INDONESIA
Government sinks 125 boats
The government has sunk 125 mostly foreign vessels involved in illegal fishing as it ramps up efforts to exert greater control over the nation’s vast maritime territory, an official said yesterday. The sinkings at 11 locations were carried out simultaneously on Monday. Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries spokeswoman Lily Pregiwati yesterday said the operation was not announced in advance to avoid straining relations with neighboring countries. The government said it has sunk 488 illegal fishing vessels since October 2014, usually with explosives. The illegal boats are a threat to the nation’s fishing industry, it said, adding that their operators are frequently perpetrators of modern-day slavery, using workers trafficked from Southeast Asian nations. The vessels sunk on Monday included 86 Vietnamese-flagged ships, 20 Malaysian and 14 from the Philippines. Video shot by local media showed ministry workers scrambling to an adjacent boat from a sinking vessel that had been filled with sand and flooded.
JAPAN
Ministries probed over quota
The government is investigating claims that ministries routinely overstated the number of disabled people on their staff to meet a legal quota, an official said yesterday. The probe began after local media last week reported that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications had padded their data on the hiring of disabled employees. Additional reports this week emerged of similar cheating at other ministries and local governments. Last fiscal year, the government set a quota for the number of disabled employees in ministries of at least 2.3 percent. Last year, ministries reported that 2.49 percent of their staff were people with disabilities, but the alleged padding might mean that the government is in violation of the law. The Japan Broadcasting Corp yesterday reported that ministries in June last year said they had 6,000 people with disabilities on staff, but more than 1,000 of those employees were not disabled, citing government sources. Private broadcaster TV Asahi put the figure even higher, at about 2,000. Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Seiko Noda earlier this week told reporters that officials at her ministry had confirmed the manipulation of data on its disabled employees. “I was extremely shocked to hear that such a thing was happening, even though I don’t know the exact number,” Noda said. “Speaking as the mother of a disabled child, not as the internal affairs minister, this is something I cannot allow.”
JAPAN
Fleet returns with whales
A fleet of whaling ships caught 177 minke and sei whales during a three-month tour of the northwestern Pacific Ocean, the government said yesterday. The three-ship mission returned home as Tokyo prepares to make its case to resume commercial whaling at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Brazil next month. During the latest 98-day mission, the ships caught 43 minke whales and 134 sei whales, the Fisheries Agency said in a statement. “Data that were gathered during this mission will be analyzed, along with results from coastal research programs,” the agency said, adding that the data “will be presented to IWC’s scientific committee and will enhance scientific knowledge for conserving and managing cetacean resources.” The mission was part of a 12-year project to study the number, eating patterns and biology of whales to support Tokyo’s claim that certain whales are not endangered and could be caught for consumption.
‘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