PHILIPPINES
Meteor lights up Luzon
A small, bright meteor lit up skies over the nation’s north early yesterday as it burned up entering the atmosphere, the European Space Agency (ESA) and witnesses said. The 1m rock, named 2024 RW1, entered the atmosphere shortly after midnight and caused a “harmless,” but “spectacular fireball” over Luzon island, the ESA said. The meteor, discovered through the Catalina Sky Survey, is only the ninth meteor that humans have ever spotted before impact. Businessman Allan Madelar, 28, told reporters that he waited an hour in Gonzaga, a municipality in Luzon, to watch the meteor with a friend. “It was mesmerizing, the color was beautiful. The sky went from black to blue-green to orange and black again,” he said. Video clips posted on Facebook showed an orange-tailed fireball that briefly illuminated the night sky over Luzon. Audie de la Cruz, 65, set up a camera on a bridge in Tuguegarao city to photograph the celestial spectacle, but the fireball died out before he could press the shutter. “It was like a tadpole with a very big head, and its head was very bright,” De la Cruz told reporters. “I might have failed to photograph it, but seeing it was a very unforgettable experience.”
JAPAN
Fukushima work planned
The operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant yesterday said that it aims to carry out a trial removal of highly radioactive debris next week, after a previous attempt was suspended. Thirteen years after a tsunami wrecked the plant, about 880 tonnes of extremely hazardous material remain inside. Late last month, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) suspended a removal procedure after a technical problem involving the installation of equipment. “It will take several days for us to prepare for a resumption ... and we will be able to resume next week if all goes well as scheduled,” a TEPCO spokesman told reporters. In three units of the Fukushima plant, fuel and other material melted and solidified into highly radioactive “fuel debris.” The new operation aims to remove a sample of the debris and study it to decide on the next steps. TEPCO deployed two mini-drones and a “snake-shaped robot” inside in February as part of the preparations for removal. The debris has radiation levels so high that it had to develop specialized robots able to function inside.
INDIA
Police seek ‘cow vigilantes’
Police yesterday said that they were compiling lists of Hindu “cow vigilantes” after a young man falsely accused of smuggling beef was shot dead. The killing last month of 19-year-old Aryan Mishra in northern Haryana state has sparked unusual outrage — much of it because the young man was a Hindu. Cows are venerated as sacred by the country’s Hindu majority, and their slaughter is illegal in many Indian states. The authorities are often accused of failing to rein in people who form gangs of “cow vigilantes” to attack people accused of involvement in cattle slaughter — with several deaths reported each year. Many of those accused of transporting or killing cows are from the nation’s 220-million-strong Muslim community, with social media awash with videos boasting of vigilante attacks. Mishra was killed on a highway on Aug. 24 after an armed mob chased his car for 50km, believing he was transporting beef. Five people have been arrested in connection with the killing, and senior Haryana police officer Aman Yadav said the force was preparing a “list of cow vigilantes” to track their movements.
‘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
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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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