AUSTRALIA
Space agency planned
Canberra yesterday said it would create its own space agency to increase its share of the US$330 billion space economy. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the agency would be part of the development of an innovation and science economy. “It’s a small agency to coordinate and lead,” Turnbull said. “The space sector, of course, is one of enormous potential.” Acting Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Michaelia Cash said the agency’s charter would be developed by the end of March next year.
INDIA
Police hunt for jailbreakers
Scores of juvenile inmates, including killers and rapists, staged a mass breakout overnight on Sunday from a detention center in Bihar state after cutting through metal windows and gates, police said yesterday. Twelve of the 34 inmates who escaped returned hours later and a manhunt is on for the rest. Centers like the one in Bihar usually do not have armed guards.
CAMBODIA
CNRP hangs banners
The Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) yesterday put up banners nationwide calling for the release of its detained leader, Kem Sokha, in a challenge to the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen. Kem Sokha was arrested on Sept. 3 and charged treason. Government spokesman Phay Siphan said the opposition party’s banners amounted to pressure on the court and an attempt to interfere with its work. “This is unacceptable,” he said.
JAPAN
Chinese intrusion claimed
Chinese coast guard vessels yesterday sailed near the Senkaku Islands, known in Taiwan as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) and the Diaoyu Archipelago (釣魚群島) in China, the second such incident in less than a week, the Japanese coast guard said. The islands are claimed by all three nations. The four ships entered the waters surrounding the island chain about 10am and were moving in a southwest direction, according to the Japanese coast guard. A statement from China’s State Oceanic Administration said the four ships were “patrolling in Chinese waters off the Diaoyu Islands.”
PHILIPPINES
Vietnamese fishermen slain
Two Vietnamese fishermen were found dead with gunshot wounds and five others were arrested after the navy chased suspected poachers in the South China Sea on Saturday, officials said yesterday. A patrol ship pursued six Vietnamese fishing boats 56km off the northern coastal town of Bolinao, regional military spokesman Lieutenant Jose Covarrubias said. The bodies of the two men were found after a Vietnamese boat slammed into the navy vessel, he said. The fishermen in custody would face poaching charges, he added. Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said Manila would conduct a “fair and thorough” investigation into the deaths of the Vietnamese.
AUSTRALIA
Whale carcass exhumed
A massive humpback whale buried on a beach was exhumed yesterday because local residents feared its rotting carcass was attracting sharks. The body of an 18 tonne whale came ashore last week entangled in fishing ropes at Nobbys Beach in Port Macquarie. Authorities tried to drag it back to sea, but gave up when it became caught on rocks. Mechanical diggers were winched down to the beach to uncover the carcass and rip it apart so the remains could be winched up to the road in skips and trucked to a landfill site.
RUSSIA
UN chides Moscow
The government is committing “grave” human rights violations in Crimea, including its imposition of citizenship and deliberately transferring hundreds of prisoners and detainees to prisons in Russia, according to UN human rights report issued in Geneva, Switzerland, yesterday. “Grave human rights violations, such as arbitrary arrests and detentions, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment and torture and at least one extra-judicial execution were documented,” the report said. UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said the imposition of citizenship can be equated to forcing people to “swear allegiance to a power they may consider as hostile.”
UNITED STATES
One dies in church shooting
A masked assailant on Sunday opened fire at a church near Nashville, Tennessee, killing a woman, wounding six more people and pistol-whipping another, police said. The gunman, who is 26, shot himself after being confronted by an usher at the Church of Christ Burnette Chapel and has been hospitalized. Police said the shooter, an African-American wearing a sort of ski mask, arrived at the church in a blue sports utility vehicle as parishioners were leaving Sunday services and immediately shot a woman in the parking lot. She died later of her wounds. He then entered the rear of the church while about 50 people were still inside and fired multiple rounds, wounding six more people, police spokesman Don Aaron said.
UNITED STATES
Kushner used private e-mail
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, used his personal e-mail account on dozens of occasions to communicate with colleagues in the White House, his lawyer said on Sunday. Between January and last month, Kushner either received or responded to fewer than 100 e-mails from White House officials from his private account, attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement that confirmed Kushner’s use of a personal address in the first months of the administration. The use of a private e-mail account to discuss government matters is a politically freighted issue that factored prominently in last year’s presidential election.
UNITED STATES
Obama faced Zuckerberg
Former president Barack Obama personally urged Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg to counter the rise of fake news on the social network during a meeting held shortly after last year’s election, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. The encounter reportedly took place on the sidelines of a meeting of global leaders in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 19 last year, days after Zuckerberg had dismissed as “crazy” the idea that misleading stories driven by Russian operatives had made a major impact on the outcome of the vote.
PALESTINE
Hamdallah to visit Gaza
Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah will travel to the Gaza Strip on Monday next week as part of renewed reconciliation efforts with Hamas, which runs the enclave, his government said yesterday. “Prime minister Rami Hamdallah has decided after consulting with President Mahmud Abbas that the government will hold its weekly meeting in Gaza next week,” government spokesman Yusuf Al Mahmoud said in a statement published on official Palestinian news agency WAFA. “Hamdallah and members of the government will arrive in Gaza next Monday,” it said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the