AUSTRALIA
No sign of missing plane
The intensive underwater hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has so far turned up just a few shipping containers, but no sign of the jet, the head of the agency leading the search said yesterday. Australian Transport Safety Bureau Commissioner Martin Dolan said that while several manmade items have been detected during a sonar search, they had found nothing resembling debris from the jet that vanished a year ago on Sunday carrying 239 people en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Authorities have narrowed the search area to a vast 60,000km2 zone — and they have so far scoured around 40 percent of it, Dolan said.
JAPAN
Abe admits to donations
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday said he received donations from firms that got government subsidies, the first time he himself has faced questions about potentially improper donations, after having lost three Cabinet members to scandals. Kyodo news agency and the Sankei Shimbun said a branch of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party in his home constituency received a total of ¥620,000 (US$5,165) from chemical companies that got government subsidies in 2012 and 2013. Donations by firms within a year of awards of government subsidies are illegal, but Internal Affairs Minister Sanae Takaichi told a parliamentary panel there was no legal problem if the politician was unaware of the subsidies at the time.
UNITED STATES
Terror case nears end
A Pakistani man who is acting as his own attorney at a terror trial told a federal court jury in closing arguments on Monday that he was busy chasing women on the Internet at the time of his arrest — not plotting death and destruction at a British shopping mall. “Abid is innocent,” said Abid Naseer, referring to himself in the third person. In her closing argument, Assistant US Attorney Zainab Ahmed told the jurors in New York City that the arrests of Naseer and other members of an alleged terror cell in Manchester, England, in 2009 averted mass murder there. Washington alleges Naseer had received bomb-making instruction in Pakistan in 2008 and conspired to provide material support to al-Qaeda.
NIGERIA
Video hints at beheadings
Boko Haram released a video purporting to show it beheading two men, its first online posting using advanced graphics and editing techniques reminiscent of footage from the Islamic State. The film, released on Monday, shows militants standing behind the two men who are on their knees, their hands tied behind their backs, with a man armed with a knife standing over them. The film moves to another scene showing their decapitated bodies. It was not possible to confirm the film’s authenticity or date.
PAKISTAN
Vaccines go to waste
Two health officials have been suspended after US$3.7 million worth of pentavalent vaccines donated by UNICEF were wasted. National Health Services Regulation and Coordination Minister Saira Afzal Tarar yesterday said the vaccines — which protect against five diseases with a single shot — spoiled because they were not stored at the proper temperature due to “departmental conflicts... It appears that one person was switching off the generator when it was turned on apparently to save fuel.” Meanwhile, police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Monday arrested more than 450 parents for refusing to vaccinate their children against polio.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema