The Prime Minister evoking divinity-like devotion in Ethiopians, and Japanese railways offers a dangerous lesson.
Vietnamese migrants take cover in Australia’s crocodile-infested waters
A total of 30 illegal migrants are believed to be hiding in Australia’s crocodile-infested Daintree rainforest in Queensland after their fishing vessel sank near Daintree River Sunday, The Guardian reported.
Around 15 Vietnamese men have been detained by police while the hunt continues for 30 more believed to be hiding in crocodile-infested mangroves.
The illegal arrival of a fishing vessel in Queensland is a failure of Australia’s expensive and highly criticised zero-tolerance “stop the boats” immigration policy, CNN reported.
The Australian Border Force (ABF) is at the venue trying to locate the illegal immigrants with the help of the Queensland police service, said an ABF spokesperson. “The first priority is to confirm the safety and welfare of the people on the fishing vessel,” he added.
Iran says the US Navy does not belong in the Gulf
Iran has full control of the Gulf, and the US Navy does not belong there, the head of the Revolutionary Guards navy, General Alireza Tangsiri, told a local news agency Monday, Reuters reported.
The remark comes at a time when Tehran has suggested it could take military action in the Gulf to block oil exports from other countries in the region as an act of retaliation against US sanctions. Washington maintains a fleet in the Gulf that protects oil shipping routes.
Saying Iran also had full control of the Strait of Hormuz, Tangsiri said closing it off would be the most direct way of blocking shipping. “We can ensure the security of the Persian Gulf and there is no need for the presence of aliens like the US and the countries whose home is not in here,” he said.
Iran and the US have been in a long-standing trade and diplomacy war that worsened after President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions on Tehran. Washington has also warned other nations to cut off trade ties with Iran.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last month he supported the idea that if Iran was not allowed to export oil, no other Gulf country should either.
Ethiopians hail new Prime Minister as ‘God’s own son’
Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s youngest Prime Minister who assumed office in April, has left the country in awe with an array of reforms, CNN reports.
British journalist Tom Gardner says there is an almost religious fervour to what has been dubbed “Abiymania”. “People talk quite openly about seeing him as the son of God or a prophet,” he writes.
Some notable decisions of the 42-year-old are credited with saving the country from civil war, including freeing thousands of political prisoners, unblocking hundreds of censored websites, ending the 20-year state of war with Eritrea, and planning to open key economic sectors to private investors.
Abiy has a hefty CV, with a stint as a United Nations peacekeeper in Rwanda in the 1990s, and heading the Ethiopian cyber security agency INSA.
Planetary catastrophe has begun, says ‘godfather of coral’
The man known as the ‘godfather of coral’ has predicted that the underwater ecosystems were headed for a “planetary catastrophe” that is already afoot, CNN reported. “It’s the beginning of a planetary catastrophe,” John ‘Charlie’ Vernon told CNN. “I was too slow to become vocal about it.”
A mass bleaching of corals in 2016-17 due to a marine heat wave caused by climate change lead to the death of almost half the Great Barrier Reef, the report added.
According to Vernon, the mass bleaching was a wake-up call for a larger effort against climate change.
Vernon has spent 45 years diving in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and is responsible for discovering nearly a quarter of the world’s known coral species.
Although experts say no bleaching occurred in the corals in 2018, Vernon said corals needed 10 years to regenerate and didn’t “have that kind of time anymore”.
Australia is the biggest coal exporter and also a heavy user, and the main reason for coral deaths is carbon emissions. “…Although the country is signed up to the Paris Agreement on climate change, this week the Australian government withdrew its National Energy Guarantee (NEG) legislation — which included targets for lowering carbon emissions — saying there was a lack of support for the bill,” the report added.
The Great Barrier Reef is 2,300 kilometres long and the only living organism visible from outer space.
UK ‘threatened Mauritius with trade cuts’ over island dispute
Mauritius has alleged that it has been threatened by the United Kingdom over the Chagos island, a tiny strategic archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the BBC reported.
Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth said the nation had received “verbal threats” from the UK, which has held the islands for over half a century since taking it over from erstwhile colony Mauritius. All the local residents of the islands were evicted, and the US subsequently invited to set up a military base here.
The Mauritius now wants the islands back, with the UK saying Chagos will be returned once they no longer serve strategic interests.
“Unfortunately, we have been threatened with retaliation… on issues of trade and on issues of investment, you know, and on our relationship with the UK,” the BBC quoted Jugnauth as saying.
The issue is scheduled to come up before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) next week.
Japan’s bizarre railway training exercise
Japanese railway workers were made to sit beside tracks as bullet trains passed them by at over 300 kilometres/hour in a bizarre training exercise, AFP reported.
The exercise was undertaken to show the employees the “potential dangers of the train and impress on them how seriously they needed to take their jobs”, the railway company JR West is reported to have said.
Despite complaints from several employees, the company has said that it has no plans to alter the practice.
“The training aims to teach our maintenance staff the importance of every part of their jobs. We pay close attention to safety while doing the training. We will continue this training while ensuring it serves a purpose and is done safely,” a company spokesman told AFP.
The training was introduced in 2016 on Japan’s renowned shinkansen bullet trains, which are globally renowned for their punctuality and speed, after an accident in August 2015.
Contributed by Sankalita Dey, Anagha Deshpande and Soniya Agrawal, journalists at ThePrint.