AUSTRALIA
Two bodies found in flood
Two bodies were reportedly found near a drain in the flood-stricken city of Townsville yesterday as Prime Minister Scott Morrison toured the devastation wrought by unprecedented rainfall. Police would not immediately confirm media reports that the bodies had been recovered a day after two men disappeared near flood waters in the Townsville suburb of Aitkenvale. Authorities have warned Townsville residents not to swim in flood waters, in which crocodiles and snakes have been spotted in the suburbs. Morrison visited a new housing estate where scores of homes had been inundated and one of the evacuation centers where more than 1,000 people were sheltering. “It was frankly quite overwhelming,” Morrison said. “I think people are in shock. I think the kids are amazingly resilient.”
THAILAND
‘Thaksins’ join elections
More than a dozen candidates in next month’s elections have changed their names to those of former prime ministers. Almost 6,000 candidates turned up on the first day of registration on Monday. Pheu Thai Party spokeswoman Ketpreeya Kaewsanmuang said that 10 men had legally changed their names to Thaksin, after former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and five women had changed their name to Yingluck, after his sister who also led the nation. “We think it is their freedom to so, and it’s not against the law and election rules,” she said. “I cannot explain it on their behalf, but my opinion is that it’s quite normal if someone wants their name to be easy to be remembered by the voters.”
ISRAEL
Ethiopian immigrants arrive
Nearly 100 Ethiopian Jews arrived on Monday in the first wave of new immigration since the government last year said that it would let some of the 8,000 remaining community members join relatives in the country. Local Ethiopian community members welcomed the newcomers after years of delays. Israel recognizes the community’s Jewish roots, but does not consider them fully Jewish, so they require special approval to immigrate that has not always been forthcoming. Atersau Baiye, 61, said he had been waiting for more than 12 years to come to Israel and be reunited with his daughter, who lives in Tel Aviv. “ Alisa Bodner, spokeswoman for an Ethiopian-Jewish activist group, said she was “far from satisfied” by the slow trickle of Ethiopian immigration, long stalled despite government promises to bring all remaining members of the community to Israel. “This is a continuation of the discriminatory practices against Ethiopian-Israelis emanating from this current government,” she said.
INDONESIA
People flee eruption
An eruption of one of the country’s most active volcanoes sent lava and searing gas clouds out the crater and made villagers leave the slopes, a volcanology official said yesterday. Authorities were still trying to evacuate nearly 600 residents living along the slopes of Mount Karangetang, said Yudia Tatipang, head of the Karangetang volcano observation post. There were no immediate reports of injuries or serious damage. He said the 1,784m volcano on Siau Island in North Sulawesi Province started spitting clouds of gas and lava on Sunday. Late on Monday, hot ash tumbled down its slopes up to 300, triggering panic among villagers as falling ash and sulfur blanketed several villages around its slopes.
UNITED KINGDOM
Mallya extradition signed
Home Secretary Sajid Javid has signed an order that paves the way for tycoon Vijay Mallya’s extradition to India to face financial fraud charges. The 63-year-old owner of Kingfisher beer has 14 days to appeal the decision. In a tweet, he said he would do so. Mallya left India in 2016 allegedly owing more than US$1 billion after defaulting on loan payments to a state-owned bank and allegedly misusing the funds.
HUNGARY
Guilty verdicts in retrial
A court in Gyor on Monday sentenced officials of a MAL alumina plant up to two-and-a-half years in prison for one of the country’s worst environmental disasters, which killed 10 people and blighted rivers with toxic waste. More than 200 people were injured in October 2010 when a holding reservoir of the plant in the town of Ajka burst open, sending 1.1 million cubic meters of red sludge into nearby villages and countryside. Fifteen MAL employees — including the plant’s former director Zoltan Bakonyi — were cleared of criminal wrongdoing in a 2016 trial, but prosecutors won a retrial. On Monday, Bakonyi was sentenced to two-and-a-half years for endangering the public by criminal negligence and jailed his deputy for two years. Eight others were handed suspended sentences, fines or reprimands, while five were acquitted.
SPAIN
Recruiting network broken
The Ministry of the Interior on Monday said it had broken up a network trying to radicalize Muslim prisoners to carry out attacks when they left jail. Eight inmates were arrested, including five Moroccans imprisoned since 2013, a prison worker and two other people, it said. The eight had “proposed directly to other inmates to carry out attacks … they promised them large sums of money,” it said. It did not say when the arrests were made.
BRAZIL
Anti-crime plans outlined
Minister of Justice Minister Sergio Moro on Monday announced a series of measures to battle crime, corruption and violence. The proposed measures include a bill allowing police to use their weapons in “legitimate defense” if facing a risk of “armed conflict” that puts lives in danger, and to make it explicit that anyone convicted of a crime must be incarcerated after they have lost their first appeal.
UNITED STATES
El Chapo jury deliberating
After nearly three months of testimony about a vast drug-smuggling conspiracy, a New York City jury on Monday began deliberations on the fate of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Guzman, who faces 10 felony charges, including drug trafficking, money-laundering, conspiracy to murder rivals and illegal weapons possession, could face life in prison if convicted.
UNITED KINGDOM
Actor tells of revenge plan
Actor Liam Neeson said he was ashamed to admit he had violent thoughts many years ago about killing a black person after learning that someone close to him had been raped by a black man. In an interview published on Monday, Neeson said he “went up and down areas with a cosh” hoping a black person “would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could kill him.” Neeson, 66, called his reaction “horrible,” saying it taught him a lesson about the “primal need” for revenge. He was being interviewed about his latest film, about a father who seeks violent revenge for his son’s death.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late