UNITED STATES
Flags ordered to half-mast
President Barack Obama on Tuesday ordered flags to be flown at half-mast until Saturday in honor of five servicemen who died in a shooting rampage in Tennessee last week. Four marines and one sailor were killed when 24-year-old Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez opened fire on two military centers in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The gunman died in a shootout with police. Obama ordered the flags lowered “as a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence.” He said: “I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the federal government.” He also ordered flags at embassies, consulates, military facilities and naval vessels abroad to be flown at half-mast. The directive is in place until sunset on Saturday. “Our thoughts and prayers as a nation are with the service members killed last week in Chattanooga. We honor their service,” Obama said. Investigators are looking into motives behind the killings, with authorities probing Abdulazeez’s travel abroad and his communications and activities on social media. Authorities have said they are treating the case as an “act of terrorism.”
UNITED STATES
Swift gets nods from MTV
Taylor Swift led nominations for the MTV Video Music Awards, but was embroiled in controversy when rapper Nicki Minaj suggested she was passed over because of racial bias. The premier music video event announced on Tuesday that Swift was in the running in nine categories for two hits from her blockbuster album 1989. The host of the Aug. 30 gala in Los Angeles is to be singer Miley Cyrus. Minaj, one of the top female stars in hip-hop, criticized MTV’s choices and hinted that she herself was ignored for Video of the Year as she is a fulsome African-American woman. She said that her video for Anaconda broke what was then a record for first-day views and turned into a popular meme for Halloween costumes. “When the other girls drop a video that breaks records and impacts culture, they get that nomination,” she wrote on Twitter. “If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year,” she tweeted. “Black women influence pop culture so much but are rarely rewarded for it,” she wrote. Anaconda was nominated in three categories, including Best Female Video and Best Hip-Hop Video.
UNITED STATES
John Kasich enters race
Ohio’s John Kasich, a blunt Republican governor known for defying his party, on Tuesday became the 16th notable Republican contestant to enter next year’s presidential race. A veteran representative as well as second-term governor, Kasich told voters that he is the only Republican candidate with experience in three broad areas of political leadership — the federal budget, national security and state government. He also spent nearly a decade at Lehman Brothers. “I have the experience and the testing,” he said. “The testing which shapes you and prepares you for the most important job in the world, and I believe I know how to work and help restore this great United States.” Kasich ran for president once before, briefly seeking the 2000 nomination after he helped seal a federal balanced-budget deal as House Budget chairman in 1997. Since then he put in nearly a decade as an investment executive and more than four years of strong-willed and often abrasive leadership as governor of a swing state. Kasich was at the bottom of early national polls.
CHINA
Air pollution levels fall
Air pollution levels in the cities improved in the first six months of this year, environmental campaign group Greenpeace said yesterday, but remained far worse than global and domestic standards. Average levels of PM2.5 — airborne particulates small enough to deeply penetrate the lungs — declined 16 percent in 189 cities that were ranked both this year and last, Greenpeace said in a press release. Only 18 cities showed increases, it added, on the basis of local government air quality readings it compiled. In Beijing, PM2.5 levels fell 15.5 percent in January-June from the same period a year earlier, it said — but they still averaged 77.8 micrograms per cubic meter. The WHO’s recommended maximum annual average is 10.
JAPAN
Zoo does cockroach PR
A zoo is trying to do the impossible — improve the image of cockroaches, putting on an exhibition of one of the world’s most hated insects. With a whopping — and disgusting — 4,000 species around the planet, the hardy creature can survive almost anywhere, but is most commonly encountered by city-dwellers in grubby corners of the kitchen, or roaming around the floor at night. Staff at Shunanshi Tokuyama Zoo in Yamaguchi say the cockroach gets a bad press, and actually performs a vital job. “They have such a negative image,” a zoo spokeswoman said. “But they’re actually playing an important role in the food chain.” Important, but not very pleasant sounding: eating rotting carcasses and dead plants on forest floors. One highlight of the exhibition will be a five-way race among cockroaches, where visitors can watch the worryingly speedy bugs whizz down a track. If that is not entertainment enough — hard to credit — the zoo is offering the chance to get your hands on a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach, which can grow as long as 7cm.
AUSTRALIA
Bardot slams feral cat cull
French actress Brigitte Bardot has condemned a plan to cull 2 million feral cats to stop them harming native animals, a proposal animal rights groups said yesterday was unlikely to be successful. Feral cats have been identified as the main culprit behind Australia’s high rate of mammal extinction, with more than 10 percent of species wiped out since Europeans settled there two centuries ago. Minister of the Environment Greg Hunt has said the advice he has received is that the cats number 20 million across the country and devour countless native animals every night. “They are tsunamis of violence and death for Australia’s native species,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp last week. Hunt said a target of eradicating 2 million feral cats had been set for 2020, in addition to creating feral-free enclosures to aid the recovery of birds and mammals among other measures.
PAKISTAN
Court to hear ‘blasphemer’
The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to hear an appeal by a Christian woman against her death sentence for blasphemy, lawyers said, in a case that has drawn criticism from rights campaigners. Asia Bibi, a mother of five, has been on death row since 2010 after being convicted of insulting the Islamic Prophet Mohammed during a row over drinking water with Muslim women with whom she was working in a field. Bibi’s death sentence was confirmed in October last year by the high court in Lahore. She denies the charges against her and in November last year appealed against the death sentence.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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