AUSTRALIA
Mice drive inmates to move
A mouse plague ravaging the country’s farmlands yesterday forced the evacuation of hundreds of inmates from a rural jail, as the rodents broke in and chewed through essential infrastructure. Scores of mice have gnawed through ceiling panels and wiring at a New South Wales prison, prompting authorities to scale back operations for repairs. “The health, safety and well-being of staff and inmates is our No. 1 priority, so it’s important for us to act now to carry out the vital remediation work,” Peter Severin of New South Wales Corrective Services said. Up to 420 inmates and 200 staff from the Wellington Correctional Centre are to be moved to other facilities by the end of the month.
PHILIPPINES
‘You must be crazy’: Duterte
President Rodrigo Duterte said that he is ready to face possible charges in any local court for the thousands of killings under his anti-drug crackdown, but never before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Outgoing ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda last week said that a preliminary examination found reason to believe that crimes against humanity had been committed during Duterte’s crackdown on drugs between July 1, 2016, and March 16, 2019. “Why would I defend or face an accusation before white people? You must be crazy,” Duterte said on Monday in his first public reaction to the prospects of an ICC investigation of his campaign. He ridiculed the ICC, saying that he would never get justice from the court, but added: “I will readily face a court, be accused in a Philippine court, before a Filipino judge.” More than 6,000 mostly poor drug suspects have been killed during the drug crackdown, the government has said, although human rights groups say that the death toll is considerably higher.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
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