AUSTRALIA
Melbourne lockdown returns
Shoppers in Melbourne yesterday stripped supermarket shelves as residents prepared to return to a COVID-19 lockdown. Five million people were ordered back into a six-week lockdown beginning yesterday at midnight as soaring community transmission of the virus brings more than 100 new cases daily. The country’s largest supermarket chain, Woolworths, said that it had reimposed buying limits on items such as pasta, vegetables and sugar after shoppers rushed to stores across Victoria state. Experts have warned that people everywhere would need to get used to the “new normal” of on-and-off restrictions as new clusters emerge and subside.
RUSSIA
Marmot hunts discouraged
Authorities have warned residents of regions near Mongolia against hunting marmots, but stressed that there is no risk of bubonic plague spreading across the country. Public health authorities appealed to residents of the Tuva and Altai regions following last week’s confirmation of two bubonic plague cases in Mongolia. The cases involve brothers who had eaten marmot meat. Authorities in the Tuva region urged residents in a statement to be vigilant, and “refrain from hunting marmots and eating marmot meat.”
RUSSIA
Adviser jailed for treason
Moscow’s Lefortovo Court has jailed a former journalist who is an adviser to the head of the country’s space agency on suspicion of treason. The Federal Security Service said that Ivan Safronov was suspected of passing information on arms sales, as well as other defense and security matters, to an unnamed NATO country, news agency RIA Novosti reported. Safronov, who had only worked at Roscosmos for a few months, denies any wrongdoing, his legal team said. Media outlets, including Vedomosti and RBC, issued statements denouncing his arrest as an effort to pressure the media.
UNITED KINGDOM
Saudi arms sales to restart
The government on Tuesday said that it would resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Weapons exports were stopped in June last year after the Court of Appeal ordered the government to clarify how it assesses whether their use in Yemen’s civil war breaches international humanitarian law (IHL). However, the government has concluded that Saudi Arabia “has a genuine intent and the capacity to comply with IHL,” Secretary of State for International Trade Liz Truss said, allowing for export license reviews to restart. The announcement came just a day after 20 Saudi Arabians were slapped with sanctions for their suspected roles in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
BRAZIL
President tests positive
President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday said that he tested positive for COVID-19, but is confident that he can swiftly recover thanks to treatment with hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug that has not been proven effective against the virus. The president told reporters that he underwent a lung X-ray on Monday after experiencing fever, muscle aches and malaise. As of Tuesday, his fever had subsided, he said, and he attributed the improvement to hydroxychloroquine. Bolsonaro is “the democratic leader who has most denied the seriousness of this pandemic,” State University of Rio de Janeiro political science professor Mauricio Santoro said. “Him getting infected is a blow to his credibility.”
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
A former flight attendant for a Canadian airline posed as a commercial pilot and as a current flight attendant to obtain hundreds of free flights from US airlines, authorities said on Tuesday. Dallas Pokornik, 33, of Toronto, was arrested in Panama after being indicted on wire fraud charges in US federal court in Hawaii in October last year. He pleaded not guilty on Tuesday following his extradition to the US. Pokornik was a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019, then used fake employee identification from that carrier to obtain tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants on three other
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