AUSTRALIA
New minister is ‘half hawk’
Newly appointed Minister for Defence Peter Dutton said that China’s Global Times is “half right” in describing him as a “hawk,” saying that he intends to work closely with the US and other allies in maintaining peace in the region. “We don’t support militarization of ports, we don’t support any foreign country trying to exert influence here via cyber or other means,” Dutton told Sky News in a televised interview yesterday, after being appointed defense minister in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Cabinet reshuffle last week. “Obviously China has held long-term ambitions in relation to Taiwan, and we want to make sure that there is peace in our region,” he said.
AUSTRALIA
Two stranded on car roof
Two Darwin residents were forced to spend nine hours on the roof of their car surrounded by crocodile-infested waters after their vehicle became stranded in floodwaters. Rescuers spent all of Saturday night attempting to rescue the pair after their Landcruiser became trapped when it tried to cross the Dingo Station river crossing west of Darwin at about 9pm. The water rose to the windows and caused the internal electrics to fail, leading the pair to seek safety on top of their car as they waited for rescue. A boat was finally able to reach the pair at about 6am yesterday.
INDONESIA
Seventeen fishers missing
Rescuers were searching for 17 missing fishers after two boats collided in waters off the coast of West Java, officials said yesterday. A fishing vessel on Saturday evening hit a larger cargo ship, flipping the wooden boat’s 32 crew members into the water, Bandung rescue agency spokeswoman Seni Wulandari said. “About 15 survivors have been evacuated to the cargo vessel, but the team is still searching for 17 other crew members who went missing,” Wulandari added. Those rescued sustained minor injuries from the accident and were taken to a nearby hospital, she added. The Habco Pioneer cargo vessel was sailing through the Port of Merak from Borneo when it was hit by the local fishing boat, Wulandari said.
HONG KONG
Record cocaine haul seized
Police announced a record 700kg cocaine seizure yesterday, saying that the shipment was likely smuggled on speedboats. The bust is the largest in nearly a decade and netted about HK$930 million (US$119.6 million) worth of cocaine. Authorities said that the collapse of global travel has forced smugglers to make riskier bulk shipments. Police said that a man with a trolley and 150 bricks of cocaine in cardboard boxes was intercepted on Friday, while another 492 bricks were found in an industrial building and an apartment, leading to the arrest of two men aged 19 and 25.
CHINA
Collision kills at least 11
At least 11 people were killed after a truck collided with a passenger bus in Jiangsu Province over a busy holiday weekend, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The truck drove through a barrier on a highway north of Shanghai and crashed into the bus at about 1am yesterday, Xinhua reported. As traffic piled up at the site of the crash, two other trucks were involved in a rear-end collision. Nineteen people were injured and hospitalized, Xinhua said. Media footage showed the passenger bus overturned amid debris from the barrier. Other early morning videos showed rescue vehicles and two cranes in action.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema