JAPAN
Pacific islands visit planned
Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi is planning to visit the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and the Cook Islands from March 18 to 22, the daily Yomiuri Shimbun said yesterday, citing multiple government sources. The plan comes after China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands last year, prompting concern from the US and Australia as China seeks to extend its influence in the region. Hayashi intends to affirm the three islands states’ cooperation with an “free and open Indo-Pacific,” and is considering suggesting security cooperation as well, the report said. He also plans to assuage concerns over the release of treated water from the disabled Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant later this year, the newspaper said.
SPACE
Crew returns from ISS
Four space station astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after a quick SpaceX flight home. Their capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida coast near Tampa. The US-Russian-Japanese crew spent five months at the International Space Station (ISS), arriving in October last year. Besides dodging space junk, the astronauts had to deal with a pair of leaking Russian capsules docked to the orbiting outpost and the urgent delivery of a replacement craft for the station’s other crew members. Led by NASA’s Nicole Mann, the first Native American woman to fly in space, the astronauts left the station early on Saturday morning. Less than 19 hours later, their Dragon capsule was bobbing in the sea as they awaited pickup. “That was one heck of a ride,” Mann radioed moments after splashdown. “We’re happy to be home.”
AUSTRALIA
Queensland floods peak
A record-breaking flood in Australia’s Queensland state peaked yesterday, after nearly 100 residents of an outback town were moved to higher ground. The flood, triggered by heavy rain over the past week, was worst in the remote Gulf Country town of Burketown, about 2,100 km northwest of state capital Brisbane. Burketown council head Dan McKinlay said on Sunday that 97 residents had been airlifted out in the past 48 hours. Water levels in the area were “at heights not previously known” and the town looked like it was “sitting in the middle of an ocean,” he told ABC radio. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology predicted water levels in the area would peak yesterday. It said the flood topped a March 2011 record of 6.78m
MEXICO
American women missing
Three women who went to Mexico to sell clothes at a market have been missing for more than two weeks, the police chief in a small Texas town said on Saturday. Marina Perez Rios, 48, her sister Maritza Trinidad Perez Rios, 47, and their friend Dora Alicia Cervantes Saenz, 53, crossed into Mexico on Feb. 24, Penitas police chief Roel Bermea said. The women, who live in Texas, had planned to go to a market in Montemorelos in northeastern Mexico. “We don’t know if they made it there,” Bermea said. After days without news, the husband of one of the women reported their disappearance to the Penitas police. The FBI has been notified, Bermea said. On Monday, four Americans were kidnapped and two of them killed in Matamoros, also in northeastern Mexico. They were seeking medical treatment in Mexico, a popular destination for medical tourism, before being targeted by gunfire and kidnapped by armed men.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
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