ISRAEL
Drone launched at PM home
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said a drone was launched toward his residence in Caesarea yesterday, after the military reported a drone from Lebanon had “hit a structure” in the central town. “The prime minister and his wife were not at the location, and there were no injuries in the incident,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. It was not immediately clear whether a structure reported hit by the military earlier was his private residence.
NORTH KOREA
Crashed drone remains found
The government yesterday said it had discovered the remains of at least one crashed South Korean military drone in the capital, Pyongyang, releasing images of the device found on Sunday last week that some analysts confirmed was South Korean. The government has accused Seoul of using drones to drop anti-regime propaganda leaflets on the capital. Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said that based on the images released by Pyongyang, the drone was “clearly a long-range reconnaissance small drone used by ... the South Korean military.”
AUSTRALIA
Mystery black balls cleared
Beaches in Sydney yesterday reopened for swimmers after authorities cleared thousands of black pollution balls washed ashore, which testing found to be formed from chemicals similar to those in cosmetics and cleaning products. About 2,000 of the mystery black balls, some golf ball-sized, had washed onto beaches across Sydney since Tuesday, forcing the closure of eight beaches, including the iconic Bondi Beach, and a massive cleanup operation, amid fears they were highly toxic. New South Wales Maritime Executive Director Mark Hutchings said the balls were not harmful to health when left on the sand, but people should avoid touching them.
MEXICO
Navy seizes 8 tonnes of drugs
The navy on Friday announced it had seized more than 8.3 tonnes of drugs in the Pacific Ocean, a record for a single operation at sea. It did not specify the type of the drugs, but said they were valued at 2.099 billion pesos (US$105.55 million). Twenty-three people were arrested during the bust southwest of the port of Lazaro Cardenas, off the country’s west coast. The drugs were distributed in six small boats, including a submersible, which implied a “complex” action on the part of the sailors, the Secretariat of the Navy said.
UNITED STATES
Teen rescued at sea
A teenager in Hawaii was recovering on Friday after spending more than 11 hours clinging to a kayak before being rescued during an overnight ocean search by an off-duty lifeguard and the Coast Guard. Kahiau Kawai, 17, had gotten separated from his high school paddling team on Wednesday afternoon after capsizing about 0.8km south of Honolulu’s Sheraton Waikiki Beach Resort. He was on a 6m kayak and was not wearing a life jacket, the Coast Guard said. Off-duty lifeguard Noland Keaulana, a Polynesian voyager and part of a well-known Native Hawaiian waterman family, had been searching through the night on a boat, when at 4am a Coast Guard flare directed him to the kayak. “I was expecting the worst, and then when I seen his head up next to the kayak ... his family is lucky and this kid is strong,” Keaulana told a news conference on Thursday. “I think he was in total shock because he wasn’t emotional at all, and I was actually crying my guts out because he was OK.”
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while