Yachts sail out of Sydney Harbour at the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race yesterday. The annual race starts on Boxing Day each year and covers 630 nautical miles (1,170km) across the Bass Strait, separating the island-state of Tasmania from mainland Australia.
Photo: AFP/Rolex/Carlo Borlenghi
The Pentagon is bolstering its presence in the Middle East with ships, fighter planes and ballistic missile defense vessels as Israel faces threats from Iran to avenge assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. The moves announced on Friday by the US Department of Defense came a day after the White House said that US President Joe Biden promised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the US would provide new “defensive US military deployments.” The deployments include sending additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the US European and Central Command regions, Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement on Friday.
The Burmese military withdrew from some positions close to China’s border to prioritize the “safety of people,” the junta chief said, days after an alliance of ethnic armed groups said they had routed state troops in the area. Shan State in eastern Myanmar has been rocked by fighting since late June when the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) renewed an offensive against the military along a major trade highway to China. “With regard to the situation of Shan State, security forces withdrew their positions by considering the security of current areas and safety of people,” Min Aung Hlaing said in a
HUGE: The Park Fire, which has destroyed more than 162,200 hectares, was allegedly started by a man who was charged on suspicion of pushing a flaming car down a gully More than 6,000 firefighters in California’s Central Valley on Saturday continued to battle the largest blaze in the US, which burned its way into the history books as the state’s fourth-largest conflagration on record. There was barely a taste of rain on Saturday from thunderstorms that brought wind and rainfall of zero to 2.5mm, forecasters said. Heat of 38°C along with winds up to 40kph or more in some spots, offered little relief to the firefighters trying to contain the Park Fire, scorching the wilderness terrain about 161km north of Sacramento, the state capital. “We had some thunderstorms that just brought us
MINOR TSUNAMI: An official described the surface of the sea ‘wavering’ during the shaking, but tsunamis of only 50cm, 20cm and 10cm were confirmed to have hit A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 shook southern Japan yesterday, but no major damage was reported and only relatively minor tsunami arrived at the coast. The quake hit at 4:42pm off Kyushu at a depth of 25km, the US Geological Survey said. Broadcaster NHK showed footage of traffic lights shaking violently in Miyazaki on Kyushu. “The surface of the sea is wavering. I felt an intense jolt when the quake happened which lasted for between 30 seconds and a minute,” a local official told NHK. The broadcaster also reported that three people were hurt in Miyazaki, but gave no indication of the