PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Police unit sent to Manus
Paramilitary police have been deployed for three months to a refugee encampment on Manus Island amid “daily” suicide attempts and rising tension there, Manus Provincial Police Commander David Yapu said yesterday. The unit has a reputation for brutal tactics and has in the past been accused of rape and murder. The would-be refugees have been refused access to Australia and moved to the remote island and the Pacific nation of Nauru, where they have remained in limbo for years. They had hoped that an expected win for Australia’s opposition Labor Party in May 18 elections would open up new options for resettlement. The surprise return to power of the conservative coalition of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison prompted a rash of suicide attempts among asylum-seekers on Manus.
HUNGARY
Hopes fade after boat crash
Hopes of finding any more survivors from a boat accident on the Danube river in Budapest were fading yesterday, with 21 people still missing most of them South Korean tourists. Police and army boats continued search operations for a second night, but their work has been hampered by high river levels and a strong current after weeks of heavy rain. The Mermaid sightseeing boat overturned after colliding with a much larger river cruise ship on a busy stretch of the Danube on Wednesday evening. At least seven South Korean tourists were killed and 21 people remain missing — including the boat’s captain and a crew member, both Hungarian. Only seven people are known to have survived. Late on Thursday, police announced that the captain of the larger ship, the 135m four-story Viking Sigyn, had been taken into custody and “questioned as a suspect ... in relation to ‘endangering waterborne traffic resulting in multiple deaths.’”
COLOMBIA
Venezuelan aid redistributed
US-supplied humanitarian aid that was earmarked for Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido is now to be distributed in Colombia, officials said on Thursday. Colombia’s government said that it had reached the decision with the US and representatives of Guaido, because of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s continued “blocking” of the aid. In a statement, the national disaster agency said that some of the aid would now be redistributed to some of the 1.2 million Venezuelan migrants who have crossed into Colombia fleeing hyperinflation and shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Poor Colombians would also benefit, it said. Whatever remaining amounts of aid not distributed inside Colombia or directly controlled by the US Agency for International Development would continue to be stored on behalf of Guaido, the agency said.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘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
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
RSS