AUSTRALIA
Shark kills swimmer
Several Sydney beaches, including the iconic Bondi and Bronte, were shut yesterday after a swimmer was killed in a shark attack, the first such fatality at the city’s beaches in nearly 60 years. Drum lines, which are used to bait sharks, have been set up near the attack site, while drones have been deployed as officials search for the shark. A video shared online showed a shark attacking a person on Wednesday afternoon off Little Bay beach, about 20km south of Australia’s largest city and near the entrance to Botany Bay.
HONG KONG
Xi expresses concerns
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) directed Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng (韓正) to express to Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) the concerns that Chinese Communist Party leaders have about the territory’s COVID-19 situation, Wen Wei Po reported yesterday. Xi said that the local government’s “overriding task” was to control the situation. Hong Kong is facing its worst outbreak of the pandemic, topping 2,000 new COVID-19 cases each day this week. The Caritas Medical Center on Wednesday was treating some patients in beds outside the building. “The reason why our society has become chaotic like this today is all because of this [“zero COVID-19”] policy. The organizational skill of the government has made Hong Kong people feel so hopeless,” said Daisy Ho, a 70-year-old homemaker.
INDIA
Thirteen die at wedding
Thirteen women and girls died while singing and dancing at a wedding as a concrete slab covering an abandoned village well collapsed under their weight, an official said yesterday. Ten other people were injured as they also fell into the well and were hospitalized in Kushinagar District in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday, Magistrate S. Rajalingam said. The well is more than 15m deep, said Muralidhar Singh, a rescuer.
CANADA
Bodies recovered from ship
Rescuers recovered bodies from a Spanish fishing ship that sank in rough seas off Newfoundland, raising the confirmed death toll to nine, but the search for 12 missing sailors was called off on Wednesday. Lieutenant Commander Brian Owens, spokesperson of the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Halifax, said that all search and rescue craft were returning to base and civilian vessels had been released from their obligation to contribute to the effort. The Villa de Pitanxo fishing boat, which operated out of northwest Spain’s Galicia region, sank early on Tuesday, tossing its 24 crew members into icy seas.
UNITED STATES
Republicans doubt result
Only 13 of the 143 Texas Republican candidates for Congress say they believe US President Joe Biden’s election win was legitimate, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. Hearst Newspapers sent questions about the election and searched campaign Web sites and social media pages of the Republicans running for Congress in Texas. Of 86 with discernible positions, at least 42 have outright said that Democrats stole the 2020 election, called the results illegitimate, or said they would have voted not to certify. Another 11 candidates have said there was enough fraud or irregularities to cast doubt on the results. “We’ve seen across the board, the Democrats have always cheated,” said Jonathan Hullihan, a candidate in the state’s 8th Congressional District.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
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