INDONESIA
New lockdown imposed
The country yesterday imposed a partial lockdown in the capital, Jakarta, across the main island of Java and on Bali as the Southeast Asian nation grappled with an unprecedented wave of COVID-19 infections. Mosques, restaurants and shopping malls were shuttered in virus hotspots across the Muslim-majority country, which recorded more than 25,000 new cases and 539 deaths on Friday, both new daily records. The country’s daily caseload has more than quadrupled in less than a month.
FIJI
COVID-19 outbreak worsens
Authorities have warned of a rising death toll from COVID-19 as an outbreak of the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 threatened to overwhelm the South Pacific nation’s health system. Two more deaths were reported yesterday, along with hundreds of new infections just days after the country recorded its biggest-ever daily increase. “The steady increase in average daily case numbers in combination with other indicators suggest higher daily numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the coming weeks,” Permanent Health Secretary James Fong said in a statement on Friday. The nation went an entire year without recording any community cases until April, when it was hit by a second wave of the quick-spreading Delta variant.
UNITED STATES
Miami condo evacuated
The city of North Miami Beach on Friday ordered the evacuation of a condominium building after a review found unsafe conditions about 8km from the site of last week’s deadly collapse in South Florida. An audit prompted by the collapse of Champlain Towers South in nearby Surfside found that the 156-unit Crestview Towers had been deemed structurally and electrically unsafe in January, the city said in a news release. The mayor of Miami-Dade County had suggested an audit of buildings 40 and older to make sure they are in compliance with the local recertification process after the condo building collapse last week that killed at least 22 people and left more than 120 still missing.
MEXICO
Rupture sets sea ablaze
The country’s state-owned oil company on Friday said it experienced a rupture in an undersea gas pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico, sending flames boiling to the surface in the Gulf waters. Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) said it had dispatched fire control boats to pump more water over the flames. Pemex said nobody was injured in the incident in the offshore Ku-Maloob-Zaap field. The leak near dawn occurred about 150m from a drilling platform.
UKRAINE
Photos spark controversy
Authorities on Friday found themselves buried in controversy after official pictures showed female soldiers practicing for a parade in heels. The country is preparing to stage a military parade next month to mark 30 years of independence following the Soviet Union’s breakup, and the Ministry of Defense released photographs of fatigue-clad female soldiers marching in mid-heel black pumps. Several lawmakers close to former president Petro Poroshenko showed up in parliament with pairs of shoes and encouraged the minister of defense to wear high heels to the parade. “It is hard to imagine a more idiotic, harmful idea,” said Inna Sovsun, a member of the Golos party, pointing to health risks.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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