• Obama’s former chief of staff also served as Chicago mayor
• Emanuel joins long list of ambassadors awaiting confirmation
Joe Biden plans to nominate Rahm Emanuel, a former US lawmaker who served as chief of staff to President Barack Obama and as mayor of Chicago, to be ambassador to Japan, the White House said in a statement on Friday.
White House officials lauded Emanuel’s experience and long years of public service in announcing the nomination.
Continue reading...The country has been lulled into a false sense of security but the only way we’ll get through this is if we are constantly vigilant
My Kiwi friends ask, somewhat jokingly, how I’m finding my first New Zealand level 4. I answer, also somewhat jokingly, that I’m a veteran at this, having lived in London and Dublin for most of the pandemic, and had gone through several hard lockdowns.
That’s why it was unfortunate, the day before New Zealand went into one, it felt like Groundhog Day to me.
Continue reading...The co-creator of Wellington Paranormal and Flight of the Conchords is busy with new projects and looking forward to bingeing friends’ work
It’s a blustery Wellington night and we’re on the brink of the second nationwide lockdown of the pandemic. There’s a measured knock at my flat door. Jemaine Clement shakes my hand warmly and removes his boots. We’re meeting off the back of the global success of his comedy series Wellington Paranormal and he is in an ebullient mood. He’s also in a thirsty one: tonight the former door-to-door orange juice salesman is plumping for copious glasses of water instead.
Paranormal is one of two spinoffs from his and Taika Waititi’s vampire film What We Do in the Shadows. It stars Shadows’ police officers Minogue (Mike Minogue) and O’Leary (Karen O’Leary), recruited for the paranormal unit by Sgt Ruawai Maaka (Maaka Pohatu). The trio, and their colleague Const Parker (Tom Sainsbury), are oblivious, bungling and affable. Clement explains the importance of Paranormal being a collegial shoot.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern has led a global Covid success story, but other countries have come unstuck when facing the Delta variant
As epidemiologist Michael Baker scrolled through a growing list of New Zealand’s Covid-exposed locations, “my heart just sank,” he says.
Bars, nightclubs, churches, schools, restaurants and hospitals – the bullet points were an infectious disease expert’s nightmare. “Virtually every high risk, indoor environment was on that list.”
Continue reading...As Fiji battles to contain the coronavirus, pregnant women are having to give birth in isolation
For 34-year-old Jane, being told she had tested positive for Covid-19 just a few days before giving birth was an experience she would never forget.
“There were some minor complications during the final trimester of my pregnancy. On 18 July, I was taken to the Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva but I had to wait outside with other pregnant mothers who were about to deliver,” said Jane, not her real name.
Continue reading...Constitutional monarch names deputy PM in coalition to take over following resignation of Muhyiddin Yassin
Ismail Sabri Yaakob has been named Malaysia’s prime minister, as a scandal-mired party that previously governed for six decades reclaimed the leadership it lost in 2018’s landmark election.
Ismail Sabri, who will be sworn in on Saturday, was the deputy prime minister in the coalition led by Muhyiddin Yassin. Muhyiddin resigned on Monday following months of political turmoil that culminated in the collapse of his majority in parliament.
Continue reading...Demonstrations shut down Gwadar, where Chinese are blamed for lack of water and electricity and threat to local fishing
Protests have erupted in Pakistan’s port city Gwadar against a severe shortage of water and electricity and threats to livelihoods, part of a growing backlash against China’s multibillion-dollar belt and road projects in the country.
This week, demonstrators including fishers and other local workers blocked the roads in Gwadar, a coastal town in Balochistan. They burned tyres, chanted slogans and largely shut down the city, to demand water and electricity and a stop to Chinese trawlers illegally fishing in the nearby waters and then taking the fish to China. Two people were injured when the authorities cracked down on the protesters.
Continue reading...Total case numbers grow to 31, including three in Wellington, as Jacinda Ardern urges public to stay vigilant
The whole of New Zealand will remain in lockdown until midnight Tuesday, prime minister Jacinda Ardern has announced, as the country’s coronavirus outbreak grew to 31 people and spread to Wellington.
The first case in the outbreak emerged in Auckland on Tuesday, prompting the government to put the entire country into a level-4 lockdown – the highest level of restrictions. Genome sequencing has linked the cluster to a returnee from Australia.
Continue reading...Regional hub in New Plymouth – built on land seized from Māori in 1960 – is up against the likes of New York’s LaGuardia for Unesco’s Prix Versailles
A tiny regional airport in New Zealand that weaves a Māori story of love and longing into its architecture is in the running for a prestigious design award, up against international heavyweights including New York’s LaGuardia.
Unesco’s Prix Versailles recognises architecture that fosters a better interaction between economy and culture, and includes a range of categories from airports to shopping malls. The finalists for the airport category include the New York LaGuardia upgrade, Berlin’s Brandenburg airport and international airports in Athens, Kazakhstan and the Philippines.
Continue reading...History judges uninterested bystanders harshly. New Zealand must commit to saving more Afghans from the Taliban regime
What is unfolding now in Afghanistan is a moment that Afghans can’t turn away from. It will mean separated families, death, torture and sexual slavery – women, the rainbow community, journalists and human rights defenders will be most zealously targeted. At this critical moment, they have hope of rescue. But in Aotearoa New Zealand, our government is at risk of letting this hope slip away. History judges uninterested bystanders harshly. It isn’t like us to be one of those.
This week our government announced we would send a New Zealand defence force (NZDF) vessel to bring a limited category of people back from Kabul. On Thursday one of our air force Hercules planes left for Afghanistan, and I acknowledge the risks our defence force personnel are taking in this time of Covid-19 to save the lives of people who have helped us.
Continue reading...A familiar face at pro-democracy rallies in the city, Wong felt forced to flee after being named in a hit list of cultural undesirables
For much of the last year Kacey Wong was waking up in Hong Kong and checking social media to see if friends had been arrested overnight. On a good morning Wong might see a photo of an oval plane window looking out over clouds or a foreign airport, a pictorial sign they had fled to safety.
On one of the worst mornings it was the arrest of 53 campaigners, politicians and activists, many of them Wong’s friends, for having the gall to hold a pre-election poll.
Continue reading...Chiba made his name with the 1970s Street Fighter trilogy, before Quentin Tarantino’s admiration brought him fame in the west
Sonny Chiba, the Japanese martial arts movie star who found late-career renown in Hollywood after outspoken admiration from Quentin Tarantino, has died aged 82 from a Covid-related illness. Variety reported that it had received confirmation of the news from Chiba’s agent.
With an acting career beginning in the 1960s with a string of roles in Japanese martial arts films and TV shows, Chiba became widely known in the west after being name-checked in True Romance, the 1993 thriller written by Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott. By then, Chiba had become a star in Japan, appearing in titles such as the 1970s Street Fighter trilogy (and its spin-off, Sister Street Fighter), Bullet Train and Champion of Death.
Continue reading...The executive’s case has sent China’s relations with the US and Canada plummeting with accusations of political arrests and ‘hostage diplomacy’
Until she was detained at Vancouver airport in December 2018, Meng Wanzhou was not a household name. But the 49-year-old Huawei executive has now become the face of a high-stakes trilateral dispute between China, Canada and the US.
Related: Meng Wanzhou extradition case wraps up but verdict will take months
Continue reading...Actor said to be given exemption to film Amazon TV series, as territory braces for tougher travel rules
As Hong Kong braces for more draconian Covid-19 travel restrictions from Friday, the Australian actor Nicole Kidman has received an exemption from the government to skip quarantine, media reported.
The exemption was given to allow her to film an Amazon television series called The Expats, the news website HK01 reported, a move that contrasts sharply with the mandatory hotel quarantine of up to three weeks that residents must undergo after entering the Chinese-ruled territory.
Continue reading...Student union had expressed ‘deep sadness’ over death of a man who attacked a police officer
Four student leaders from Hong Kong’s top university have been arrested for “advocating terrorism”, police said.
Arrests were made in response to a controversial student union statement after a man attacked a police officer last month.
Continue reading...Asked what she would say to people who questioned the need for a level 4 lockdown, the prime minister responded with one word: ‘Australia’
To overseas eyes, going into national lockdown over a single case should have been a hard sell, even for an extraordinarily popular prime minister such as Jacinda Ardern.
But a disastrous outbreak of the Delta variant in Sydney has helped galvanise New Zealand’s “team of 5 million” – and across the country, the government’s tough strategy on Covid-19 has enjoyed widespread popular support.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern warns of more cases as Auckland cluster grows to seven, marking New Zealand’s first local transmissions of Delta variant
New Zealand’s coronavirus cluster has grown to seven, with genomic sequencing linking it to the Delta outbreak that began in Sydney, as the country woke up to day one of a snap lockdown stemming from just one case.
The country went into a snap level four lockdown – the highest level of restrictions – on Tuesday night, after detecting one case with no obvious links to the border. New Zealand has not had a level 4 lockdown in more than a year, and the case is the country’s first instance of Delta transmission in the community.
Continue reading...Army says warships, anti-submarine aircraft and fighter planes sent to the south-west and south-east of island
China has launched live-fire air and sea exercises near Taiwan in response to what it called “external interference and provocations by Taiwan independence forces”.
According to a statement from Col Shi Yi, the spokesperson of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theatre Command, warships, anti-submarine aircraft and fighter planes were dispatched to the south-west and south-east of Taiwan on Tuesday.
Continue reading...New Zealand will go into a national lockdown on Tuesday night after detecting one case of Covid-19, the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced on Tuesday. ‘Delta has been called a gamechanger and it is,’ Ardern said, adding that her government had ‘planned for this eventuality’.
Under level 4, all New Zealanders are asked to shelter in place in a ‘bubble’ that only includes their immediate household or dependents. They can only leave the house to buy food or medical supplies, to access medical care or for socially distanced exercise
Continue reading...Crescent-shaped landmass 50km south of Minami Ioto could disappear due to erosion
The 6,000-plus islands that make up the Japanese archipelago have a new addition, after scientists said an undersea volcanic eruption 1,200km (745 miles) south of Tokyo had created a new landmass.
The island was formed in the Pacific Ocean about 50km south of Minami Ioto, the southernmost island of the Ogasawara group.
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