CHINA
US ‘illegally’ sails sea: PLA
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command yesterday said that a US warship had illegally entered its territorial waters in the South China Sea. The command said in a statement that the USS Curtis Wilbur entered the waters near the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) — over which Taiwan, China and Vietnam all claim sovereignty — without permission, adding that its ships and planes followed the US vessel. The command said that Beijing opposed the US action, which it said violated China’s sovereignty, and undermined regional peace and stability.
ANTARCTICA
Largest iceberg takes float
A giant slab of ice bigger than the Spanish island of Mallorca has sheared off from the frozen edge of the continent into the Weddell Sea, becoming the largest iceberg afloat in the world, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday. The newly calved berg, designated A-76 by scientists, was spotted in satellite images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, the space agency said in a statement posted on its Web site with a photograph of the enormous, oblong ice sheet. Its surface area spans 4,320km2 and measures 175km long by 25km wide. By comparison, Spain’s Mallorca in the Mediterranean occupies 3,640km2.
GREECE
Villagers flee forest fires
Scores of villagers were early yesterday evacuated as a forest fire raged overnight around the protected wildlife habitat of Mount Geraneia, fire department spokesman Vassilis Vathrakogiannis told Skai TV. No injuries were immediately reported. Six villages and two monasteries were evacuated after the fire broke out on Wednesday evening near the village of Skinos on the Gulf of Corinth, he said. Fanned by strong winds, the “fire is burning over a large front,” he said. More than 180 firefighters with 62 fire engines were deployed to the area, backed by 17 planes and three helicopters, the fire department wrote on Twitter.
ITALY
Drained lake reveals village
The eerie image of a church bell tower emerging from Lake Resia became so famous that it inspired a book and a Netflix series. Now the remains of the surrounding village, which were under water for more than 70 years, have again been revealed. The village of Curon once had about 900 inhabitants living in 160 homes, but it was flooded in 1950 to create a hydroelectric plant. After leaks were found, the lake was temporarily drained for repair work. “It was strange for me to walk among the rubble of houses. I felt curiosity and sadness,” local resident Lucia Azzolini said. However, a power company started to release water back into the lake a week ago, so the village is soon to be once again submerged.
UNITED STATES
Teacher disarms student
When a student opened fire at an Idaho middle school, teacher Krista Gneiting directed children to safety, rushed to help a wounded victim and then calmly disarmed the sixth-grade shooter, hugging and consoling the girl until police arrived. Parents credited the math teacher’s display of compassion with saving lives. While two students and the school custodian were shot on May 6, all three survived, and the gunfire was over within minutes. Gneiting said that after she got the gun, she pulled the shooter into a hug: “I thought: ‘This little girl has a mom somewhere that doesn’t realize she’s having a breakdown and she’s hurting people.”
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
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
‘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
‘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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