PHILIPPINES
Meteor lights up Luzon
A small, bright meteor lit up skies over the nation’s north early yesterday as it burned up entering the atmosphere, the European Space Agency (ESA) and witnesses said. The 1m rock, named 2024 RW1, entered the atmosphere shortly after midnight and caused a “harmless,” but “spectacular fireball” over Luzon island, the ESA said. The meteor, discovered through the Catalina Sky Survey, is only the ninth meteor that humans have ever spotted before impact. Businessman Allan Madelar, 28, told reporters that he waited an hour in Gonzaga, a municipality in Luzon, to watch the meteor with a friend. “It was mesmerizing, the color was beautiful. The sky went from black to blue-green to orange and black again,” he said. Video clips posted on Facebook showed an orange-tailed fireball that briefly illuminated the night sky over Luzon. Audie de la Cruz, 65, set up a camera on a bridge in Tuguegarao city to photograph the celestial spectacle, but the fireball died out before he could press the shutter. “It was like a tadpole with a very big head, and its head was very bright,” De la Cruz told reporters. “I might have failed to photograph it, but seeing it was a very unforgettable experience.”
JAPAN
Fukushima work planned
The operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant yesterday said that it aims to carry out a trial removal of highly radioactive debris next week, after a previous attempt was suspended. Thirteen years after a tsunami wrecked the plant, about 880 tonnes of extremely hazardous material remain inside. Late last month, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) suspended a removal procedure after a technical problem involving the installation of equipment. “It will take several days for us to prepare for a resumption ... and we will be able to resume next week if all goes well as scheduled,” a TEPCO spokesman told reporters. In three units of the Fukushima plant, fuel and other material melted and solidified into highly radioactive “fuel debris.” The new operation aims to remove a sample of the debris and study it to decide on the next steps. TEPCO deployed two mini-drones and a “snake-shaped robot” inside in February as part of the preparations for removal. The debris has radiation levels so high that it had to develop specialized robots able to function inside.
INDIA
Police seek ‘cow vigilantes’
Police yesterday said that they were compiling lists of Hindu “cow vigilantes” after a young man falsely accused of smuggling beef was shot dead. The killing last month of 19-year-old Aryan Mishra in northern Haryana state has sparked unusual outrage — much of it because the young man was a Hindu. Cows are venerated as sacred by the country’s Hindu majority, and their slaughter is illegal in many Indian states. The authorities are often accused of failing to rein in people who form gangs of “cow vigilantes” to attack people accused of involvement in cattle slaughter — with several deaths reported each year. Many of those accused of transporting or killing cows are from the nation’s 220-million-strong Muslim community, with social media awash with videos boasting of vigilante attacks. Mishra was killed on a highway on Aug. 24 after an armed mob chased his car for 50km, believing he was transporting beef. Five people have been arrested in connection with the killing, and senior Haryana police officer Aman Yadav said the force was preparing a “list of cow vigilantes” to track their movements.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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