TURKEY
6.2 quake hits off Istanbul
A magnitude 6.2 earthquake yesterday struck in the Marmara Sea near the western outskirts of Istanbul, officials said, with the impact felt across the country’s largest city where people rushed onto the streets. The initial quake at 12:49pm was followed by three others of magnitudes 4.4 to 4.9, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority posted on social media. There were no immediate reports of anyone being hurt or killed nor of buildings collapsing in the sprawling city of 16 million people, city authorities and the regional governor’s office said. The tremors could be felt as far away as Bulgaria, according to reports from the capital, Sofia.
JAPAN
Fukushima operation done
A tricky operation to remove a second sample of radioactive debris from inside Japan’s stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has been completed, the site operator said yesterday. Dangerously high radiation levels mean that removing melted fuel and other debris from the plant hit by a huge tsunami in 2011 is seen as the most daunting challenge in the decades-long decommissioning project. The debris was “removed from a different location from the previous sampling location” to better understand the material’s “characteristics and distribution,” government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters. US nuclear expert Lake Barrett, a special adviser to Japan on the cleanup, said that removing more debris would be challenging, but not impossible. “They’ve got to develop robots we’ve never done before, but the fundamentals are there for the technology to do it,” he said.
UNITED STATES
NJ fire forces evacuations
A fast-moving wildfire burning in New Jersey on Tuesday forced thousands of people to evacuate and closed a stretch of a major highway. The Garden State Parkway, one of the state’s busiest highways, was closed between Barnegat and Lacey townships, the New Jersey Forest Fire Service said. More than 1,300 structures were threatened and about 3,000 residents were evacuated, it said. Shelters were open at two high schools, the Barnegat Police Department said. The fire in the Greenwood Forest Wildlife Management Area burned more than 34.2km2 of land, fire officials said, adding it was only about 10 percent contained as of Tuesday night. Debi Schaffer was caught in gridlocked traffic after evacuating with her two dogs while her husband agreed to stay with their 22 chickens, the Press of Atlantic City reported. “I wanted to take them in the car with me; can you imagine 22 chickens in a car?” she told the newspaper.
PERU
Kennedy stages jailbreak
A 22-year-old thief named for the late US president John F. Kennedy caused an uproar by escaping from prison, shouting thanks to God as he dashed to freedom, according to video footage that has gone viral. John Kennedy Javier Sebastian had been one of 10,000 inmates at Lima’s Lurigancho prison — the nation’s most crowded, and built to hold 2,500. On Monday night, he escaped from his cell, and climbed over a perimeter fence and the outer wall — both topped with razor wire and security spikes, the National Penitentiary Institute said. He had been serving a 10-year sentence for theft since mid-2023. “Hallelujah, Christ lives,” the fugitive can be heard shouting as he reaches the main road and darts off, video captured by neighbors showed. Gunshots and dogs could be heard in the background. The head of the prison was dismissed after his escape.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
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