AUSTRALIA
Suburbs under lockdown
Authorities were to lock down more than 300,000 people in suburbs north of Melbourne for a month from yesterday to contain the risk of infection after two weeks of double-digit rises in new COVID-19 cases in the country’s second-most populous state. From midnight, more than 30 suburbs in the country’s second-biggest city would return to stage 3 restrictions, the third-strictest level in curbs to control the virus. That means residents would be confined to home except for grocery shopping, health appointments, work or caregiving, and exercise.
HAITI
Government defends opening
The country defended its decision to reopen its air borders to the US, with the first plane due to arrive yesterday morning. The US has been one of the worst-hit countries by the COVID-19 pandemic, reporting more than 127,000 deaths from the disease as some states see a spike in fresh cases. The first commercial flight in three months was to land in the capital, Port-au-Prince, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida — a state with a large Haitian diaspora, but which is among those reporting a sharp uptick in infections.
UNITED STATES
Biden not to hold rallies
Former vice president Joe Biden on Tuesday said that he would not hold presidential campaign rallies during the pandemic, an unprecedented declaration that stands in stark contrast with President Donald Trump, who has already held large campaign gatherings. Biden also ramped up his criticism of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, saying that he had “failed” the American people and “waved the white flag” of surrender in the fight against COVID-19.
ETHIOPIA
Four die as protests spread
At least four people were on Tuesday killed as protests spread across several cities after a prominent singer from the country’s largest ethnic group was shot dead. The unrest, which prompted the government to switch off the Internet in the capital, highlighted ethnic tensions that threaten to derail the country’s fraught democratic transition, overseen by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The singer Hachalu Hundessa was shot on Monday night. With his political lyrics, he was seen as a voice of the Oromo people during years of anti-government protests that swept Abiy to power in 2018. On Tuesday morning, protesters poured into Addis Ababa from the surrounding Oromia region. Protests were reported in several towns in Oromia, such as central Adama, where the injured said they had been shot by security forces, said Desalegn Fekadu, a surgeon at the Adama Hospital. “Three patients died and there are still critical patients,” he said. “There are also more than 10 patients with burn injuries. They said their houses were set on fire.” A resident of Western Hararge, in Oromia, on condition of anonymity said that his cousin had been killed by young Oromo nationalists, because he was from the Amhara ethnic group.
SOMALIA
Mortars hit stadium
At least three mortar blasts on Tuesday evening sent people ducking for cover, hours after the Mogadishu Stadium reopened following years of instability. The mortar shells struck in and around the stadium, police Colonel Ahmed Muse said. There was no immediate word on any casualties. The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab extremist group often targets the city. The blasts occurred after President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed attended the opening ceremony, which included a soccer match in the nearly empty stadium. He left before the shells hit. The 35,000-seat stadium’s opening, complete with a large ceremonial flame, was a symbol of the nation’s attempts at rebuilding after nearly three decades of conflict.
IRAN
Clinic explosion kills 19
A powerful explosion at a clinic in northern Tehran on Tuesday killed at least 19 people, the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported. The blast at Sina At’har health center damaged buildings in the vicinity and sent a plume of thick black smoke into the night sky, state television reported. “An explosion was reported at 20:56 followed by a fire at Sina At’har clinic. Medical units were dispatched immediately,” Tehran’s emergency medical services said in a statement. “The death of 13 people has been confirmed. Six have also been injured and transferred” to a hospital, it added. Tehran fire department spokesman Jalal Maleki also told the agency that firefighters recovered the bodies of six more people after the blaze was extinguished. The explosion occurred as gas canisters caught fire in the clinic’s basement, Maleki said.
UNITED STATES
Comedy legend dies
Carl Reiner, a driving force in American comedy as a writer for television pioneer Sid Caesar, partner of Mel Brooks, and creator and costar of the classic sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show, has died at the age of 98. His career spanned seven decades and every medium from theater and recordings to television and movies, including directing Oh, God!, three collaborations with Steve Martin and a role as an elderly con man in the revived Ocean’s Eleven series. Reiner died on Monday night of natural causes at his home in Beverly Hills, his assistant Judy Nagy said on Tuesday.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
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