AUSTRALIA
Second missing hiker found
A second person missing in the outback for two weeks after going hiking has been found near Alice Springs, police said yesterday. Phu Tran, 40, was found by a farmer at a cattle station near Alice Springs. He survived soaring temperatures by drinking water meant for livestock, and was basically in good condition, although slightly disoriented, police said. Tran was found three days after his friend Tamra McBeath-Riley was found. The third member of the group, Claire Hockridge, is still missing.
SRI LANKA
Parliament suspension set
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has suspended parliament for a month ahead of snap elections he wants to call in March to consolidate his landslide victory in last month’s presidential elections. He issued a proclamation overnight proroguing the legislature and said a new session would begin from Jan. 3. The official announcement of a fresh session of the legislature will give his minority government more control over parliamentary oversight committees.
JAPAN
Nuisance calls bring arrest
A pensioner has been arrested after ringing a telephone company 24,000 times to complain they had violated his contract, Tokyo police and media reported yesterday. Akitoshi Okamoto, 71, was taken into custody last week after he made hundreds of toll-free calls over eight days to KDDI’s customer service section. However, media outlets reported that he made thousands more calls from public pay phones to voice his displeasure with the company and insult customer service staff. He has been arrested on suspicion of “fraudulent obstruction of business,” a police spokesman said.
INDIA
NASA spots crashed lander
NASA has found the Vikram lander that crashed in September while attempting to land near the moon’s south pole. The agency released images showing an impact site and debris from the lander, which disappeared with a rover minutes before a scheduled touchdown that would have made the country just the fourth nation to achieve a soft landing on the moon. Local mechanical engineer Shanmuga Subramanian contacted NASA after studying images of the site released by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team on Sept. 26. He identified the debris and the team confirmed the finding after checking images acquired in the following months, NASA said.
ZIMBABWE
WFP sending food aid
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) yesterday announced it was procuring 240,000 tonnes of food assistance to deliver to 4.1 million people in the nation, where food shortages are being exacerbated by runaway inflation and drought induced by climate change. “We are very much concerned as the situation continues to deteriorate,” WFP country director Eddie Rowe said in Harare. “We believe if we do not reach out and assist these people then the situation would blow up into a major crisis.”
ZIMBABWE
Mugabe’s estate listed
Former president Robert Mugabe left behind US$10 million in the bank and four houses in the capital, but there is no will naming his beneficiaries, a list of his estate published by state-owned Herald newspaper showed yesterday. The list included a farm, 10 cars and 11 hectares of land and the orchard where he is buried, but does not mention any overseas assets.
RUSSIA
Blogger registration passed
President Vladimir Putin yesterday signed a bill into law that gives the government the right to register bloggers, journalists and social media users as foreign agents. The law can apply to anyone who distributes content produced by media firms registered as foreign agents and receives payments from abroad. Individuals registered as foreign agents will be subject to additional government scrutiny.
RUSSIA
Murder charge recommended
Investigators yesterday said that two sisters who killed their father after years of abuse should face murder charges. Three sisters — Krestina, Angelina and Maria Khachaturyan — stabbed their father, Mikhail, to death in July last year after years of alleged beatings and sexual assault. They were 17, 18 and 19 at the time of the killing. The Investigate Committee said in a statement that it was recommending charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder against the two older sisters, Krestina and Angelina. The probe pointed to “mitigating circumstances,” but said the two older sisters were of sound mind and aware of their actions at the time of the attack. They face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Investigators recommended that the youngest sister, Maria, should enter mandatory psychiatric care.
UNITED STATES
Word of year announced
Climate change, gun violence, the very nature of democracy and an angsty little movie star called Forky helped propel “existential” to Dictionary.com’s word of the year. “In our data, it speaks to this sense of grappling with our survival, both literally and figuratively, that defined so much of the discourse,” John Kelly, senior research editor for the site, said on Monday. The word earned awareness in searches on the Web site in the aftermath of wildfires and Hurricane Dorian, and mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas. It also reared itself in presidential politics and pop culture, including Forky the white plastic spork in Toy Story 4. Oxford Dictionaries picked “climate emergency” as its word of the year.
UNITED STATES
PG&E blamed for fire
California power producer PG&E Corp did not properly inspect and replace transmission lines before a faulty wire sparked a wildfire that killed more than 80 people last year, a probe by a state regulator has concluded. The Caribou-Palermo transmission line was identified as the cause of the Camp Fire last year, which virtually incinerated the northern town of Paradise and stands as the state’s most lethal blaze. “PG&E failed to maintain an effective inspection and maintenance program to identify and correct hazardous conditions on its transmission lines ... as are necessary to promote the safety and health of its patrons and the public,” a 700-page report by the California Public Utilities Commission said.
FRANCE
Drone postal deliveries start
La Poste’s subsidiary DPD has begun using drones to make parcel deliveries to a remote Alpine village. DPD says flying packages by remote control is more reliable, quicker and safer than driving a van up narrow mountain roads in winter when they are often icy or blocked by snow. Launched during a normal postal delivery round, drones are guided to a “secure terminal” near the village where they release the package to be collected by the customer using a code.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
French singer Kendji Girac, who was seriously injured by a gunshot this week, wanted to “fake” his suicide to scare his partner who was threatening to leave him, prosecutors said on Thursday. The 27-year-old former winner of France’s version of The Voice was found wounded after police were called to a traveler camp in Biscarrosse on France’s southwestern coast. Girac told first responders he had accidentally shot himself while tinkering with a Colt .45 automatic pistol he had bought at a junk shop, a source said. On Thursday, regional prosecutor Olivier Janson said, citing the singer, that he wanted to “fake” his suicide
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other