CHINA
Hainan to ban some plastics
Hainan Province is to ban the production, sale and use of all single-use nonbiodegradable plastics by 2025 in a bid to ease pollution, state media reported late on Thursday, citing the province’s environmental bureau. Hainan is the country’s first region to make a formal commitment to phase out single-use nonbiodegradable plastics, which have been identified by the UN as one of the world’s biggest environmental challenges. The province uses about 120,000 tonnes of the material every year, the government has estimated. The official China News Service reported that Hainan would draw up new standards and establish a monitoring and enforcement system before the end of this year. The province is to begin by banning nonbiodegradable plastic bags and eating utensils by the end of next year, and ban the material completely before 2025, the news agency said.
INDIA
Moonshine kills at least 17
At least 17 tea plantation workers have died from drinking toxic bootleg liquor after receiving their weekly wages, with more than 40 hospitalized and critically ill, a doctor said yesterday. The deaths came less than two weeks after more than 100 people died after drinking tainted alcohol. Seven women were among the dead at the plantation in northeastern Assam, 310km from the state capital, Guwahati. Dilip Rajbnonshi, a doctor at the government hospital in Golaghat, said that the deaths were due to “spurious country liquor.” Nearly 100 people drank the liquor on Thursday and people were still falling ill and being taken to hospitals, Mrinal Saikia, a local lawmaker from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters.
TURKEY
Warrants issued for soldiers
The government yesterday ordered the arrest of 295 active-duty military personnel, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement, accusing them of links to the network of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara has said orchestrated a 2016 attempted coup. Those facing detention included three colonels, eight majors and 10 lieutenants, with about half of the suspects being in the army and the remainder in other branches, including the navy and air force, the statement said. Police launched simultaneous arrest operations at 1am under an investigation into pay phone calls between suspected Gulen operatives, the office said. It was not clear how many suspects have been detained. About 250 people were killed in the failed putsch, in which Gulen, a former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has denied involvement. Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. More than 77,000 people have been jailed pending trial since the coup and widespread arrests are still routine.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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