AUSTRALIA
Birds to get flu vaccine
Authorities yesterday said they would vaccinate bird species deemed to be especially vulnerable to the highly contagious H5 bird flu virus. The country was for years the only continental landmass free of the H5 strain. The first domestic case was discovered in a migratory sea bird in June and last week the government reported its first mass mortality event in wildlife. Officials said they would roll out targeted vaccinations for captive and wild species. “It is difficult to vaccinate birds in the wild — it does take two vaccination doses to vaccinate birds,” Minister for the Environment and Water Murray Watt said. “Where it is possible to vaccinate wild birds, we will do so, but the priority is to vaccinate birds that are in captivity.”
SWITZERLAND
World disaster losses fall
Economic losses from natural catastrophes worldwide are estimated to have reached US$100 billion in the first half of the year, reinsurance group Swiss Re said in a report yesterday, a sharp decline from a year earlier. Despite severe storms in the US and the deadly earthquakes that struck Venezuela in June, the losses were well below the US$152 billion recorded in the first half of last year, it said. The losses were also 10 percent below the 10-year average for the period. However, losses from natural disasters often increase in the second half of the year, mainly due to hurricanes in the North Atlantic ocean, Swiss Re said. “A less costly first half of the year does not mean the risk has gone away,” said Balz Grollimund, the group’s director of Catastrophe Perils. “One major hurricane, earthquake or wildfire can quickly change the picture.” Severe heat across Europe since June has sparked an early wildfire season in France and Spain that has already destroyed thousands of homes and businesses as well as infrastructure. “Wildfire risk has so far accounted for only a relatively small share of insured losses in Europe. Yet it is the fastest-growing weather peril globally,” the company said.
THAILAND
PM suspends gun licenses
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul yesterday suspended the issuance of permits to buy firearms and said existing licenses would be reviewed, days after a 14-year-old gunman killed nine people. Anutin directed a deputy prime minister overseeing legal affairs to expedite a new gun control law, with stronger controls and significantly harsher penalties. Police were ordered to stop renewing permits that enable people to buy firearms. Registered firearms must be kept at home and cannot be carried in public, Anutin said, reiterating the current law. For illegal firearms, studies are under way to enact legislation requiring their return to the state within a specified period, he said.
SOUTH AFRICA
14 miners found dead
A rockfall at an illegal mine northwest of Johannesburg killed 14 clandestine miners, most of them from Lesotho, police spokeswoman Colonel Adele Myburgh said yesterday. Thousands of unregistered miners known as “zama zamas” operate in the nation, scavenging abandoned mines for gold and other minerals in arduous and often perilous conditions. “Eight others were hospitalized and an unknown number of illegal miners are currently possibly stuck under the ground. Police are on the scene, and the scene is still active,” Myburgh said in a statement. Officials were headed to the site of the disaster at Nkaneng, near the town of Rustenburg, in North West Province. The incident was reported late on Monday.
Beijing has quietly confirmed the deaths of two Chinese sailors in a collision in the contested South China Sea, according to government statements nearly a year after the incident. In August last year, a China Coast Guard ship collided bow first with a Chinese naval destroyer while chasing a Philippine patrol boat near the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), video footage released by Manila showed. A China Coast Guard spokesperson confirmed at the time that there had been a confrontation, but did not mention the collision, nor injuries or deaths. The Chinese People’s Armed Police Force said on social media on Wednesday
South Korean police yesterday raided the Starbucks national headquarters, the chain’s local operator told reporters, following allegations that an advertising campaign defamed activists slain in 1980 pro-democracy protests. Seoul-based Starbucks Korea caused an uproar this year when it launched a “Tank Day” promotion on May 18, touting a new line of capacious tumblers for its coffee beverages. The date marked the anniversary of the 1980 Gwangju pro-democracy uprising, when at least 165 civilians were killed as a military dictatorship rolled tanks out onto the streets. The chain was accused of trivializing the nation’s landmark protest movement and insulting the dead, remembered as martyrs
‘COCKROACH’ PARTY: The youth-led movement said it plans to travel across the nation to gather ideas for reforms directly from the public, but will not join elections The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which spearheaded one of India’s biggest student protests, yesterday accused authorities of violating an agreement by pursuing participants and reiterated that it would remain a pressure group rather than enter electoral politics. Police continue to investigate cases against some students who took part in the New Delhi protests last month, despite a government agreement to withdraw legal action, CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka told Bloomberg Television’s Menaka Doshi. The group had called off the protests after the agreement was reached. “There were clear instances where this agreement was reneged,” Ranka said, citing cases that remained active in several
US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he was once more trying to limit the number of people who are born in the country who can become American citizens, in a sign that even after his first attempt at limiting birthright citizenship was rejected by the Supreme Court, he was ready to try again. Trump said he was signing two executive actions on immigration, including one limiting the number of people eligible for American citizenship after being born in the US. The written executive order released later on Thursday was narrower in scope than the previous one shot down by the
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