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.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in