NEW ZEALAND
USB returned minus seal poo
The owner of a USB stick that was found in the frozen feces of a rare leopard seal in New Zealand has been tracked down and revealed to be a seal enthusiast who had helped collect the sample 12 months earlier. Last week, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) put out a call for the owner of a functional USB stick that they had recovered from the scat of a leopard seal. That person was Amanda Nally, the only sea lion volunteer on the south coast, who spotted the announcement on the news. “NIWA are convinced that a bird ate my USB stick and the leopard seal then ate the bird, because he had a lot of feathers in the scat. And then, bizarrely, I came along and said: ‘Oh there’s a sample — we should send to NIWA,’” Nally said. A NIWA spokesperson confirmed the theory.
CHINA
Uighurs’ kin seek video proof
Ethnic Uighurs have launched a global campaign to press authorities for video proof that their missing relatives are alive, turning the tables on Beijing’s use of video to counter claims that a renowned Uighur had died in custody. The social media campaign was launched on Tuesday under #MeTooUyghur after the government released a video showing a man who identified himself as Uighur poet and musician Abdurehim Heyit, and saying he was alive and well. The video was made public after Turkey claimed that Heyit had died in a prison in a statement in which Ankara condemned the country for herding vast numbers of Muslim minority Uighurs into “re-education” camps in the remote Xinjiang region. “Chinese authorities showed video as proof Mr Heyit is still alive. Now, we want to know, where are millions of Uyghurs?” said advocate Murat Harri Uyghur, who created the hashtag.
HAITI
Convicts escape prison
All 78 detainees at the prison in Aquin, a city of about 100,000 on the south coast of the country’s Tiburon Peninsula, escaped at about noon on Tuesday, a national police spokesman said. The exact circumstances of the prison break are unclear, but witnesses said it took place during a demonstration against President Jovenel Moise in front of the police station adjoining the penitentiary.
UNITED STATES
Penguins mark Valentine’s
In what has become an annual Valentine’s Day tradition, biologists on Tuesday handed out red felt hearts to African penguins at the California Academy of Sciences. The birds grabbed the hearts in their beaks and waddled around their rocky enclosure toward their nests. It is often the male penguin who retrieves the heart and carries it back to his mate, spokeswoman Kelly Mendez said. The penguins use the felt for material in their nests, which helps reinforce the couples’ bond.
UNITED STATES
Snow hits Hawaiian peak
There is snow in Hawaii, on the highest peak of the island of Maui, but visitors have to enjoy it from down below as the summit area of Haleakala National Park is closed because of “extreme winter conditions.” Snow, ice, fallen trees and rocks are making the area dangerous, park officials said on Tuesday, adding that people are encouraged to view the snowcapped mountain from afar. Snowfall lower down at a Maui park caused a traffic jam over the weekend from people wanting to see the unusual weather.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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