CHINA
HK poll a ‘farce’: paper
A state-run newspaper yesterday slammed Hong Kong’s unofficial referendum on democratic reform — which has drawn more than 700,000 votes — as an “illegal farce” that could prompt tighter control from Beijing. The Global Times daily accused the referendum organizers of being politically influenced by the West, adding that “overseas supporters have overestimated the effect of an illegal farce... Neither China’s central government nor the Hong Kong government will admit the results of the poll.”
AUSTRALIA
Carbon tax repeal reintroduced
Prime Minister Tony Abbott reintroduced legislation to the federal parliament yesterday that would repeal a carbon tax that the nation’s worst greenhouse gas polluters have to pay. The opposition center-left Labor Party and minor Greens party used their Senate majority in March to block the bills that would remove the A$24.15 (US$22.79) tax per tonne of carbon dioxide that was introduced by a Labor government in July 2012. However, with new senators to take their seats on July 7, the bills are expected to be passed by a narrow margin.
AUSTRALIA
Singer fired for anti-gay post
Leading soprano Tamar Iveri yesterday had her contract torn up by Opera Australia for “unconscionable” anti-gay comments posted on her Facebook page that sparked a storm of protest. The Georgian referred to homosexuals as “fecal masses” in reacting to a gay pride march in Tblisi. “I was quite proud of the fact how Georgian society spat at the parade ... please, stop vigorous attempts to bring West’s ‘fecal masses’ in the mentality of the people by means of propaganda,” said the post, which was later taken down. The comments, made 18 months ago, sparked a backlash in Australia, culminating as Iveri was due to perform the role of Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello from July 5 at the Sydney Opera House. Many people threatened to boycott the company or cancel their subscriptions if they continued to employ her.
MAURITANIA
Abdel Aziz re-elected
President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz has been re-elected with an overwhelming 81.89 percent of the vote, preliminary results showed, after his main rivals boycotted a process they rejected as a sham. The former general, who seized power in the northwest African nation in an August 2008 coup, campaigned strongly on his success in fighting armed groups linked to al-Qaeda at home and in neighboring Sahel nations. Preliminary results released by the Independent National Electoral Commission on Sunday indicated that Abdel Aziz was firmly ahead of anti-slavery candidate Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, who obtained just 8.67 percent of Saturday’s ballot.
SOUTH KOREA
Japanese envoy summoned
The government summoned Japan’s envoy yesterday to protest against Tokyo’s review of a landmark 1993 apology to women, many Korean, forced to work as wartime sex slaves in Japanese military brothels, urging it to stop trying to whitewash history. First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yong told Japanese Ambassador Bessho Koro that Tokyo was trying to undermine its own apology when the history behind the issue of “comfort women” was recognized internationally. “Japan must understand that the more the [Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe government tires to undermine the Kono statement, the more its credibility and international reputation will suffer,” Cho said.
UNITED STATES
Anthrax row intensifies
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reassigned the director of the bioterror lab behind the potential anthrax exposure of dozens of scientists and staff, sources said, as the anthrax controversy intensified. Michael Farrell, head of the Bioterror Rapid Response and Advanced Technology Laboratory, has been reassigned as the agency investigates the incident, two CDC scientists who are not authorized to speak with press said. The possible exposure has forced as many as 84 employees at the agency’s Atlanta campus to get a vaccine or take powerful antibiotics with known side effects to ward off potentially anthrax disease.
UNITED STATES
Missile test successful
The military intercepted a target over the Pacific Ocean on Sunday in a test of the nation’s Ballistic Missile Defense System. A long-range interceptor blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast, minutes after an intermediate-range ballistic missile was launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the Missile Defense Agency said in a statement. Sailors aboard the USS Hopper destroyer detected and tracked the missile, and the interceptor struck the target warhead.
Bosnia
Ferdinand’s death marked
Thousands of cyclists swarmed through Sarajevo on Sunday in a “Race for Peace” to mark 100 years since Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in the city sparked World War I. The throng, including 140 professional racers, rode from predominantly Bosnian-Serb eastern Sarajevo to the center of the city, which has been administered separately by Muslim-Croats since the end of Bosnia’s devastating 1992 to 1995 war. It was the ceremonial opening leg of the Sarajevo Grand Prix, sponsored by the Tour de France, aiming to promote peace in a city that has so often been the center of conflict.
UNITED STATES
Bergdahl out of center
Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier freed in a swap with the Afghan Taliban, has been released from a Texas medical center and is now in outpatient care, the army said on Sunday. Bergdahl spent nearly five years in captivity at the hands of Taliban-linked Haqqani insurgents after he went missing from his post in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. He was released on May 31 as part of a controversial swap with the Taliban and had been receiving treatment and counseling at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, since his return to the country on June 13.
UNITED Kingdom
No trust funds from Sting
Pop icon Sting says his children will not be getting trust funds from his vast fortune, assuming there is any money left in it. The 16-time Grammy Award winner and former frontman of The Police, told the Mail on Sunday that the vast wealth would be “albatrosses” around the necks of his six children. The singer-songwriter who grew up in a shipbuilding community in northeast England says he told the kids: “There won’t be much money left because we are spending it: People make assumptions, that they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, but they have not been given a lot.” Sting’s wealth was estimated at ￡180 million (US$306 million) by the Sunday Times Rich List.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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