PHILIPPINES
China ‘damaging reefs’
Manila yesterday challenged China to open Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) to international scrutiny after it accused Beijing of destroying the shoal’s marine environment. “We are alarmed and worried about the situation that’s happening there,” National Security spokesperson Jonathan Malaya told a news conference. Government consensus was growing on the need to file a case against China over the destruction of coral reefs, including the harvesting of endangered giant clams, in the South China Sea, Malaya said. Photographs taken by the coast guard from 2018 to 2019 showed individuals it said were Chinese fishers illegally harvesting giant clams, sting rays, topshells and sea turtles depleting the shoal’s marine environment. “That’s a clear evidence of being careless. They don’t really care about the marine environment,” coast guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela said.
AUSTRALIA
Police charge 554 for abuse
Police in New South Wales yesterday announced that they had arrested and charged 554 domestic violence suspects in a four-day operation, as the country reckons with a series of high-profile attacks on women. Police said some of “the worst domestic violence offenders” in the state had been rounded up, including one man who allegedly stamped on a woman, causing fractured ribs, facial injuries and a bruised kidney. The arrests come as Australia grapples with the violent deaths of 28 women this year — an average of one death every four days. Only 14 women died in violent incidents during the same period last year.
AFGHANISTAN
IS claims deadly attack
The Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for an attack on foreigners in central Afghanistan in which three Spanish citizens and three Afghans were killed. Seven people were wounded in the attack on Friday in Bamiyan Province, a major tourist area, said Abdul Mateen Qani, a spokesman for the interior minister. He said seven suspects were arrested at the scene. IS issued statements on its Aamaq news agency late on Sunday that said its fighters attacked a bus carrying tourists and their guides. “The attack was in response to the IS leaders’ directions to target citizens of the European Union wherever they are found,” it said.
UNITED STATES
Space age record broken
Ed Dwight, the US’ first black astronaut candidate, finally rocketed into space 60 years later, flying with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company on Sunday. Dwight was an Air Force pilot when President John F. Kennedy championed him as a candidate for NASA’s early astronaut corps, but he was not picked for the 1963 class. Dwight, now 90, went through a few minutes of weightlessness with five other passengers aboard the Blue Origin capsule as it skimmed space on a roughly 10-minute flight. It was “a life-changing experience,” Dwight said shortly after exiting the capsule. “I thought I really didn’t need this in my life, but, now, I need it in my life ... I am ecstatic.” The brief flight from west Texas made Dwight the new record-holder for oldest person in space — nearly two months older than Star Trek actor William Shatner was when he went up in 2021. It was Blue Origin’s first crew launch in nearly two years. The company was grounded following a 2022 accident in which the booster came crashing down, but the capsule full of experiments safely parachuted to the ground.
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
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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
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