AUSTRALIA
Dolphins euthanized
Dozens of false killer whales stranded on a remote beach in Tasmania state were euthanized after bad weather and the isolated location hampered efforts to push them back into the waters, authorities said yesterday. More than 150 endangered dolphins, known commonly as false killer whales, were found stranded this week in the island state’s northwest coast near Arthur River, about 400km from Tasmania’s state capital, Hobart. “The conditions that the team faced yesterday in attempts to refloat the whales proved very challenging and in fact, dangerous to our staff,” Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service Brendon Clark said in a media briefing. Twenty-seven of the animals were euthanized yesterday morning, with 38 still alive, Clark said. The euthanasia process was expected to be finished later yesterday.
Photo: AFP / Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania
INDONESIA
Crocodile attacks boy
A boy is missing on Borneo island after he was attacked by a crocodile, police said yesterday, the second such attack in the area in two weeks. The 10-year-old boy jumped into a river in West Kalimantan province on Borneo, one of the world’s most biodiverse islands, on Tuesday, when a 4m-long crocodile attacked him, a friend said. “His friend witnessed the crocodile resurface, maul the victim’s body and drag it into the current,” local police chief Rachmatul Isani Fachri said in a statement. The friend alerted the boy’s father, who searched for his son’s body in the river using a speedboat, but could not find him. “Currently the search-and-rescue team and local people are still searching for the victim. Please pray so he will be found soon,” Rachmatul said. Another boy went missing in the same village after a crocodile attacked him while bathing, according to his uncle who witnessed the attack, police said on Feb. 7. The search for six-year-old Cristian Ricardo ended after seven days and he is now presumed dead.
Photo: Reuters
JAPAN
North buried in snow
Residents in the nation’s north were yesterday sheltering from deep snow up to the rooftops in some areas after a two-week whiteout. Several cities have had record snowfall this month, causing traffic disruption and several fatalities. More snow is expected, said the national weather agency, which issued a series of warnings for heavy snow and strong winds, particularly along the coast facing Russia and the Korean Peninsula. “I have been here for 10 years and I have never seen anything like this,” a resident of Aomori Prefecture’s Sukayu area told TV network TBS in comments broadcast yesterday. “If you look at the volume of snowfall per day, there wasn’t any single stand-out episode, but it accumulated little by little,” he said. Sukayu was buried under 5m of snow, reaching the roofs of two-story buildings, the meteorological agency said.
UNITED STATES
DOGE dividends mooted
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he likes the idea of giving some of the savings from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) back to citizens as a kind of dividend. The administration is considering a concept in which 20 percent of the savings produced by DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts goes to citizens and another 20 percent goes to paying down the national debt, Trump said at an investment conference in Miami. He also said the potential for dividend payments would incentivize people to report wasteful spending. “They’ll be reporting it themselves,” he said. “They participate in the process of saving us money.”
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
The US will help bolster the Philippines’ arsenal and step up joint military exercises, Manila’s defense chief said, as tensions between Washington and China escalate. The longtime US ally is expecting a sustained US$500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview in Manila on Thursday. “It is a no-brainer for anybody, because of the aggressive behavior of China,” Teodoro said on close military ties with the US under President Donald Trump. “The efforts for deterrence, for joint resilience
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