A night shift worker pulled the device from a ‘potato reception area’ thinking it was a muddy stone
New Zealand’s bomb squad has been called into a chip factory after a suspicious-looking potato trundling down the production line turned out to be a grenade.
Grenades frequently pop up in potato fields in Europe, but are a highly unusual find in New Zealand.
Continue reading...John Lee’s bid for top political post is sign of power security officials are gaining
Hong Kong chief secretary John Lee, a security official during the global financial hub’s prolonged and often violent 2019 pro-democracy protests, has resigned in a bid to run in an election in May to become the city’s new leader.
Lee, 64, a former deputy commissioner of police, was promoted to the role in 2021 in a move that some political analysts said showed Beijing’s priorities for Hong Kong were security rather than the economy.
Continue reading...Softly-spoken public servant who became a household name says the role had been challenging and complex
The understated doctor who became an unexpected star of New Zealand’s pandemic has resigned after two years leading the country’s Covid response.
Dr Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s director-general of health announced his resignation on Wednesday, and said that it had been “a huge privilege”.
Continue reading...Residents of China’s most populous city complain of government’s lack of organisation
Shanghai has put all its 26 million residents under lockdown in China’s single-biggest city-wide imposition of the restrictions since the pandemic began as authorities admitted the difficulty in containing the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
Until this week, the megacity – also China’s most populous – adopted an approach of phased lockdown. Initially, the eastern side of the Huangpu River went into lockdown between 28 March and 1 April, then the western side followed suit for another four days.
Continue reading...Conflict adds strain to developing economies in east Asia and Pacific already struggling with Covid and inflation
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further dampened the economic prospects for developing countries in east Asia and the Pacific, meaning lower economic growth and higher poverty in the region this year, the World Bank has warned.
The Ukraine factor came on top of the existing risks that the region – home to 2.1 billion people and stretching from China to Papua New Guinea – has been facing in recent years. They included the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the financial tightening in the US, and the pandemic resurgence amid China’s zero-Covid policies.
Continue reading...Warning points to a rise in tensions on the peninsula after the North conducted its first intercontinental ballistic missile test in five years
The influential sister of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has said the country’s nuclear forces would “annihilate” the South Korean military if it launched a pre-emptive strike against the regime.
Kim Yo-jong, who holds several senior positions in the government and ruling party, said the North had no intention of starting a second Korean war, but would respond if provoked and leave the South’s military in a state of “total destruction and ruin”.
Continue reading...Tenure of woman who rose through ranks to become governor marked by controversies and scandals
Carrie Lam came to office pledging to unite Hong Kong, but she will leave accused of being a divisive leader of a politically turbulent city.
Lam entered Hong Kong’s civil service in 1980, with her colleagues labelling her a “houdadak”, or “good fighter”, because of her strong will in a bureaucratic battle. She eventually rose through the ranks to become the first female governor of the key financial hub in 2017. She announced on Monday that she will not seek a second five-year term of office.
Continue reading...Canberra must walk a delicate line when responding to challenges presented by Beijing and Solomons’ security agreement
As China makes progress on a security deal with Solomon Islands, the Australian government is anxious not to be seen to have “dropped the ball” in the Pacific region. That would be a tad embarrassing, given it has spent the past few years sounding the alarm about security threats from China while also trumpeting its own “Pacific Step-Up”.
The deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, has been one of the ministers on the defensive after leaked documents revealed the draft agreement between China and the Pacific island nation.
Continue reading...The $100m tax on companies controlling more than 40% of market is ‘arbitrary’ and ‘perplexing’, says telco Digicel
Digicel Group says it is considering legal options after Papua New Guinea imposed a $100m tax that the telecoms firm said had potential “implications” for the planned AU$2.1bn ($1.57bn) sale of the Pacific’s biggest mobile network to Australia’s Telstra.
Telstra Corp Ltd said last October that it would buy the Pacific operations of Digicel in a deal largely funded by the Australian government, seen by observers as a way to block China’s rising influence in the region. The operations include 2.5m mobile phone subscribers across PNG, Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa and Nauru.
Continue reading...Chief executive to leave office at end of June after five years marked by upheavals of anti-government protests
Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, who has governed the Chinese region since 2017, has announced she will not seek a second five-year term of office.
Lam’s tenure as the chief executive of one of Asia’s most significant financial hubs has been marked by the upheavals of anti-government protests and, more recently, Covid-19. Critics have accused her of helping Beijing to curtail Hong Kong’s freedoms.
Continue reading...Daily case numbers are some of the largest seen in China since the virus was first detected in Wuhan
Covid-19 cases in China’s largest city of Shanghai have risen again as millions remain isolated at home under a sweeping lockdown.
Health officials on Sunday reported 438 confirmed cases detected over the previous 24 hours, along with 7,788 asymptomatic cases. Both figures were up slightly from the day before.
Continue reading...Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, issues blistering attack on Seoul and ‘reckless remarks’ by Suh Wook
The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has called South Korea’s defence minister a “scum-like guy” for talking about preemptive strikes on the North, warning that the South may face “a serious threat”.
Kim Yo-jong’s statement on Sunday came amid heightened tensions between the rival Koreas over the North’s spate of weapons tests this year, including its first intercontinental ballistic missile launch in more than four years.
Continue reading...Talks ahead of the key Cop15 summit on halting mass extinction of life were slow – and much has been asked of the developing world
For talks that are meant to be about halting the mass extinction of life on Earth, the slow pace of negotiations in Geneva ahead of Cop15, the major biodiversity summit in Kunming, China, later this year, was not a hopeful sign that meaningful action would follow. As discussions drew to a close this week, little progress was made on the targets and goals that are meant to herald nature’s “Paris moment”.
Rhetoric from rich developed nations about the need for ambition on halting biodiversity loss was not being followed through with resources, negotiators from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa complained.
Continue reading...Researcher who co-created substance says it is not an April fool’s joke and they hope to deploy it like a robot
Scientists have created a moving magnetic slime capable of encircling smaller objects, self-healing and “very large deformation” to squeeze and travel through narrow spaces.
The slime, which is controlled by magnets, is also a good electrical conductor and can be used to interconnect electrodes, its creators say.
Continue reading...The ISA, obliged to frame industry rules by 2023, drops reporting service and is accused of lacking transparency in plans for mining
• Podcast: The race to mine the deep sea
The UN-affiliated organisation that oversees deep-sea mining, a controversial new industry, has been accused of failings of transparency after an independent body responsible for reporting on negotiations was kicked out.
The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is meeting this week at its council headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica, to develop regulations for the fledgling industry. But it emerged this week that Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), a division of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), which has covered previous ISA negotiations, had not had its contract renewed.
Continue reading...China’s largest city and financial powerhouse is struggling to cope with the country’s worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic in Wuhan
Shanghai has been plunged into an extended lockdown and some residents face another 10 days of isolation in their homes as China’s strict zero-Covid policy threatens to derail the country’s economy.
The eastern half of China’s biggest city had been due to emerge on Friday from a four-day lockdown aimed at crushing a persistent outbreak of the Omicron variant, but the extension was announced late on Thursday night.
Continue reading...Six members receive brief suspensions after years of eating free ‘navy curry’ they were not entitled to
A keen appetite for curry has landed six members of Japan’s maritime self-defence forces (SDF) in trouble, after it emerged that they had been tucking into the dish without paying for up to three years.
The SDF members, including an officer in his 50s, helped themselves to free curry at Hachinohe air base in north-east Japan, apparently ignoring rules requiring them to pay, according to Japanese media reports.
Continue reading...Seedlings, apparently planted by anti-Covid mandate protesters, have been removed after speaker asked for ‘weed to be weeded’
After a weeks-long illegal occupation that ended in a riot, New Zealand’s parliament has a new unwelcome visitor to contend with: cannabis seedlings popping up among its rose gardens.
An eagle-eyed Wellingtonian spotted the tiny green leaves emerging from the soil this week and posted his find to social media. The man wished to remain anonymous, but a parliament groundskeeper confirmed to the national broadcaster, RNZ, that the plants were indeed “a few cannabis seedlings” thought to be left by the protesters.
Continue reading...Fu Zhenghua, who had brought down ex security chief for corruption, denounced as ‘extremely despicable’
Beijing has expelled its high-profile former justice minister and deputy police chief from the ruling Communist party, denouncing him as being “extremely despicable” and accusing him of befriending “political frauds”.
Fu Zhenghua – who had reportedly helped bring down China’s former security chief Zhou Yongkang a few years ago – has been removed from public office over serious violations of party discipline and laws, said the state news agency Xinhua in a brief announcement that attributed the decisions to Beijing’s top anti-graft body.
Continue reading...Bloc pressed to threaten sanctions at bilateral summit amid concerns about global authoritarian alliance
EU leaders are being urged to tell China it will face sanctions if it offers military aid to Russia for the war in Ukraine, amid concerns about a deepening authoritarian alliance that threatens the rules-based international order.
Senior EU and Chinese leaders are expected to hold discussions on Friday at a video summit that is likely to be dominated by the war.
Continue reading...