NEW ZEALAND
Man rescued from base
An Australian who fell ill at a remote antarctic base is returning home on an icebreaker following a daunting mission to rescue him, authorities said yesterday. The man was working at the Casey research station when he suffered from what authorities described as a developing medical condition that needed specialist assessment and care. The icebreaker RSV Nuyina left Australia last week and traveled south more than 3,000km, breaking through sea ice to reach a location 144km from the base, the Australian Antarctic Division said in a statement. From there, two helicopters on Sunday were deployed from the deck and arrived at the base after nearly an hour to rescue the man. The ship is now on the return voyage to Hobart. “Getting this expeditioner back to Tasmania for the specialist medical care required is our priority,” said Robb Clifton, the division’s acting general manager of operations and logistics. The man is expected to arrive in Australia next week.
FRANCE
Girls sent home over ‘abaya’
French schools sent dozens of girls home for refusing to remove their abaya on the first day of the school year, Minister of National Education and Youth Gabriel Attal told the BFM broadcaster yesterday. Defying a ban on the Muslim dress, nearly 300 girls showed up on Monday morning wearing an abaya, Attal said Most agreed to change out of the dress, but 67 refused and were sent home, he said. The government last month announced it was banning the abaya in schools, saying it broke the rules on secularism in education that have already seen Muslim headscarves banned on the grounds they constitute a display of religious affiliation. Attal said the girls refused entry were given a letter addressed to their families saying that “secularism is not a constraint, it is a liberty.”
SINGAPORE
Rapper jailed over criticism
A rapper who has accused authorities of racism was yesterday sentenced to six weeks in jail over his social media posts, including a video criticizing an actor in brownface and comments alleging unequal treatment of the city-state’s races. Subhas Nair, a musician of Indian descent, was earlier this year found guilty of attempting to promote ill will between different ethnic and religious groups. The government has sought to promote racial harmony among its diverse population of 5.6 million, but some still complain that the ethnic Chinese majority enjoy greater privileges. One of the charges related to a 2019 rap video that criticized an ad featuring a local Chinese actor who darkened his skin to portray an Indian. “Subhas has filed an appeal against both his guilty verdict, as well as his sentence,” his lawyer Suang Wijaya said, adding that Nair has been granted bail pending appeal.
CHINA
Two damaged Great Wall
Two people have been detained after using an excavator to dig a hole in the Great Wall, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Monday. Police in Shanxi Province followed tracks made by machinery used to dig a shortcut through a segment of the wall. The suspects said under questioning that they had used a digger to create a shortcut in the wall in a bid to reduce local travel time, state media said. The section of the Great Wall affected, situated about a six-hour drive west of Beijing, dates back to the Ming Dynasty. CCTV said the suspects had caused “irreversible damage” to the wall, which was described as a “relatively intact” section of significant research value.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home