NEW ZEALAND
Hipkins sworn in as PM
Chris Hipkins was yesterday sworn in as the nation’s 41st prime minister, following the unexpected resignation last week of Jacinda Ardern. Hipkins, 44, has promised a back-to-basics approach focusing on the economy and what he described as the “pandemic of inflation.” He has less than nine months before contesting a tough general election, with opinion polls indicating that his Labour Party is trailing its conservative opposition. Governor-General Cindy Kiro officiated the swearing in ceremony after earlier accepting Ardern’s resignation. Hipkins was education and police minister under Ardern. He rose to public prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he took on a kind of crisis management role.
THE PHILIPPINES
Plane crash kills two
An air force plane yesterday crashed on a farm northwest of Manila, killing the two people on board, while a search was continuing for a private aircraft carrying six people that went missing the previous day in the mountainous north. The SF-260 plane was on a training flight from Sangley Point Airport in Cavite province south of Manila when it plummeted into a rice field in Bataan province, air force spokesperson Colonel Maria Consuelo Castillo said. Separately, a single-engine Cessna plane carrying six people lost contact with airport tower personnel about four minutes after takeoff on what was to be a 30-minute flight on Tuesday in northern Isabela province, the Civil Aviation Authority said. A full-scale search and rescue was continuing yesterday, the agency said. It did not identify those who were on the plane.
THAILAND
Bangkok pollution worsens
Authorities on Tuesday urged Bangkok residents to work from home and wear respirator masks outdoors as air pollution level worsens in one of the world’s most-visited cities. Residents in the city of more than 10 million should work from home if possible, or switch from personal vehicles to public transportation options if they need to commute, Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt said in a statement. Authorities are attempting to control activities causing dust particles such as outdoor burning, construction and combustion from truck engines, he said. Air quality in the capital has been mostly at unhealthy levels since the weekend with authorities warning that the hazardous dust particles, known as PM2.5 — airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrometers or less — might exceed safe levels again later this week.
INDIA
New Delhi reaches out
New Delhi has invited Pakistan’s foreign minister to a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) that it is hosting in May, Indian media reported yesterday, signaling a possible thaw in relations between the nuclear-armed rivals. The invitation came days after Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif called for talks with India over all outstanding issues, including the disputed Kashmir region. Just a month ago, there were street protests in India over comments Pakistani Minister of Foreign Affairs Bilawal Bhutto Zardari made about Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of a UN Security Council meeting. India called Zardari’s comments “uncivilized.” Foreign ministry spokespersons for the two countries did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the media reports that Zardari had been invited to the SCO foreign ministers meeting being hosted in Goa.
UNITED KINGDOM
Two war volunteers die
Two British volunteers who had been reported missing in eastern Ukraine have been killed, a family statement released on Tuesday said. Andrew Bagshaw, 48, and Christopher Parry, 28, went missing earlier this month while heading to the town of Soledar, in the eastern Donetsk region, where heavy fighting took place. Parry’s family confirmed in a statement released through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office that both men were killed. “It is with great sadness we have to announce that our beloved Chrissy has been killed along with his colleague Andrew Bagshaw whilst attempting a humanitarian evacuation from Soledar, eastern Ukraine,” it said. Ukrainian police on Jan. 9 said that they lost contact with Bagshaw and Perry after they headed for Soledar. Bagshaw, a resident of New Zealand, was in Ukraine to assist in delivering humanitarian aid, New Zealand media reports said.
MEXICO
Court rules on army arrests
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the armed forces do not have to advise civilian police when they make an arrest. The issue is a sensitive one, because the military is supposed to be participating in civilian law enforcement only to “support” police. However, the court said that soldiers can make an arrest without telling police, as long as they eventually register the arrest in a computer system that civilian agencies use. The armed forces have frequently been accused of breaching human rights, but the nation’s underpaid, antiquated police forces cannot handle the country’s well-armed drug cartels alone. Some civilian police forces complain that the armed forces, and the largely militarized National Guard, are not trained in proper arrest procedures and filling out standardized crime reports. A broader criticism is that the armed forces and National Guard do little investigation, and thus cannot build strong cases except when they catch suspects in the act of committing a crime.
UNITED STATES
Rocket Lab launches mission
Rocket Lab on Tuesday launched its first mission from US soil, kicking off an expansion of the company’s launch business that adds to a surge in private rocket activity at US space ports. The California-based firm’s workhorse Electron rocket, an expendable launcher 12m tall, lifted off at 6pm from its new launch pad at the NASA-operated Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. The mission marked Rocket Lab’s first outside its flagship launch site on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand, where the company has carried out all 32 previous Electron missions since the rocket’s debut in 2017.
UNITED STATES
Dallas Zoo probes death
What mysterious forces are at work at the Dallas Zoo? In recent days, the largest zoo in Texas has been the scene of suspicious incidents, most recently the death of a beloved vulture — and police are on the case. “Everything is under suspect at this point — internal, external — we’re looking at every single option,” zoo president Gregg Hudson told reporters on Monday. The 35-year-old endangered lappet-faced vulture named Pin was found dead over the weekend and the zoo said “the death does not appear to be from natural causes.” The zoo offered a US$10,000 reward for any information that helps the investigation. On Jan. 13, a clouded leopard, Nova, escaped from her enclosure after a section of fencing had been cut. Nova was later discovered safe on zoo grounds, but staff found that the langur monkey enclosure had also been breached.
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
IN PROTECTION: Video released by the Senate showed Ronald dela Rosa being chased through the halls of the upper chamber, pursued by National Bureau of Investigation officers Philippine authorities on Monday said that they would not arrest for now a lawmaker wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his alleged role in former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, capping a lengthy Senate standoff. Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, who served as police chief and Duterte’s top enforcer during the bloody drug crackdown, would be treated as if in the custody of the Senate, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Melvin Matibag told reporters after the politician had taken refuge in the legislative building. “We respect that they are a co-equal branch,” Matibag said after the Senate refused
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