GREENLAND
US not getting island: PM
New Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen on Sunday pushed back against assertions by US President Donald Trump that Washington would take control of the territory. “President Trump says that the United States ‘will get Greenland.’ Let me be clear: The United States will not get it. We do not belong to anyone else. We decide our own future,” Nielsen wrote on Facebook. His post comes a day after Trump told NBC News that military force was not off the table with regard to acquiring Greenland. “I think there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force,” Trump said, but added: “I don’t take anything off the table.” Greenland’s residents and politicians have reacted with anger to Trump’s repeated suggestions, with Danish leaders also pushing back.
UNITED STATES
Musk gives away millions
Billionaire Elon Musk on Sunday handed out million-dollar checks to two voters in Wisconsin and promised smaller payments to others who help elect a conservative candidate to the state’s top court in a closely watched election. The Tesla CEO, a top adviser to Trump, handed out oversized checks at a rally in Green Bay, as he sought to drum up enthusiasm for the state Supreme Court election. Musk said he would also pay supporters US$20 for every voter they recruit over the next two days. He said he was spending the money to raise awareness of a race in which liberal Susan Crawford seems to be running ahead of conservative Brad Schimel. Today’s contest would determine the ideological tilt of the state’s top court as it considers abortion rights, labor rights and possibly election rules. Wisconsin’s attorney general, Democrat Josh Kaul, sued to block the giveaway, but the state supreme court ruled it could go ahead, the Washington Post reported.
CHINA
Major oilfield discovered
China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) yesterday said it has discovered a major oilfield in the eastern South China Sea, with proven reserves exceeding 100 million tonnes. The Huizhou 19-6 oilfield lies about 170km from Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, Xinhua news agency said. Test drilling has yielded a daily production of 413 barrels of crude oil and 68,000 cubic meters of natural gas, CNOOC said. CEO Zhou Xinhuai (週心懷) hailed “successive breakthroughs in oil and gas exploration in the eastern waters of the South China Sea.” CNOOC “has discovered 100 million tonnes oilfields for two consecutive years, which creates a new growth pole for the continuous growth in offshore oil and gas production,” he added. The US Energy Information Administration says the South China Sea is mostly underexplored because of territorial disputes, but most discovered oil and gas are in uncontested areas.
JAPAN
Sukiya outlets shut down
Shares of Zensho Holdings Co yesterday fell as much as 6.5 percent after the operator of Japanese restaurant chains said it would temporarily close most of its Sukiya stores following multiple food contamination incidents. A pest was found in a product given to a customer on Friday, the company said on its Web site. The incident follows a case they had disclosed on March 22, in which a customer in January discovered a dead rodent in a bowl of miso soup. Sukiya, which operates about 2,000 branches across the nation, yesterday shuttered most of its outlets until Friday.
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
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
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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