VIETNAM
Virus variant detected
Vietnam has detected its first imported case of the new COVID-19 variant that is spreading rapidly across Britain, the Ministry of Health said yesterday. The variant was detected in a 44-year-old woman returning to Vietnam from Britain, who was quarantined upon arrival and was confirmed positive for the virus on Thursday last week, the ministry said in a statement. “Researchers ran gene-sequencing on the patient’s sample and found the strain is a variant known as VOC 202012/01,” it said. Vietnam is still operating repatriation flights to bring its citizens stuck in the UK home amid the pandemic.
BRAZIL
Rio mayor launches probes
Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes took office on Friday and launched a raft of investigations into corruption allegations against his predecessor, Marcelo Crivella. Crivella had already been arrested on Dec. 22 and suspended from his job over the allegations, but Paes wasted no time piling more pressure on the man he defeated in municipal elections in November. Paes used his first day back in office to order four probes into alleged corruption and strongarming in the Crivella administration. “Never in the history of Rio de Janeiro has a mayor received such a perverse inheritance from his predecessor,” Paes said at his swearing-in ceremony.
MEXICO
Sea Shepherd ship rammed
Conservationist group Sea Shepherd on Friday said in a statement that two fishermen were injured off the Baja California coast when they rammed their small boat into a larger vessel used by the group, who protect the endangered vaquita porpoise. The attack is the latest round in an escalating spiral of protests by fishers who use banned gill nets in the Gulf of California, the only place the vaquita is found. Only as few as a dozen vaquitas are believed to remain, making them the world’s most endangered marine mammal. “This morning’s attack is the latest in a series of increasingly violent assaults launched against Sea Shepherd’s ships over the past month,” the statement said. “Assailants have hurled Molotov cocktails, knives, hammers, flares, bottles of fuel and other deadly projectiles at the vessels, crew and military personnel on board. No serious injuries have occurred prior to today’s incident.” The attackers also threw lead net weights at the crew, the group said. It released a video showing one fishing boat approaching the Farley Mowat at high speed and slamming into the side of the vessel.
UNITED STATES
Thomas hearing ordered
A federal judge has ordered a hearing to decide whether to civilly commit the man charged with stabbing five people with a machete at a suburban New York Hanukkah celebration in 2019. A psychiatric evaluation found that Grafton Thomas is mentally unfit to stand trial, despite months of hospitalization at a federal facility in Missouri, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. A hearing this month is to determine Thomas’ prognosis for rehabilitation and whether he should be civilly committed rather than tried in federal court. Thomas, 38, is charged in an attack at a rabbi’s home in December 2019 that left five people wounded in Monsey, an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City. The most critically injured victim, Josef Neumann, 72, died three months after the attack.
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
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