AUSTRALIA
Thousands to flee floods
Thousands of people were forced to abandon their homes yesterday as record flooding that has cut off thousands threatened to engulf areas devastated by wild weather last year. Police ordered the 3,800 residents of the town of St George, in northern Queensland state, to evacuate as rising floodwaters raced toward record heights, threatening to cut the one remaining exit road. “Residents of St George are required to evacuate by road before the Moonie Highway is cut by floodwaters, which is expected to occur sometime in the early part of Sunday evening,” police said in a mandatory evacuation order. The swollen Balonne River, flooding for the third time in less than two years, was expected to peak at 15m tomorrow night, far exceeding the previous record of 13.4m set in March 2010.
NEPAL
Chickens culled over bird flu
Health workers are to cull thousands of chickens following the discovery of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the southeastern part of the Himalayan country, officials said yesterday. Bird flu has also been confirmed in the eastern hills of Panchathar district and the tea--producing area of Ilam, Directorate of Animal Health official Ram Krishna Khatiwada said, adding that surveillance of farms was to be stepped up and 4,000 chickens would be killed in the affected areas. The nation’s first reported outbreak of bird flu in poultry was in January 2009 in the eastern part of the country. The virus reached Kathmandu for the first time in December last year, with health workers culling hundreds of chickens and ducks. If it spreads to humans, bird flu can cause fever, coughing, sore throat, pneumonia, respiratory disease and sometimes death.
PHILIPPINES
Airstrike kills rebel leader
Two security officials say a key Abu Sayyaf commander killed in a US-backed airstrike was planning terror attacks when he was slain. Abu Sayyaf commander Umbra Jumdail was killed on Thursday in a jungle hideout on Jolo Island. The officials say his death is a major blow to his al-Qaeda-linked group because he harbored Southeast Asian terrorist figures, who provide funds and bomb-making training. Military spokesman Colonel Arnulfo Marcelo Burgos said yesterday that top Southeast Asian terror suspect Zulkifli bin Hir from Malaysia and Singaporean militant Abdullah Ali were killed along with Jumdail and 12 other gunmen.
NORTH KOREA
Military uses US drones
Pyongyang is developing unmanned attack aircraft using US target drones imported from the Middle East, a report said yesterday. They are based on MQM-107D Streaker target drones, which are used by the US army, and imported from a Middle East nation believed to be Syria, Yonhap news agency reported. It cited an anonymous Seoul military official, adding that Pyongyang would likely deploy them, once completed, near the tense maritime border with the South on the Yellow Sea. The US drone, which flies at 12,000m at a maximum speed of 920kph, is commonly used for testing missiles. The North has conducted several tests by mounting high explosives on the imported drones, but has not been able to produce a new weapon yet, the source was quoted by Yonhap as saying. The disputed sea border off the west coast was the scene of deadly naval clashes in 1999, 2002 and 2009. The North also shelled a frontier island in a November 2010 attack that left four South Koreans dead.
ITALY
Man throws infant in river
A man on Saturday threw his 16-month-old son off a bridge into the river in Rome in a fit of rage following a custody row and was arrested by police as he fled, reports said. The 26-year-old father told police he had thrown his son into the freezing waters of the Tiber after arguing with the infant’s mother. He was caught in the act by a passing prison officer, who said the father was overwrought and yelled out before throwing the child over the edge. The unemployed man, who has a criminal record for drug dealing, tried to flee the scene, but was detained shortly afterward by police, the reports said. Divers from the fire brigade searched the river for the child, but their efforts were hampered by strong currents and poor weather conditions.
FINLAND
Presidential poll under way
Voters went to the polls yesterday to elect a new president in a runoff ballot between a veteran, conservative front-runner and the country’s first openly gay candidate from the small Green Party. Former finance minister Sauli Niinisto lead opinion polls by a wide margin over former environment minister Pekka Haavisto as polling stations opened nationwide in record cold temperatures. About a third of the electorate, about 1.5 million voters, cast ballots in a week of advance voting before yesterday’s election. The new president will replace President Tarja Halonen, one of the nation’s most popular heads of state, who has served the maximum two six-year terms.
SAUDI ARABIA
Women sue over licenses
Two female activists have filed lawsuits against the government for refusing to issue them driver’s licenses and banning them from driving a car, they said on Saturday. Manal al-Sherif, the icon of an Internet campaign launched last year urging women to defy a ban on driving, and human rights activist Samar Badawi filed their suits against the interior ministry. Sherif, who was arrested in May last year and detained for 10 days after posting on YouTube a video of herself driving, said she decided to file the lawsuit after having been denied a driver’s license. “There is no actual law that states woman can’t drive” in the country and therefore “no justification for preventing them from issuing a license,” said Sherif, one of the activists behind a “My Right, My Dignity” campaign aimed at ending discrimination against women.
SOUTH AFRICA
ANC upholds Malema’s ban
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) on Saturday upheld a decision to ban youth leader Julius Malema for five years for bringing the movement into disrepute, sending into the political wilderness a noisy rebel who had called for the nationalization of mines. The decision by an ANC appeals panel is likely to alter the political landscape by sidelining one of the most vocal foes of President Jacob Zuma. However, it will not put to rest the questions Malema raised about why the poor majority in Africa’s largest economy have still not felt the “better life for all” promised by the ANC since it took power in 1994 after the end of apartheid. The appeals committee upheld convictions against Malema and other ANC Youth League members handed down in November last year for bringing the party into disrepute and for causing rifts in Africa’s oldest liberation movement. It allowed an additional internal hearing for Malema to seek a lighter penalty. He cannot escape suspension under ANC rules, but he has a chance to argue for a shorter ban.
UNITED STATES
Police sport pig emblem
Vermont’s police force was incredibly embarrassed when they realized that the emblem on their squad cars had been doctored to show a pig. Long an insulting term to refer to police, a pig is hardly the symbol that uniformed officers would like to display. However, right there in the state seal mounted on most of the New England state’s police cruisers there is now a curly tailed porky pig, the Burlington Free Press reported on Friday. The shield shows a — legitimate — cow among other pastoral details and the pig is drawn cleverly, although hardly discreetly, into the regular splotches on the cow’s hide. State officials noticed on Thursday, then traced the prank to a prison printing shop in Saint Albans, the Free Press said. Apparently an inmate four years ago was able to modify the computer program and inserted the extra image.
UNITED STATES
Herrera released, detained
Authorities say a man previously accused of murdering his mother and brother in Southern California was released from jail after the charges were dropped, but that he is now in custody of federal immigration officials. Orange County Sheriff’s Lieutenant Gary Strachan said on Saturday that Eder Herrera was transferred on Friday to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement because he was suspected of being in the country illegally. Strachan had no additional information. Herrera had been charged with the murders of his mother and brother in Yorba Linda in October last year, but authorities on Friday said they had uncovered evidence linking Itzcoatl Ocampo, a suspected serial killer, to the crimes. Ocampo, a high school friend of Herrera, is charged with killing four homeless men in Orange County
UNITED STATES
Microwave killing trial starts
Sacramento County prosecutors say they would not seek the death penalty for a woman charged with killing her six-week-old daughter in a microwave. The Sacramento Bee reports that during a brief hearing on Friday, Deputy District Attorney Chris Ore disclosed that prosecutors would not seek death for Ka Yang. The 30-year-old Yang is charged with murder with special circumstances in the death of her daughter, Mirabelle. Yang was arrested and charged in June after authorities determined that her baby had died of what was termed “extensive thermal injuries.” In an e-mailed statement, Ore said prosecutors had considered Yang’s lack of criminal background in deciding not to pursue capital punishment. Ore also said in his statement that Yang is still facing a special-circumstance charge of torture that could lead to a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole if she is convicted.
MEXICO
Sinaloa hit man arrested
Police on Saturday arrested the reputed head of a Sinaloa drug cartel assassination ring who is accused of plotting a massacre at a drug rehabilitation center. Federal police arrested Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, identified as leader of the criminal organization known as “New People,” the armed wing of the Sinaloa cartel. Torres, 33, was wanted by the authorities, which offered a US$150,000 reward for his capture, and the US justice system, which accuses him of drug trafficking. Torres allegedly masterminded the murder of 18 people at a drug rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez on Sept. 2 last year.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
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