■AUSTRALIA
Sabotage led to boat blast
Three Afghan asylum seekers set fire to their boat in a deliberate act of sabotage last year, causing an explosion that killed five people, a coroner ruled yesterday. Northern Territory Coroner Greg Cavanaugh said he would refer his findings to police and they would decide whether criminal charges should be brought against the three men. Cavanaugh found that Ghulam Mohammadi, Arman Ali Brahimi and Sabzali Salman were probably trying to cripple the boat to prevent it from possibly being returned to Indonesia.
■AUSTRALIA
Cyclone threatens resorts
Hundreds of people started evacuating resort islands off the east coast yesterday as officials braced for a powerful cyclone packing winds of up to 168kph. About 300 people were being ferried from the Great Barrier Reef islands of Heron and Lady Elliott, north of Brisbane, with Tropical Cyclone Ului about 1,200km offshore and likely to make landfall on Saturday or Sunday. Cyclone Ului, which has already brought strong winds and rough seas to the Queensland coast, was moving slowly but heading towards the mainland and was likely to hit between the towns of Bowen and Gladstone. Conditions would worsen as the cyclone, currently at the second highest level of Category Four, approaches.
■NEPAL
Tibetans go on hunger strike
Nearly two dozen Tibetan exiles jailed for protesting against Chinese rule in their homeland began a hunger strike yesterday demanding their immediate release. Police have been put on alert to rush the exiles to hospitals if their health deteriorates, Katmandu police Chief Ganesh Chettri said. The 23 Tibetans were arrested on March 10 and on Sunday for defying the government’s ban on anti-China protests by trying to storm the Chinese embassy’s visa office. They were ordered held for 90 days under the public security act, which allows authorities to take action against those determined to be a threat to the public.
■AFGHANISTAN
Suicide attackers shot dead
Two suicide attackers were shot dead yesterday as they attempted to enter the compound of a US-linked international aid organization, an official said. The bombers were wearing explosives-packed vests and were killed at the gates of International Relief and Development in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand Province, provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi said. Lashkar Gah is 20km away from a major US-led offensive in Helmand.
■CHINA
Ministry closes zoo
A zoo in the northeast has been shut after a spate of Siberian tiger deaths as reports yesterday said dozens of the dead animals may have been used to make a virility tonic. The forestry ministry has ordered the Shenyang Forest Wildlife Zoo in Liaoning Province to suspend operations and urged the local government to step up a probe into the deaths of 13 of the endangered tigers, the state-run Global Times reported. Authorities are investigating whether the Shenyang zoo was harvesting tiger parts to produce ingredients for the lucrative traditional Chinese medicine market, the Beijing News said. The newspaper quoted an unnamed zoo official saying between 40 and 50 tigers may have died at the privately operated zoo since 2000 and that it was an “open secret” that the zoo was producing tiger-bone liquor.
■EGYPT
Ancient statues unearthed
A team of archeologists unearthed two large red granite statues in the south at the mortuary temple of one of the most powerful pharaohs, who ruled nearly 3,400 years ago, the culture ministry said on Tuesday. A ministry statement said the team discovered a 4m statue of Thoth, the ancient god of wisdom and the top part of a statue of Pharaoh Amenhotep III standing next to another god. Both were found buried in the pharaoh’s mortuary temple on the west bank of the Nile in the southern temple city of Luxor.
■EUROPE
Butterflies under threat
Hundreds of butterflies, beetles and dragonflies are at risk of extinction across Europe, with almost one-third of 435 butterfly species in decline, scientists have warned. The loss of habitat caused by intensive farming, climate change, forest fires and the expansion of tourism is threatening with extinction 14 percent of dragonflies, 11 percent of saproxylic beetles and 9 percent of butterflies within Europe, the International Union for Conservation of Nature report said.
■SWITZERLAND
Naked man escapes fire
The daily Blick reported that a fire in an apartment used for transsexual prostitution forced a naked man onto a window ledge. Firefighters rushed to the scene and put out the flames, but not before the man was photographed in all his glory against the modern building. Blick printed the photograph on Tuesday and quoted Markus Melzl from the Basel prosecutor’s office as saying the apartment was used for the sex business.
■FRANCE
Officer dies in shootout
A policeman died on Tuesday in a shootout southeast of Paris with Basque-speaking gunmen linked by the media to the Basque armed separatist group ETA. “Several leads were being explored” yesterday, said sources close to the inquiry, with the “most serious” implicating ETA after one of the men involved in the shootout was arrested and gave a Basque identity. The firefight broke out near Dammarie-les-Lys, 50km southeast of the French capital, after a police patrol checked the identities of a group that had stolen cars from a garage.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Climate change ads banned
The nation’s advertising watchdog has banned two government advertisements for overstating the threat from climate change, it said yesterday. The adverts used nursery rhymes including Jack and Jill to highlight the impact of global warming, but the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said they exaggerated the risk. “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought,” read the copyline on one of the ads. “Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense,” warned the advert, commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The adverts were part of a DECC campaign last year that attracted 939 complaints. Upholding the complaints, the ASA said that forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “involved uncertainties” that the adverts failed to reflect. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said: “The science tells us that it is more than 90 percent likely that there will be more extreme weather events if we don’t act. In any future campaign, as requested by the ASA, we will make clear the nature of this prediction.”
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru, a US$1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent. With China’s demand for agricultural goods and metals from Latin America growing, Xi will participate in the APEC summit in Lima then head to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week, where he will also make a state visit to Brazil. Xi and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte participated on Thursday by video link in the opening
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
IT’S A DEAL? Including the phrase ‘overlapping claims’ in a Chinese-Indonesian joint statement over the weekend puts Jakarta’s national interests at risk, critics say Indonesia yesterday said it does not recognize China’s claims over the South China Sea, despite signing a maritime development deal with Beijing, as some analysts warned the pact risked compromising its sovereign rights. Beijing has long clashed with Southeast Asian neighbors over the South China Sea, which it claims almost in its entirety, based on a “nine-dash line” on its maps that cuts into the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of several countries. Joint agreements with China in the strategic waterway have been sensitive for years, with some nations wary of deals they fear could be interpreted as legitimizing Beijing’s vast claims. In 2016,
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