CHINA
Worries over jailed reporter
The partner of Chinese-
Australian journalist Cheng Lei (成蕾)), detained by Beijing since August 2020, yesterday said he has serious concerns about her declining health behind bars. Cheng, a mother of two and former anchor at Chinese state broadcaster CGTN, was formally arrested in February last year and charged with “supplying state secrets overseas.” Nick Coyle, Cheng’s boyfriend and CEO of the China-Australia Chamber of Commerce, said he was concerned about a “range of health issues” his partner faced in prison, which were exacerbated by food restrictions. He said monthly consular visits between Cheng and Australian officials had also been suspended because of China’s strict COVID-19 protocols. Cheng was tried secretly in March, as Australian Ambassador to China Graham Fletcher was blocked from entering the court.
UNITED STATES
Air links to Cuba eased
Washington on Wednesday lifted restrictions on air links with Cuba, one of the measures announced last month in a gesture of conciliation toward the communist nation. The decision allows US airlines to serve other airports aside from the capital of Havana, a Department of Transportation document said. The reauthorization of certain group trips is also planned, it said. Washington on May 16 announced that it would soon lift a large range of sanctions targeting the country, which a US official described as “practical decisions” to help alleviate its humanitarian situation and to “expand economic opportunities” for Cubans. It also promised to increase capacity for processing visa applications in Havana, and to abolish a quarterly ceiling of US$1,000 that was permitted to be sent to Cuba by relatives in the US. The announcements were welcomed by Havana, which said the measures are “a small step in the right direction.”
INDIA
Officials visit Kabul
New Delhi has sent a team of officials to the Afghan capital for talks with senior members of the ruling Taliban, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. It is the first such meeting since the US withdrawal last year. Poverty and hunger have rocketed in the strife-torn nation since Islamist militants took power last year. “The Indian team will meet the senior members of the Taliban, and hold discussions on India’s humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan,” the ministry said in a statement. The government has donated about 20,000 tonnes of wheat, 13 tonnes of medicines, 500,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines and substantial amounts of winter clothing, it said. New Delhi pulled its officials out of Afghanistan in August last year and closed its embassy, although it is keen to retain ties with the country in matters where Pakistan wields influence.
AUSTRALIA
Meadow forms largest plant
Scientists have discovered the world’s largest plant off the nation’s coast — a seagrass meadow that has grown by repeatedly cloning itself. Genetic analysis showed that the underwater fields of waving green seagrass are a single organism covering 180km2 through making copies of itself over 4,500 years. Scientists confirmed that the meadow is a single organism by comparing the DNA of seagrass shoots across the bed. They call the meadow of ribbon weed “the most widespread known clone on Earth.” However, it is vulnerable. Cyclones and rising ocean temperatures linked to climate change have killed almost one-10th of the ancient seagrass bed over the past decade.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
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