JAPAN
Biden tells PM napping OK
Wishing a newly elected fellow world leader good luck is one thing, but US President Joe Biden also wants Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to have a good night. Meeting yesterday at the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in Tokyo, Biden expressed admiration that Albanese made the long flight right after winning his election. “I welcome you to your first Quad meeting,” Biden said. “Like I said, you got on a plane — you were sworn in and got on a plane,” Biden said. So “if you fall asleep while you’re here, it’s OK, because I don’t know how you’re doing it. It’s really quite extraordinary — just getting off the campaign trail as well.”
PHILLIPPINES
Duterte slams Putin
Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte sharply criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for the killings of innocent civilians in Ukraine, saying that while the two of them have been tagged as killers, “I kill criminals, I don’t kill children and the elderly.” Duterte, who openly calls Putin an idol and a friend, voiced criticism for the first time over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in remarks aired yesterday in which he blamed the war for the spike in global oil prices.
IRAQ
Sandstorm halts movement
The country on Monday closed public buildings and temporarily shut airports as another sandstorm — the ninth since the middle of April — hit the country. More than 1,000 people were hospitalized across the nation with respiratory problems, Ministry of Health spokesman Seif al-Badr said. Flights were also grounded in neighboring Kuwait for a second time this month, as the region grapples with the increasingly frequent weather phenomenon. Later the same day, the second heavy sandstorm in less than a week descended on Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, obscuring iconic buildings such as the Kingdom Center in a gray haze. Baghdad was enveloped in a giant dust cloud that left streets largely deserted and bathed in an eery orange light, correspondents said. Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi ordered all work to cease in state-run institutions, except for health and security services.
RUSSIA
Navalny loses appeal
Jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny yesterday lambasted President Vladimir Putin in a live court hearing, casting him as a madman. “This is a stupid war which your Putin started,” Navalny, 45, told an appeal court in Moscow via video link from a corrective penal colony. “This war was built on lies.” Navalny was appealing against a nine-year jail sentence he was handed in March for fraud and contempt of court, on top of two-and-a-half years he is already serving. He denies all the charges against him. The court rejected his appeal.
UNITED KINGDOM
‘No monkeypox jabs needed’
The WHO does not believe the monkeypox outbreak outside of Africa requires mass vaccinations as measures such as good hygiene and safe sexual behavior would help control its spread, a senior official said on Monday. Richard Pebody, who leads the high-threat pathogen team at WHO Europe, said that immediate supplies of vaccines and antivirals are relatively limited. His comments came as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was in the process of releasing some Jynneos vaccine doses for use in monkeypox cases. Germany’s government said that it was assessing options for vaccinations, while the UK has offered them to some healthcare workers.
China is racing to quash a new COVID-19 flareup that risks spilling over into one of its most economically significant regions, raising the specter of disruptions that could roil global supply chains for solar panels, medicines and semiconductors. Infections have surged in Si County in the eastern province of Anhui, with officials reporting 287 cases for Sunday and nearly 1,000 since late last week. Authorities locked down Si and a neighboring county late last week to try and stop the virus from spreading to Jiangsu Province, the second-biggest contributor to China’s economic output and a globally important manufacturing hub for the
A flight test of a hypersonic missile system in Hawaii on Wednesday ended in failure due to a problem that occurred after ignition, the US Department of Defense said, delivering a fresh blow to a program that has experienced stumbles. It did not provide details of what took place in the test, but said in an e-mailed statement that “the department remains confident that it is on track to field offensive and defensive hypersonic capabilities on target dates beginning in the early 2020s.” “An anomaly occurred following ignition of the test asset,” Pentagon spokesman US Navy Lieutenant Commander Tim Gorman said in
OPPOSITION PROTESTS: Many people in Myanmar suspect China of supporting the military takeover, while Beijing has refused to condemn last year’s army power grab China’s top diplomat on Saturday arrived on his first visit to Myanmar since the military seized power last year to attend a regional meeting that the Burmese government said was a recognition of its legitimacy and opponents protested as a violation of peace efforts. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) is to join counterparts from Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam in a meeting of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation group in the central city of Bagan, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The grouping is a Chinese-led initiative that includes the countries of the Mekong Delta, a potential source of regional tensions
CERN UPGRADES: ompared with the collider’s first run that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012, this time around there would be 20 times more collisions Ten years after it discovered the Higgs boson, the Large Hadron Collider is about to start smashing protons together at unprecedented energy levels in its quest to reveal more secrets about how the universe works. The world’s largest and most powerful particle collider started back up in April after a three-year break for upgrades in preparation for its third run. From today it will run around the clock for nearly four years at a record energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced at a news conference last week. It is to send two beams of protons
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