Australia wants the Indonesian navy to agree to help guard tsunami buoys from pirates searching for scrap metal before the early warning devices are floated in the Indian Ocean, an official said yesterday.
Geoff Love, Australia's director of meteorology, told a Senate inquiry that the nation planned to place two tsunami buoys this year in international waters between Australia and Indonesia.
"We are negotiating an agreement with the Indonesian government to make sure that they don't become the victims of pirates -- scrap metal collectors," Love told the inquiry, adding that government-owned meteorological equipment had been stolen off Australia's north coast in the past.
for sale
"We've found [Australian] automatic weather stations for sale in Hong Kong -- we don't want that to happen again and so I'd like the Indonesians to have some ownership of these and the Indonesian navy" to protect them, he said.
A magnitude 9 quake off Sumatra's coast in 2004 triggered a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia.
Since then, Australia has begun building its own tsunami warning center to detect and verify potential tsunami dangers in its region.
locations
Love told the inquiry, which is conducting a routine investigation into the environment department spending, that the first buoy had been placed southeast of Australia between Tasmania State and the southern island of New Zealand.
A second will be placed next month in the Coral Sea northeast of Australia between Queensland State and Vanuatu and a third was planned in the Tasman Sea off the east coast between Sydney and New Zealand's north island.
Love said the Australians buoys in the Indian Ocean would help alert Indonesians to a tsunami threat in its southern waters, while the US was installing buoys in Indonesia's northern waters.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese