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.
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
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
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to