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.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
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