UNITED STATES
Idaho mulls darkness reserve
Tourists heading to central Idaho will be in the dark if local officials get their way. The first International Dark Sky Reserve in the US would fill a chunk of the state’s sparsely populated region that contains night skies so pristine that interstellar dust clouds are visible in the Milky Way. The International Dark-Sky Association has said the region is one of the few places remaining in the contiguous US large enough and dark enough to attain reserve status. Nearby towns, county and federal officials, as well as a conservation group are working to apply this fall to designate 3,600km2 as a reserve, but they will have to limit light pollution. Researchers have said 80 percent of North Americans live in areas where light pollution blots out the night sky.
MEXICO
New storms head for land
A weakening Tropical Storm Max on Thursday dumped rain over southern Mexico after slamming into a sparsely populated stretch of Pacific Ocean coast as a Category 1 hurricane. Near the resort city of Acapulco in Guerrero state, the government worked frantically to widen a channel to the sea to prevent a coastal lagoon from flooding. Guerrero Governor Hector Astudillo warned that the rains would continue through the night, creating fears of flooding and landslides in Guerrero and Oaxaca states. The US National Hurricane Center said that the rapidly weakening Max should become a tropical depression before dissipating by yesterday. Also on Thursday, Tropical Storm Norma formed farther out to the west in the Pacific and was expected to strengthen and head toward the resort-studded Baja California Peninsula. The storm had winds of 75kph and was moving north at 9kph. On that track, Norma could be at hurricane strength near Los Cabos by Sunday or Monday.
UNITED STATES
Dallas’ Lee statue removed
Crews arranged by Dallas officials on Thursday removed a statue of former US Confederate Forces general-in-chief Robert Lee from a pedestal and carted it away from a park named for Lee. In an unannounced move, a large crane was brought through the city by a police escort to Lee Park, where it lifted the large statue from its pedestal. City officials said in a statement that an art conservator monitored the proper handling of the statue and police tactical officers with automatic rifles provided security. The statue was lowered onto a flatbed trailer for transport to an abandoned naval air station owned by the city on its western outskirts. It is expected to remain there until city officials decide on the statue’s future. The Dallas City Council on Sept. 6 voted to remove the statue, but was met with a series of delays, including a brief court stay obtained by a pro-Confederacy group and a collision.
UNITED STATES
Cassini crashes into Saturn
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which was orbiting Saturn, yesterday sent its final signal following a remarkable journey of 20 years. Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere at 7:55pm Taiwan time last night. Flight controllers at California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory expect one last burst of scientific data from Cassini, before the radio waves go flat and the spacecraft falls silent. The only spacecraft to ever orbit Saturn, Cassini showed the planet, its rings and moons up close in all their glory. Cassini departed Earth in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004. Its hitchhiking companion, Huygens, landed on Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005. Nothing from Earth has landed farther.
CHINA
Nine trapped in rail tunnel
Rescuers yesterday were racing to save nine construction workers trapped for more than a day after a railway tunnel collapsed, local authorities said. The tunnel collapsed on Thursday morning in a mountainous area in southern Yunnan Province, near the borders with Myanmar and Laos. Xinhua news agency said rescuers dug a small opening in the rubble and were able to confirm yesterday morning that all the workers had survived. A small pipe had been fed through the opening and a mobile phone signal amplifier had been installed to make it easier to keep in contact with the trapped workers, local authorities told Xinhua.
SRI LANKA
Croc drags man into river
A young journalist at the Financial Times was dragged into a river and killed by a crocodile while holidaying in Sri Lanka, the BBC reported yesterday. Paul McClean, an Oxford University graduate with a first-class degree in French, joined the newspaper as a graduate trainee two years ago. McClean had been on a beach holiday near Arugam Bay on the island’s southeast coast with friends when people heard him screaming for help as he was pulled into a river by the crocodile, an eyewitness cited by the BBC said. “By the time they went to the spot where the croc attacked, they couldn’t save him because already the crocodile had pulled him inside the water so they couldn’t see what was going on,” Fawas Lafeer was quoted as saying.
PAKISTAN
Court dismisses PM appeal
The Supreme Court yesterday dismissed an appeal from former prime minister Nawaz Sharif against his disqualification from the premiership over corruption allegations tied to the Panama Papers leak. “All these review petitions are dismissed,” said Supreme Court justice Asif Saeed Khosa, who oversaw the five-member review panel. In a long-winded appeal, Sharif’s legal team presented 19 points challenging the court’s judgement, saying the ruling suffered “from errors floating on the surface.” The court has also ordered the National Accountability Bureau to open a criminal case against Sharif, his sons and daughter.
VIETNAM
Powerful typhoon hits center
Typhoon Doksuri yesterday lashed central Vietnam, tearing roofs from houses, knocking out power and causing localized flooding, in the nation’s most powerful storm in years. Nearly 80,000 people have been evacuated from coastal regions in preparation for Doksuri. Winds exceeded 130kph, according to the nation’s meteorological agency. There were no immediate reports of deaths, but one person drowned in central Vietnam on Thursday after flooding caused by heavy rain that preceded Doksuri.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
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