Japanese whaling ships on their annual hunt in the Antarctic are banned from docking in Australia and should use restraint in looming clashes with protesters, Canberra said yesterday.
A fleet of six Japanese whalers plans to kill nearly 1,000 whales in the name of research, while activists from Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd conservation groups have threatened to stop them.
Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell said he was strongly opposed to whaling and the Japanese fleet operating in the Southern Ocean would not be allowed to enter Australian ports.
"They can only do that with my permission and I will not grant permission to Japanese whaling vessels or support vessels to use Australian ports," he said. "They are banned from Australian ports as long as I'm the minister."
Campbell urged the Japanese whalers to shun the use of water cannons against protesters, saying confrontations during previous hunts had put lives at risk.
"In the deep Southern Ocean, shooting a powerful water cannon at a human being puts them at risk of falling into the ocean," he said. "Death through either propeller strike, hypothermia or being struck by a ship is a very high risk."
The water cannon were used last year against Greenpeace protesters who deployed small rubber boats to put themselves between the harpoons and the whales.
Greenpeace will harass the Japanese fleet with its fastest ship, the 72m Esperanza, scheduled to leave New Zealand for the Southern Ocean on Jan. 25.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
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