AUSTRALIA
Landmark treaty signed
Canberra and Funafuti are pressing ahead with a landmark treaty offering the Pacific Island’s citizens a climate refuge, quieting speculation about the fate of the pact. The 11-page treaty was presented to the Australian Parliament late on Tuesday — offering Tuvalu residents the right to live in Australia if their homeland is lost to rising sea levels. The pact also commits Australia to defending Tuvalu in the face of natural disasters, health pandemics and “military aggression,” but only upon their request for aid.
TUNISIA
Four sentenced to death
Four people were condemned to death and two sentenced to life in prison yesterday after a decade-long investigation into the 2013 killing of secular opposition leader Chokri Belaid. Belaid’s assassination, which was claimed by militants loyal to the Islamic State group, dealt a heavy blow to the fledgling democracy established after the overthrow Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the first of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. The judgement was announced on national television early yesterday after 15 hours of deliberation. Twenty-three people received sentences ranging from two to 120 years, while five defendants were acquitted.
UKRAINE
Russian fleet devastated
The military has sunk or disabled one-third of all Russian warships in the Black Sea in just more than two years of war, a navy spokesman said on Tuesday, a heavy blow to Moscow’s military capability. Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said that the latest strike on Saturday night hit the Russian amphibious landing ship Kostiantyn Olshansky that was resting in dock in Sevastopol in Russia-occupied Crimea, along with two other landing ships and an intelligence ship. With the latest attack, one-third of all warships that Russian had in the Black Sea before the war have been destroyed or disabled, Pletenchuk said.
UNITED STATES
Man dies in subway attack
A man died after being pushed onto subway tracks in New York in an unprovoked attack, authorities reported less than a month after troops were deployed to reduce surging violence in the city’s transportation system. The victim, who has not been identified, was shoved in front of an oncoming No. 4 train on Monday evening in East Harlem, police said. Officers arrested and charged the alleged assailant, a 24-year-old man named Carlton McPherson, who local media reported has a long history of mental illness. In the past few months there have been a number of deadly shootings, as well as incidents involving knives and passengers being pushed onto the tracks.
AUSTRALIA
Man in drain hiding: police
Police yesterday said that a man who spent more than 30 hours stuck in a Brisbane drain was hiding from them, not trying to retrieve a lost mobile phone as he initially claimed. The man’s underground escapades are believed to have begun when he was allegedly involved in a crash with a police vehicle in the early hours of Sunday. After hitting the police vehicle, the man fled before being involved in another crash, at which point he fled on foot, police said. It was then that the 38-year-old man is alleged to have entered the drain looking for a place to hide. The trapped man was initially spotted by a passerby on Sunday and refused an offer of help, saying: “No bro, I’m all good,” adding he was looking for a lost phone.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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