landmark Casino at midnight on January 1, marking the conclusion of the region’s long-running experiment with satellite casinos. With this decades-old operating model now over, Macau continues its efforts to adapt to shifting industry trends and reduce its reliance on casino revenue.
Regulatory Changes Made Satellite Casinos Unfeasible
The closure of Landmark marked the final act in a process that started after the COVID pandemic. Satellite casinos were once a common sight in Macau, operating under separate agreements that allowed third-party property owners to run casinos using the licenses of major concessionaires. Such arrangements fueled Macau’s rapid gambling expansion, particularly during the early 2000s.
However, the passage of Law 7/2022 marked the beginning of the end for satellite casinos. The revised gaming legislation introduced stricter oversight and reshaped the legal landscape. It granted satellite casinos a three-year transitional window to either restructure their business models or shut down entirely with a deadline of December 31, 2025.
In reality, restructuring was not economically viable. Landmark was one of the last properties to announce it would cease operations following the closure of nine other satellite casinos earlier in the year. Melco Resorts and Galaxy Entertainment had taken similar steps, choosing to shutter their satellite operations gradually instead of fully taking over or renegotiating the management conditions.
Macau Seeks Tighter Control over the Gambling Sector
The Landmark’s final hours featured a proper ceremony. On the final night,crowds gathered outside the venue, drawn by a mixture of nostalgia and curiosity. When the doors closed, staff drew red curtains across the casino’s signage, a gesture that underscored the finality of the closure. A brief technical hiccup with the curtain only enhanced the experience before the staff rectified the problem.
Landmark’s closure means that all of Macau’s casinos are now fully owned and operated by itssix licensed concessionaires. While the current situation marks a stark contrast from the region’s peak of 42 casinos, the pandemic and regulatory reforms necessitated a new approach. The remaining 20 casinos reflect a more centralized and tightly controlled industry.
The transition for satellite casino workers has been smoother than expected. In November 2025, around1,600 workers from shuttered satellite casinos were reassigned to other properties run by concessionaires. Dedicated support teams and consultation hotlines remain available to workers as authorities seek to ensure a smooth transition.
Alicja Kwade’s Pars pro Toto (2020) in the museum’s courtyard. Courtesy of Dib Bangkok. Photographer Auntika Ounjittichai, 2025
IT WAS HARD TO GET HERE reads a painted vinyl and plywood bench created by Finnegan Shannon and situated past the entryway of Dib Bangkok. It provides an abbreviated backstory behind a new museum that opened in the Thai capital in late December—the first of its kind in the city and the country. Stability is something the Thai art scene has lacked, and the museum’s launch marks a significant structural shift. “For the general arts scene here, the ecosystem is fast developing,” Miwako Tezuka, director of the museum, told Observer. “What we need is constancy.”
Located in a converted industrial warehouse designed by WHY Architecture (the same firm behind the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), the museum takes its name from the Thai word “dib,” meaning “raw” or “natural, authentic state.” The institution’s holdings are comprised of the private art collection of Thai businessman Petch Osathanugrah, amassed over the course of three decades before his death in 2023. It comprises around 1,000 works by some 200 artists, more or less equally divided between Asian and non-Asian origins. “There was no institution presenting a space that allows local artists and global artists to have equal ground [in] conversation,” Tezuka added, contextualizing the importance of the museum.
The debut exhibition, “(In)visible Presence” (on view through August 3, 2026), is a meditation on memory curated by Ariana Chaivaranon. “It’s so important for local artists to see how they’re in dialogue with something that’s so much bigger than the nation or what’s going on right now in Thailand,” she told Observer. “These artists are all deeply intertwined with an international conversation. And yet, so often in Thailand, we only have a conversation internally, which is partly because of the collections that have been on display.” The mise-en-scène at Dib Bangkok reflects that these practices developed in different geographical regions, but Chaivaranon insisted that “visitors can actually see that they have been in dialogue for decades.”
She further emphasized how crucial the experiential aspect of museum-going is as a cornerstone of art education, and how Dib Bangkok is filling an absence in the city’s scene. In previous decades, “for many of these [Thai] artists, they were getting their knowledge of international work from slides, from books, from magazines, and they didn’t have a chance to see international art of their time. Dib is offering a site where the artists can now see these works in person. When you see it in person… it takes on a whole new dimension that is inaccessible through just digital media, even.” She cited as a key example the Anselm Kiefer work on view, Die verlorene Buchstabe, an installation unfurling from a Heidelberg letterpress sprouting tall resin sunflowers. “The sunflowers gently move with the air, right? That’s something you couldn’t get online—and something that I’m really excited for young artists now to be able to come here and be inspired by.”
Montien Boonma, Lotus Sound piece (1999-2000). Remade from a smaller 1992 version. Courtesy of Dib Bangkok. Photographer Auntika Ounjittichai, 2025
Dib Bangkok’s 11 indoor galleries are spaced over three levels. The ground floor hosts Marco Fusinato’s work Constellations, a site-specific commission in which visitors are invited to whack a white wall with a Brooklyn Whopper Model CS38 Cold Steel baseball bat, whose sound is amplified at 120 decibels: a symbolic blow to the pristine museum space. This is followed by works from Jean-Luc Moulène and Ugo Rondinone; nearby, in the cone-shaped Chapel gallery, is Incubate, Subodh Gupta’s 2010 installation of stainless steel lunch tins (dabbas) overhung by chandeliers. (Recent sexual assault allegations did not prevent him from being featured.) Jannis Kounellis’s 1998 untitled work, comprised of four steel panels, I-beams and rolled second-hand garments—impecunious items he first used because he could not afford to buy new canvases—works well in conversation with Thai artists shown later in the exhibition, who also funneled principles of Arte Povera in their work: frugality, material simplicity.
On the second level, visitors encounter an iron bed by Rebecca Horn, Jinjoon Lee’s two-channel video installation and 22 folios on music paper by Louise Bourgeois. These pieces are paired with work by Thai artists, including gelatin silver prints by Surat Osathanugrah—father of the collector—which feature a modest depiction of day-to-day Thai life. Also on view are Navin Rawanchaikul’s tiers of photos of elders encased in salvaged medicine bottles (1994) and Somboon Hormtientong’s 1995 installation of wrapped vihara columns laid flat amongst libation vessels and glassware. These artists sanctify the rites that shape Thai lifestyles but refresh the perspective on tradition.
Under skylights on the top floor, the work of Montien Boonma is the star (he’s arguably the star of the whole museum). The Thai artist studied in Europe in the 1980s, and his sensitive, thoughtful work fosters a crossover between Arte Povera ideas and Thai spirituality. Lotus Sound piece (1999-2000, remade from a smaller 1992 version) stacks 500 terra-cotta bells around a gilded lotus flower, celebrating negative space, as does Arokayasala: Temple of the Mind (1996), with its herbal medicine drawers encircling aluminum lungs coated in aromatic herbal pastes. His 1998-99 installation Zodiac Houses models, at a modest scale, six existing German structures on stilts: visitors can take off their shoes, mount the platform and stand under their hollow structures, scented with cinnabar.
Outdoor works create a compelling complement to the galleries. Alicja Kwade’s Pars pro Toto (2020), an installation of 11 monumental stone globes ranging from 70-250 cm in diameter, speckle the courtyard like an outsized game of boules or errant marbles; Pinaree Sanpitak’s Breast Stupa Topiary (2013), a series of stainless-steel forms, dots the upper terrace. As is his signature, James Turrell’s 1988 Straight Up installation frames the sky above; the museum hosts dedicated sunrise and sunset programs for visitors. Sho Shibuya’s 85-meter-long print on vinyl, MEMORY, was specially commissioned by the museum, hugely enlarging the Sunrise from a Small Window series, in which the artist painted the sensuous colors of daybreak over the front page of the New York Times.
There is an emphasis on interactive and participatory works, so visitors can play. Surasi Kusolwong’s installation featuring an overturned and ceiling-suspended 1965 Volkswagen Beetle functions like a cradle in which visitors can sit and watch a video; the installation also includes TAO BIN vending machines, from which one can buy sour cream Pringles, salted cocktail nuts, Pepsi or Nescafé. “There are some works that are fragile, very sensitive, but we don’t want to make our exhibition precious,” Tezuka noted. The museum very much isn’t “a top-down institution where everything is didactically explained. … We want to make sure that we offer [visitors] the opportunity to educate themselves, to have their own creative agency and be their own active viewers.”
The first few shows will showcase the collection, and some galleries will rotate out more frequently than others (the display of Montien Boonma works will remain on the longest because these works haven’t previously been seen in context with each other). As for the way the collection will grow in the future, Chaivaranon confirmed that the institution is “continuing to acquire work, and I would say our strategy has a few different aspects, but one is to be quite deep. It’s not just one work from the big names.” Tezuka added that the “curatorial team is continuing to do the collection research to identify which are the gaps in the collection, whether that be cultural representation or different mediums that artists globally are using or experimenting with… How can we strategically fill in those gaps, while at the same time creating opportunities for newly discovered artists to present their works?”
Beyond the museum walls, Tezuka spoke about a “collective energy” brewing in the city’s art scene, citing the publicly funded art space BACC, the experimental programming at Bangkok Kunsthalle and the art destination of the Khao Yai Art Forest several hours outside the city. On the horizon, there will be deCentral, a space focusing on regional creative voices, and the Bangkok Biennale, which began in 2018, will return in fall 2026. According to Tezuka, “every organization is approaching art from a completely different way, bringing different perspectives.” The scene is most definitely one to watch.
Rebecca Horn, The Lover’s Bed, 1990. Courtesy of Dib Bangkok. Photographer Auntika Ounjittichai, 2025
SEOUL, Jan 2 (Reuters) – A local court in South Korea issued a new warrant to detain former President Yoon Suk Yeol for another six months, Yonhap News TV reported on Friday.
Yoon has been indicted on more charges including aiding an enemy state related to his short-lived imposition of martial law in 2024.
The judge cited concerns over him destroying evidence, Yonhap said.
(Reporting by Heejin Kim; Editing by Toby Chopra)
DUBAI, Jan 2 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Yemen said on Friday that Aidarus Al-Zubaidi, the leader of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), refused landing permission the previous day for a plane carrying a Saudi delegation to Aden.
The halt in flights at Aden international airport was the latest sign of a deepening crisis between Gulf powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose rivalry is reshaping war-torn Yemen.
“For several weeks and until yesterday, the Kingdom sought to make all efforts with the Southern Transitional Council to end the escalation … but it faced continuous rejection and stubbornness from Aidarus Al-Zubaidi,” the Saudi ambassador, Mohammed Al-Jaber, said on X.
Yemen’s separatist STC did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Jaber’s statement.
Zubaidi issued directives to close air traffic at Aden airport on Thursday, the ambassador added, saying that a plane carrying a Saudi delegation to Aden aiming to find solutions to the crisis was denied permission to land.
In a statement on Thursday, the STC-controlled transport ministry accused Saudi Arabia of imposing an air blockade, saying Riyadh required all flights to go via Saudi Arabia for extra checks.
The UAE backs the STC, which seized swathes of southern Yemen last month from the internationally recognised government, backed by Saudi Arabia, which in turn saw the move as a threat.
The Aden international airport is the main gateway for regions of the country outside Houthi control.
(Reporting by Ahmed Elimam; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
