IRELAND
General election begins
Ireland yesterday began voting in a general election, with Prime Minister Leo Varadkar hoping to secure a new term on the back of Brexit, but voters likely to judge him more on his domestic record. About 3.3 million people are eligible to vote to elect 159 members of the Dail, the lower chamber of parliament in Dublin. Varadkar’s Fine Gael party has been in power since 2016, but polling has suggested they were trailing rivals Fianna Fail and republicans Sinn Fein. “This election is wide open,” Varadkar said at his final campaign stop in the western town of Ennis on Friday. “It’s a three-horse race, three parties, all within shouting distance of each other.” Varadkar launched his campaign after successfully helping to broker a deal cushioning Britain’s EU exit on Friday last week by avoiding a hard border with British-run Northern Ireland. Polls were to close after press time last night, with voting to begin today.
ANTARCTICA
High temperature reported
The temperature in Antarctica hit nearly 18.3°C, a likely heat record on the continent best known for snow, ice and penguins. The reading was taken on Thursday at an Argentine research base and still needs to be verified by the World Meteorological Organization. “Everything we have seen thus far indicates a likely legitimate record,” said Randall Cerveny, who researches records for the organization. Cerveny is waiting for full data to confirm, he said. The research base, called Esperanza, sits on a peninsula that juts up toward the southern tip of South America. The peninsula has warmed significantly over the past half century — almost 3°C, according to the organization. Cerveny said that the high temperature was likely due, in the short term, to a rapid warming of air coming down from a mountain slope. The previous record of 17.5°C was set in March 2015.
UNITED STATES
Fake police car stopped
A man driving what appeared to be a police car did not fool a suspicious sheriff in suburban Detroit. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said he was driving away from a meeting on Thursday when he spotted a vehicle with police-style bumpers, an array of lights on the back and a decal that read “emergency response.” Bouchard activated his emergency lights and stopped the vehicle. He said there was a fake radar on the dashboard and a police-style computer. He also discovered a loaded gun and a large knife. “He looks at me and says: ‘Who are you?’ And I said: ‘I’m the sheriff. Who are you?’” Bouchard told WDIV-TV. The man was arrested, with charges pending. “We’re still trying to run down what he was doing with this vehicle or if he’s stopped anyone in the past,” the sheriff said. “He initially said that sometimes he helps police. I don’t know what that means.”
UNITED STATES
Facebook’s accounts hacked
Twitter on Friday said that the official Twitter accounts of Facebook Inc and its Messenger platform were hacked. A Twitter spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement that the accounts were hacked through a third-party platform. “As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them,” the Twitter spokesperson said. Seperately, Facebook also confirmed that some of its official social media accounts were hacked. “Some of our corporate social accounts were briefly hacked, but we have secured and restored access,” Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said.
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
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
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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