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.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
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
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