AUSTRALIA
More pilot whales stranded
Rescuers were yesterday racing against the tide to free whales beached off the coast, with more than half of the estimated 470 mammals in the country’s biggest stranding on record already believed dead. The pod of long-finned pilot whales was first spotted on a wide sandbank during an aerial reconnaissance of remote and rugged Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania State on Monday, launching a difficult rescue operation. “We’re not at a point where we’re considering euthanasia... We’re still very hopeful,” Tasmanian Marine Conservation Program wildlife biologist Kris Carlyon said. The stranded pod in Tasmania was first believed to be about half the size, before further aerial searches spotted another group of about 200 whales nearby.
BOUGAINVILLE
Ex-rebel elected president
Former rebel military commander Ishmael Toroama has been elected as president of the autonomous region in the South Pacific, electoral officials said yesterday, and is set to lead talks seeking independence from Papua New Guinea. The general election was the first since residents voted overwhelmingly for a separation from Papua New Guinea at the end of last year, with Toroama defeating an open field, the electoral commissioner said. Toroama was a commander in the secessionist army, and later worked on the peace and disarmament process.
UNITED NATIONS
Korean War must end: Moon
South Korean President Moon Jae-in urged world leaders to bring the 70-year-old Korean War to a formal end, in his latest attempt to resuscitate stalled talks between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Moon told the General Assembly on Tuesday that officially declaring an end to the 1950-1953 conflict would be the first step toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. “The war must end, completely and for good,” Moon said in a virtual address to the international body in New York City. “I hope that the UN and the international community provide support so that we can advance into an era of reconciliation and prosperity.”
INDIA
Building collapse kills 35
The death toll from an apartment block collapse in Bhiwandi, near Mumbai, yesterday jumped to 35, officials said, as hopes of finding anyone else alive dimmed. Emergency workers from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) have so far pulled 20 survivors from the rubble of the three-story building. An NDRF spokesman and local authorities told reporters that recovery teams, aided by sniffer dogs, retrieved 35 bodies buried under brick and concrete after the block came crashing down before dawn on Monday. The dead included eight children, a Thane City official said.
EGYPT
Wooden sarcophagi found
Archeologists have discovered 27 coffins at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, a burial ground that is also home to one of the world’s oldest pyramids, the Ministry of Antiquities said. The wooden sarcophagi are ornately painted and covered in hieroglyphs, and were found stacked in two burial shafts, the ministry said in a statement, adding that they had not yet been opened. Saqqara is a UNESCO world heritage site.
ITALY
Mob ‘underestimated’
The country’s top anti-mafia prosecutor Giuseppe Governale on Tuesday said that the ’Ndrangheta mob was “the most important criminal organization in the Western world” as preliminary hearings in the biggest-ever trial against the group resumed. The hearings at the bunker room of Rome’s Rebibbia prison, which are expected to last until the end of next month, are preliminary procedures against 452 suspects from the Calabrian-based ’Ndrangheta. At a separate briefing on Tuesday, Governale said that the group was “underestimated.”
SWITZERLAND
Police clear protesters
Police early yesterday began removing protesters seeking more action against climate change from a square near the parliament building in Bern after the group that had set up tents refused to heed a city order to leave. State broadcaster SRF showed video of police leading protesters away from Federal Square. The removal was likely to last for several hours, because some had chained themselves to objects, including bicycles and metal fencing, requiring fire department employees to use cutting tools.
UNITED STATES
Ginsburg to lie in repose
Late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death has opened a crucial court seat that President Donald Trump, a Republican, has promised to quickly and controversially fill against the wishes of Democrats, is to lie in repose at the high court beginning yesterday. Trump is to announce his pick to replace Ginsburg on Saturday, with Senate Republicans promising a swift vote on the nominee. Leaders of the Republican majority in the Senate, which is tasked with confirming court nominees, said they had enough support to hold a vote on the nomination either before the November presidential election or at worst during the “lame-duck” session between the election and the inauguration of the next president in January next year.
UNITED STATES
Woman charged over letter
A Canadian woman accused of sending a ricin poison-laced letter to President Donald Trump was on Tuesday formally charged with threatening the president. Pascale Ferrier, a 53-year-old from Quebec, made a brief appearance in a federal court in Buffalo, New York, after her arrest at a border crossing over the weekend. “I found a new name for you: ‘The Ugly Tyrant Clown’ I hope you like it,” read a note in the letter, according to an FBI special agent bomb technician who filed an affidavit as part of the criminal complaint. “You ruin USA and lead them to disaster,” the note added.
ECUADOR
Chinese vessels leave
The navy on Tuesday said that Chinese fishing vessels have gradually left the area near the Galapagos Islands and were operating in international waters off Peru. More than 300 vessels arrived in June to the area around the Galapagos, one of most biodiverse in the world, to fish for giant squid in international waters. “We have done the monitoring and we know that they are in offshore waters off the exclusive economic zone of Peru, in its southern part,” Commander of Naval Operations Rear Admiral Daniel Ginez said in an interview. No vessels of the fishing fleet entered Ecuadoran waters while operating near the Galapagos, Ginez said, adding that fuel was supplied by vessels belonging to the same fleet.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not