INDONESIA
Court rejects poll delay
The Jakarta High Court yesterday overturned a lower court’s controversial order to delay next year’s presidential and general elections by two years, saying it had overstepped its jurisdiction and had no authority to make the decision. The decision, after an appeal by the General Elections Commission, means the elections in February next year should be able to go ahead as scheduled. Deciding chief judge Sugeng Riyono said the Central Jakarta District Court had no authority or competence to deliberate on the matter. The March 2 ruling stunned many politicians and members of the public after it ordered all election activities be stopped because of a complaint by an obscure party whose application to run was denied. ”
JAPAN
Intern scheme may be shut
A government panel is set to recommend the closure of a controversial vocational training scheme for young people from developing countries, an immigration official said yesterday. The “technical intern” program was launched three decades ago and has long been criticized by campaigners as a hotbed of abuse and discrimination. The scheme is supposed to offer skills to overseas “trainees” in sectors such as construction, agriculture and food processing, but local firms have been accused of treating participants as cheap, temporary workers. Draft recommendations by an immigration agency expert panel called for replacing the system with one that recognizes the nation’s need for labor and its wish to train people from less developed countries, the official said. In a document released on Monday after months of discussions, the panel highlighted the “discrepancy” between the program’s goal and the reality faced by young interns. The panel aims to submit its first proposals to ministers in the coming weeks before issuing an official policy recommendation after the summer, the official said.
INDIA
Normal monsoon forecast
The nation is likely to receive normal monsoon rains this year, the Meteorological Department said yesterday, the fifth straight year of normal or above normal summer rains that spur farm and overall economic growth. The rains, which usually lash the southern tip of Kerala state around June 1 and retreat by September, are expected to total 96 percent of the long-term average this year, Ministry of Earth Sciences Secretary M. Ravichandran told a news conference. The department defines average, or normal, rainfall as ranging between 96 percent and 104 percent of a 50-year average of 87cm for the four-month season.
GERMANY
Firefighters free squirrel
Firefighters said they have freed an “uncooperative” squirrel that was stuck in a manhole cover in Dortmund — echoing a similar incident that happened in the same city four years ago. The Dortmund fire department said it was alerted to a distressed squirrel by a pedestrian on Monday afternoon, after she spotted its head peering out of a hole in the road. A crew of firefighters who arrived at the scene carefully removed the manhole cover and tried to free the rodent. “This turned out to be quite complicated as the squirrel was uncooperative,” the department said. After further attempts the crew was able to extract the animal unharmed and it vanished up a nearby tree. In 2019, a similar squirrel rescue drew international attention. “It could not be determined if it was the same squirrel that had to be rescued from the same situation four years ago,” the department said in a statement.
RUSSIA
Shiveluch volcano erupts
Shiveluch volcano erupted yesterday, spewing a cloud of ash across a vast swath of the Kamchatka Peninsula and potentially posing a risk to flights, local volcanology authorities said. The Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT), which monitors eruptions in the region, issued an aviation code red after the eruption, reporting that the ash cloud had drifted hundreds of kilometres to the north and southwest of Shiveluch. “An extrusive eruption of the volcano continues. Ash explosions up to 15km ASL [above sea level] could occur at any time. Ongoing activity could affect international and low-flying aircraft,” the KVERT notice said. A video of the eruption posted to Telegram by the head of the local Ust-Kamchatsky administration, Oleg Bondarenko, showed a wall of ash billowing from one end of the horizon to the other. In a separate post, Bondarenko said that locals were “advised to stay at home, do not leave the premises unnecessarily.”
SOUTH KOREA
Fires force evacuations
About 300 people evacuated from their homes in Gangneung as strong winds and dry weather fanned a wildfire yesterday, officials said. Firefighters were struggling to control the blaze that started at about 8:30am, with water-bombing aircraft unable to take off due to the winds, officials said. The flames had consumed more than 170 hectares of land and prompted the evacuation of about 300 residents in the city of more than 200,000 people as of 1pm, Gangwon Province Governor Kim Jin-tae said. There were no immediate reports of any casualties. The fire appears to have started after strong winds blew a tree over onto live overhead power cables, igniting flames, Kim said. Photographs and footage circulating on social media showed fires razing forests and fields, and buildings engulfed by smoke. President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered officials to mobilize all available resources to put out the fire as soon as possible and quickly evacuate nearby residents to minimize casualties, his office said.
CHINA
Sandstorms forecast
Thick sandstorms are forecast to hit Beijing and several provinces through today, with warnings issued of respiratory dangers and low visibility while travelling, state media reported. Beijing has had regular air pollution and an unseasonal number of sandstorms over the past few weeks. Forecasters issued a “blue” weather alert warning for sandstorms. China has a four-tier, color-coded weather-warning system, with red representing the most severe warning and blue the least severe. On Tuesday morning, smog and misty gray clouds enveloped Beijing and the city’s real-time air quality index was at a serious pollution level, the Web site of the Beijing Municipal Ecological and Environmental Monitoring Center said. The concentration of fine particulates in the air in Beijing reached 46.2 times the WHO’s annual air quality guideline value, said IQAir, a Web site that issues air quality data and information. A dozen regions, including Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan and Hubei, Inner Mongolia and metropolis Shanghai, would be affected by sandstorms and major dust until 8am today, the Central Meteorological Observatory said. The sandstorms were again a hot dicussion topic on social media, racking up 2.178 million chats. One user wrote, “What. When I wake up, why doesn’t anyone issue a holiday notice, do you still have to go to work in the dust today!”
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
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