CHINA
Hainan to ban some plastics
Hainan Province is to ban the production, sale and use of all single-use nonbiodegradable plastics by 2025 in a bid to ease pollution, state media reported late on Thursday, citing the province’s environmental bureau. Hainan is the country’s first region to make a formal commitment to phase out single-use nonbiodegradable plastics, which have been identified by the UN as one of the world’s biggest environmental challenges. The province uses about 120,000 tonnes of the material every year, the government has estimated. The official China News Service reported that Hainan would draw up new standards and establish a monitoring and enforcement system before the end of this year. The province is to begin by banning nonbiodegradable plastic bags and eating utensils by the end of next year, and ban the material completely before 2025, the news agency said.
INDIA
Moonshine kills at least 17
At least 17 tea plantation workers have died from drinking toxic bootleg liquor after receiving their weekly wages, with more than 40 hospitalized and critically ill, a doctor said yesterday. The deaths came less than two weeks after more than 100 people died after drinking tainted alcohol. Seven women were among the dead at the plantation in northeastern Assam, 310km from the state capital, Guwahati. Dilip Rajbnonshi, a doctor at the government hospital in Golaghat, said that the deaths were due to “spurious country liquor.” Nearly 100 people drank the liquor on Thursday and people were still falling ill and being taken to hospitals, Mrinal Saikia, a local lawmaker from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters.
TURKEY
Warrants issued for soldiers
The government yesterday ordered the arrest of 295 active-duty military personnel, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement, accusing them of links to the network of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara has said orchestrated a 2016 attempted coup. Those facing detention included three colonels, eight majors and 10 lieutenants, with about half of the suspects being in the army and the remainder in other branches, including the navy and air force, the statement said. Police launched simultaneous arrest operations at 1am under an investigation into pay phone calls between suspected Gulen operatives, the office said. It was not clear how many suspects have been detained. About 250 people were killed in the failed putsch, in which Gulen, a former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has denied involvement. Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. More than 77,000 people have been jailed pending trial since the coup and widespread arrests are still routine.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not