INDIA
Gas leak prompts evacuation
Thirty students at a school were yesterday hospitalized complaining of breathlessness and eye irritation following a gas leak from a fuel tanker, witnesses said. More than 100 students were evacuated from the Rani Jhansi school in the capital, New Delhi, media said. It was not clear what had caused the leak and no further details were immediately available. “Some students complained of irritation in eyes and throat due to the gas leak,” a school official told reporters.
PERU
Investigation targets Humala
The national prosecutor’s office on Friday said it has opened an investigation into allegations of “crimes against humanity” related to the military’s fight against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s, in a case involving former president Ollanta Humala. The investigation comes as testimony from two new witnesses suggests that soldiers under Humala’s command at the Madre Mia military base tortured and murdered civilians. Humala was an army officer during Peru’s bloody campaign against Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path in the 1980s and 1990s. Humala has publicly denied the allegations. A previous probe into the alleged human rights violations was shelved in 2009 for lack of evidence. However, leaked transcripts of recorded telephone conversations published in local media over the past few weeks appear to suggest Humala bribed torture victims to alter their testimony, which he has also denied.
UNITED STATES
Cassini finds ‘the big empty’
The uncrewed Cassini spacecraft, after completing two passes in the vast, unexplored area between Saturn’s rings, has discovered not much else there, researchers at NASA said. Scientists have been surprised to find that not all that much — not even space dust — lies between Saturn’s iconic rings. Cassini late last month made a first pass to explore what lies between the rings and a second one on Tuesday at a speed of about 123,920kph relative to the planet. “The region between the rings and Saturn is ‘the big empty,’ apparently,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory Cassini project manager Earl Maize said after the probe’s first pass. The gap between the rings and the top of Saturn’s atmosphere is about 2,400km. Cassini is expected to make a total of 22 dives between the rings and the planet before making a death plunge into the gas giant in September.
VANUATU
Storm damage assessed
The government yesterday began assessing the damage after the nation was pounded by destructive winds from Cyclone Debbie, which brought down houses and buildings. The eye of the category three cyclone veered away from the nation before making landfall, but National Disaster Management Office Director Shadrack Welegtabit said winds in excess of 200kph wreaked havoc in outlying islands. “The cyclone has passed through and we have now started our response, doing an assessment of the damage and what people need,” he told reporters. “It did not make landfall, but the gale force winds affected some islands. There was damage to houses and buildings, but we haven’t had any reports of injuries.” A curfew was imposed in many of the populated islands on Friday, with residents taking shelter in caves and evacuation centers until the storm passed. Although Donna was tracking west toward New Caledonia, the nation was warned to expect “damaging gale force winds and very rough seas” for another 24 hours.
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing