AUSTRALIA
Wolf reignites Xmas row
Naomi Wolf has reignited her row with Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor, publishing a recording of a heated telephone call with his office. The US author yesterday said that she called Taylor’s parliamentary office requesting a “formal correction” to the record of his maiden speech, asking that Taylor “tell parliament please that I was not campaigning against Christmas in any way.” She published the 29-minute recording in full. “He used my name twice in ways that are completely inappropriate, totally unjustified, inaccurate,” Wolf told a staffer. “I don’t need to advocate to him about that. He has done a wrong thing and he needs to take responsibility for that.” Taylor in 2013 referred to Wolf in his maiden speech to parliament while recounting an anecdote about “political correctness,” and a dispute about a Christmas tree at the University of Oxford in 1991. When Wolf was alerted to the speech on Monday she said that she was not at Oxford in 1991 and accused the minister of “antisemitic dog whistling.” In the call with Taylor’s staffer, Wolf repeatedly requested that his office issue a public correction to say that she was not at Oxford at the same time as Taylor, and that she was not part of a group of people campaigning against Christmas.
RUSSIA
‘Fake’ smuggler detained
The authorities have detained a man who built a fake frontier post in the woods near the border with Finland and promised to smuggle four South Asian migrant workers into the EU. The man erected mock border posts and charged the four men more than US$10,000 to take them to Finland, the Border Guard Service was quoted as saying on Wednesday. Authorities did not specify the nationalities of the would-be migrants involved in the incident which took place last week. “The man never planned to carry out his promises,” Interfax news agency reported. He installed sham fence posts purportedly marking the border, and took the group on a circuitous route by vehicle and on foot before all five were detained. Video footage showed the men bundled up in parkas and hats standing in the darkness among fir trees, their hands up in the air. A St Petersburg court on Wednesday fined the hapless four men and ordered their deportation. The man behind the smuggling scheme hailed from Central Asia and could be charged with fraud, local media reported.
FRANCE
Santa dives in on climate
In a change of scene, Santa Claus is donning flippers and a diving mask along with his traditional red-and-white outfit to scuba dive in at the Aquarium de Paris, as he teaches children about global warming and climate issues during the festive season. The aquatic Santa, a professional diver and biologist, can be found swimming among fish and a zebra shark every day over the holiday. The show is part of the aquarium’s activities aimed at educating children about environmental issues, including global warming, loss of biodiversity and extreme weather as a result of climate change. “Children are the future,” said Alexandre Dalloni, the aquarium’s education manager. “The planet is also here for children to inherit, so it’s those of a very young age which we can teach ... to tell them that everyone is responsible for preserving the planet for the future.” Dalloni said that swimming with the shark was safe for Santa. “The shark is an animal which isn’t going to attack a human for no reason. There are attacks, but they’re accidental,” he said. Scuba-diving Santa is to remain in residence until Jan. 5.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
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