NEW ZEALAND
Volcano search continues
A second land search of White Island yesterday failed to locate the bodies of the last two victims of a volcanic eruption that has now claimed 16 lives, most of them tourists. Police confirmed the 16th victim died on Saturday at Sydney’s Concord Hospital, one of several Australian hospitals where survivors suffering from severe burns were being treated.
PHILIPPINES
Magnitude 6.8 quake hits
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake yesterday hit the southern island of Mindanao, geologists said, the same area struck by a string of deadly tremors in October. People rushed from homes and restaurants set swaying by the strong jolt south of Davao. According to an initial report, a child died when a structure collapsed, and patients were evacuated from hospitals.
CHINA
Beijing halts tariff plan
Beijing suspended additional tariffs on US products that had been due to kick in yesterday, after Washington and Beijing announced a major thaw in their trade dispute on Friday. China would suspend the planned addition of 10 percent and 5 percent tariffs on some US imports, and “continue to suspend additional tariffs on US-made autos and spare parts,” the Chinese Ministry of Finance said. The move is part of a “phase one” trade deal that the two sides have yet to sign.
NEPAL
Gurkha deal might change
Kathmandu wants to review a military deal allowing its citizens to be enlisted in the British army, before a planned recruitment of Nepalese women in the Brigade of Gurkhas for the first time in two centuries, Minister for Foreign Affairs Pradeep Kumar Gyawali said. It is not clear how many Gurkha women Britain plans to enlist, but the first Gurkha women could begin their training in the British army in next year, according to British media. Kathmandu now wants the 72-year-old deal renegotiated as that accord does not allow it to play any role in the recruitment process of Gurkhas by foreign armies, Gyawali said on Friday.
SUDAN
Court sentences al-Bashir
Former president Omar al-Bashir was on Saturday sentenced to two years’ detention in a correctional center for corruption in the first of several cases against the ousted autocrat. The charges stemmed from millions of US dollars received by the toppled strongman from Saudi Arabia. In a statement late on Saturday, the prosector-general confirmed al-Bashir was also being investigated for “killings and crimes against humanity,” adding that the punishment for some of his alleged crimes is death by hanging.
GERMANY
Official issues Huawei threat
China’s ambassador threatened Berlin with retaliation if it excludes Huawei Technologies Co as a supplier of 5G wireless equipment. Lawmakers in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition, have challenged her China policy with a bill that would impose a broad ban on “untrustworthy” 5G vendors. “If Germany were to take a decision that leads to Huawei’s exclusion from the German market, there will be consequences,” Chinese ambassador to Germany Wu Ken (吳懇) said on Saturday at a Handelsblatt event. “Could we say one day that these German cars are no longer safe because we’re in a position to manufacture our own cars? No. That is pure protectionism.”
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
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
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees