AUSTRALIA
Watchdog pans airline tie-up
The nation’s competition watchdog yesterday said it was leaning toward blocking a tie-up between Qantas Airways and China Eastern Airlines because it could increase fares on the popular Sydney-Shanghai route. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission issued a draft decision to deny authorization for Qantas and China Eastern to coordinate their operations between Australia and China under an agreement proposed in November last year. The watchdog said in a statement that the tie-up could result in “significant public detriment” by giving Qantas and China Eastern increased ability and incentive to limit capacity and increase airfares on the Sydney-Shanghai route. Commission chairman Rod Sims said the regulator understands the commercial reasons for the alliance, as Qantas wants to establish a gateway to northeast Asia, but is concerned the two airlines have chosen to do so with their main competitor on the route.
MYANMAR
Police reject monks’ lawsuit
Police in the northwest have rejected a lawsuit filed by two Buddhist monks against the nation’s Minister of Home Affairs Ko Ko and national police chief Police Major General Zaw Win, saying that they are protected by law. In declining to accept a first information report, which is needed for a lawsuit to proceed, police officials said no lawsuit can be brought against any officer who carries out acts in good faith. Human rights lawyer Aung Thein yesterday said that the two Buddhist monks, among scores seriously burned during a 2012 police crackdown on protests at a Chinese-backed copper mine, registered the first information report at the Hsalingyi police station. Aung Thein, who works with the Justice Trust, said a letter was also sent to Burmese President Thein Sein asking that the lawsuit proceed against government ministers. He said the purpose of the lawsuit was “to fight for justice and to highlight human rights violations and the lack of rule of law in Myanmar.”
ALGERIA
Threat spurs evacuation
Authorities temporarily evacuated about 100 Turkish construction workers from a roadway project east of Algiers as a precaution after a threat from militants affiliated with the Islamic State group, security sources said on Monday. The measure underscores growing concern over militant attacks in North Africa following last week’s National Bardo Museum massacre of foreign tourists in Tunisia and the Islamic State group’s growing presence in neighboring Libya. The Turkish workers were evacuated for 24 hours as a “preventative measure,” but returned to the Kabilye region east of the capital on Monday. A French tourist was kidnapped and beheaded in the area by Islamic State extremists last year.
RUSSIA
Human rights group fined
A Moscow court on Monday fined the prominent Sakharov Centre, a human rights group seeking to preserve the legacy of a Nobel Prize-winning Soviet-era dissident, for failing to declare itself as a “foreign agent.” The organization was slapped with a 300,000 ruble (US$5,100) fine for not registering under a controversial law signed by President Vladimir Putin in 2012 as part of a broader crackdown on rights activism. The law forces non-governmental groups who receive funding from abroad and carry out political activities to use the “foreign agent” tag on all their paperwork and to undergo more intrusive checks.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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