SOUTH KOREA
Hostages in Nigeria released
Two South Koreans have been released after being abducted nearly three weeks ago by an unidentified armed group in Nigeria, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The two men, who were abducted in southern Nigeria on Dec. 12, are employees of Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co, Yonhap News Agency reported. South Korean authorities secured their custody on Friday, the foreign ministry said, adding that they are in good health. They “have been moved to a safe area after a medical examination, and have spoken to their families,” the ministry said in a statement. It did not state if any ransom was paid.
UNITED STATES
Burning ship heads to Alaska
A Taiwan-owned cargo vessel carrying lithium-ion batteries has been ordered to continue to Alaska after a fire was reported in its cargo hold. The coast guard on Friday said the fire is contained, but ongoing. The 125m cargo ship Genius Star XI was directed to continue to the port at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, while a coast guard airplane and ship were sent to assist. The ship was about 362km southwest of Dutch Harbor when they reported the fire early on Thursday morning, the guard said in a release. The vessel is owned by Wisdom Marine Group of Taipei. A spokesperson said in an e-mail that there were no injuries to the 19 crew members and no oil has leaked. It was headed to San Diego with the batteries from Vietnam, when the fire was detected on Monday, the e-mail said.
AUSTRALIA
Forecasting harder: official
Climate change is making it harder to accurately forecast extreme weather events, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Murray Watt said yesterday, amid criticism that the Bureau of Meteorology failed to provide timely warnings of this week’s deadly storms. “Climate change is having an impact,” Watt told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. “The models that we’ve traditionally used are having to change because the climate is changing. That’s something that I know the bureau is working hard on, but unfortunately, the reality is that climate change means that we are going to be living through more unpredictable weather.” The weather bureau has received criticism for its failure to notify residents in time about this week’s deadly thunderstorms following the landfall of ex-tropical cyclone Jasper in Queensland. Watt, who is also the emergency management minister, acknowledged the criticisms, adding that “meteorology is not a perfect science.”
UNITED STATES
Ex-Trump fixer cites AI cases
Michael Cohen, formerly a fixer and lawyer for former US president Donald Trump, said in court papers unsealed on Friday that he mistakenly gave his attorney fake case citations generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) program that made their way into an official court filing. The case citations were included by an attorney for Cohen in a motion seeking an early end to his supervised release following Cohen’s imprisonment for campaign finance violations. US District Judge Jesse Furman earlier this month said three court decisions cited in the motion did not exist. Cohen, who is expected to be a star witness against Trump at one of the former president’s criminal trials, said he had “not kept up with emerging trends [and related risks] in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like ChatGPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not.”
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
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
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
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
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