AUSTRALIA
Downpours bring crocodiles
The unwelcome visitors have made their way into the town of Ingham, according to several residents’ photographs posted on social media, after four days of torrential rain broke river banks, covered pastureland and cut off towns. Toby Millyard, crocodile researcher at Australia Zoo in Queensland, said the reptiles were known to use flood waters in the region to travel to different areas and search for food. “Some crocodiles love it when it rains and they use the water’s currents to travel. They’re very smart animals,” Millyard said in a telephone interview. “But they’re very easy to stay away from. As long as you’re not in the water or standing by the edge, then you should be fine.”
INDONESIA
Sumatran killed by tiger
A man has been mauled to death by a Sumatran tiger in a remote village, the second deadly attack this year, authorities said yesterday. Yusri Effendi, 34, was found with fatal wounds to his neck by workmates and local villagers in Riau Province on Sumatra on Saturday evening, the local conservation agency said. The victim was working on a building when the tiger began lurking around the construction site. Several hours after first seeing the big cat, Effendi and his three workmates — thinking the coast was clear — made a dash for safety, only to come face-to-face with the animal and scattered. A search party found the victim unconscious at the edge of a river a short time later, authorities said.
PAKISTAN
Ruling may target Ahmadis
Rights activists are expressing concern over a court ruling that would require people to declare their religion on all official documents, saying it could lead to the persecution of minorities, particularly adherents of the Ahmadi faith. The Islamabad High Court ruling on Friday also requires that citizens take a religious oath upon joining the civil service, armed forces or judiciary. Zohra Yusuf, a board member at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, on Sunday called the ruling “very dangerous.” The ruling appeared to be aimed at Ahmadis, who revere the 19th-century founder of their faith as a prophet. Pakistan declared Ahmadis non-Muslims in 1974.
CHINA
Beijing expects high pollution
Beijing has issued an orange alert for pollution, the second-highest on the nation’s four-level system, effective from today. Heavy pollution is expected to last through Wednesday, the Beijing Municipal Environment Protection Bureau said in a statement late on Saturday. The city government has ordered emergency pollution-curbing measures, beginning today, including industrial production reduction in response to the heavy pollution, the report said.
INDIA
French to fund solar projects
French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday pledged hundreds of millions of euros for solar projects in developing countries, as world leaders met in New Dehli to promote greater investment in renewable energy. Macron said France would extend an extra 700 million euros (US$861.5 million) through loans and donations by 2022 for solar projects. France had already committed 300 million euros to the initiative when it cofounded with India a global alliance in 2015 to unlock cash for solar projects in sunny yet poor nations. “We need to remove all obstacles and scale up,” he said at the launch of the International Solar Alliance in New Delhi yesterday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it was vital that nations were not priced out.
UNITED STATES
Anti-opioid protest at Met
Activists protesting a prominent donor family’s link to the opioid crisis unfurled banners and scattered pill bottles inside New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) on Saturday. The protest started just after 4pm inside the museum’s Sackler Wing, named after brothers Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, who donated US$3.5 million for the wing in the 1970s. The Sacklers also owned Purdue Pharma, the company that developed OxyContin, a widely prescribed and widely abused painkiller. Purdue pleaded guilty in 2007 to misleading the public about OxyContin’s risk of addiction and agreed to pay US$600 million in fines and other payments. The protest was led by photographer Nan Goldin, whose work has been exhibited at many museums, including the Met. Goldin started an anti-opioid group called Prescription Addiction Intervention Now, after being addicted to OxyContin from 2014 to last year. The protesters threw pill bottles with labels that read “OxyContin” and “prescribed to you by the Sacklers” into the wing’s reflecting pool.
COLOMBIA
Elections for Congress held
The nation went to the polls yesterday to elect a new Congress with a resurgent right, bitterly opposed to a peace deal that allows leftist former rebels to participate, expected to fare strongly. The peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guarantees their new political party 10 of the 280 seats in the new Congress. However, opinion polls give it little chance of adding to its 10 free seats, following a disastrous campaign during which its rebels-turned-politicians were largely drowned out by a tide of public revulsion over crimes committed during the conflict. Surveys predict a triumph for former president and Senator Alvaro Uribe and his Centro Democratico party, along with other parties opposed to the peace agreement.
POLAND
New law shuts most stores
A new law that shuts most stores on Sundays took effect yesterday for the first time, with large supermarkets and most other retailers banned from opening. The law was introduced by a leading trade union, which wants employees to be able to rest and spend time with their families, and was approved by the conservative and pro-Catholic ruling party. Pro-business opposition parties have decried it as a blow to commercial freedom and warn that tens of thousands of workers could lose their jobs. The new law at first bans trade two Sundays per month, but next year increases it to three Sundays and finally all Sundays in 2020, except for seven exceptions before the Easter and Christmas holidays.
UNITED STATES
Bump stock ban move made
President Donald Trump’s Trump administration on Saturday said it has taken the first step in the regulatory process to ban bump stocks, likely setting the stage for long legal battles with gun manufacturers. The move was expected after Trump ordered the Department of Justice to work toward a ban following the shooting deaths of 17 people at a Florida high school on Feb. 14. Bump stocks were not used in that attack, but were used in last year’s Las Vegas massacre and have since become a focal point in the gun control debate. The department’s regulation would classify the hardware as a machine gun banned under federal law. That would reverse a 2010 decision by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that found bump stocks could not be regulated unless Congress amended existing firearms law or passed a new one.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
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