NEW ZEALAND
Man rescued from base
An Australian who fell ill at a remote antarctic base is returning home on an icebreaker following a daunting mission to rescue him, authorities said yesterday. The man was working at the Casey research station when he suffered from what authorities described as a developing medical condition that needed specialist assessment and care. The icebreaker RSV Nuyina left Australia last week and traveled south more than 3,000km, breaking through sea ice to reach a location 144km from the base, the Australian Antarctic Division said in a statement. From there, two helicopters on Sunday were deployed from the deck and arrived at the base after nearly an hour to rescue the man. The ship is now on the return voyage to Hobart. “Getting this expeditioner back to Tasmania for the specialist medical care required is our priority,” said Robb Clifton, the division’s acting general manager of operations and logistics. The man is expected to arrive in Australia next week.
FRANCE
Girls sent home over ‘abaya’
French schools sent dozens of girls home for refusing to remove their abaya on the first day of the school year, Minister of National Education and Youth Gabriel Attal told the BFM broadcaster yesterday. Defying a ban on the Muslim dress, nearly 300 girls showed up on Monday morning wearing an abaya, Attal said Most agreed to change out of the dress, but 67 refused and were sent home, he said. The government last month announced it was banning the abaya in schools, saying it broke the rules on secularism in education that have already seen Muslim headscarves banned on the grounds they constitute a display of religious affiliation. Attal said the girls refused entry were given a letter addressed to their families saying that “secularism is not a constraint, it is a liberty.”
SINGAPORE
Rapper jailed over criticism
A rapper who has accused authorities of racism was yesterday sentenced to six weeks in jail over his social media posts, including a video criticizing an actor in brownface and comments alleging unequal treatment of the city-state’s races. Subhas Nair, a musician of Indian descent, was earlier this year found guilty of attempting to promote ill will between different ethnic and religious groups. The government has sought to promote racial harmony among its diverse population of 5.6 million, but some still complain that the ethnic Chinese majority enjoy greater privileges. One of the charges related to a 2019 rap video that criticized an ad featuring a local Chinese actor who darkened his skin to portray an Indian. “Subhas has filed an appeal against both his guilty verdict, as well as his sentence,” his lawyer Suang Wijaya said, adding that Nair has been granted bail pending appeal.
CHINA
Two damaged Great Wall
Two people have been detained after using an excavator to dig a hole in the Great Wall, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Monday. Police in Shanxi Province followed tracks made by machinery used to dig a shortcut through a segment of the wall. The suspects said under questioning that they had used a digger to create a shortcut in the wall in a bid to reduce local travel time, state media said. The section of the Great Wall affected, situated about a six-hour drive west of Beijing, dates back to the Ming Dynasty. CCTV said the suspects had caused “irreversible damage” to the wall, which was described as a “relatively intact” section of significant research value.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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