AUSTRALIA
Lawmaker dangles salmon
A lawmaker yesterday dangled a floppy dead salmon in the Senate, accusing the government of falling hook, line and sinker for polluting industrial fish farms. Environmental advocates have questioned the practices of intensive salmon farms in Tasmania, accusing them of choking waterways with waste and fish feces. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said she was fed up with a government that refused to enforce more stringent environmental standards. “On the eve of an election, have you sold out your environmental credentials for a rotten, stinking extinction salmon,” she said on a live feed of the proceedings, briefly pausing to heft the fish on to her desk. A fellow Greens senator sitting behind her cried out: “It stinks.” Hanson-Young was ordered to remove the fish — sheathed in a plastic bag.
Photo: Reuters
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Police unblock Facebook
Police yesterday said that they had unblocked Facebook after cutting off access in the nation because of a “counterterrorism” operation. Meta’s Facebook and Messenger platforms had been inaccessible since going offline on Monday. The police minister initially issued a statement praising a successful test of “innovative technology” to control misuse of Facebook content. Yesterday, the chief of police said that Facebook had been taken down as the force grappled with criminals abusing the social network. “A counterterrorism operation is under way to apprehend two men connected to attempts to incite an act of terrorism,” Police Commissioner David Manning said in a statement.
THAILAND
No-confidence vote fails
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra yesterday easily survived a no-confidence vote in parliament following a two-day debate in which rivals charged that she has mismanaged the country and let her father, a former prime minister, control her administration. Opposition lawmakers argued that she has been unduly influenced by her father, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Paetongtarn’s opponents said her administration has improperly favored the personal and financial interests of her family and her father. Paetongtarn received 319 votes, with 161 voting against her and seven abstaining.
PERU
President announces vote
President Dina Boluarte on Tuesday said that the country would hold general elections one year from now in an effort to end years of instability. The polls would elect a new president, 130 deputies and 60 senators, Boluarte said. The bicameral election system has not been used since the early 1990s. In a brief nationwide television address, Boularte did not say if she would be a candidate.
UNITED STATES
Voter ID ordered
President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered tighter controls on federal elections, including requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote. “Perhaps some people think I shouldn’t be complaining, because we won in a landslide [in November last year], but we’ve got to straighten out our election,” Trump said as he signed the executive order in the White House. “This country is so sick because of the election, the fake elections, and we’re going to straighten it out, one way or the other.”
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
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