Police at Indonesian airport also found two live geckos and five lizards in suitcase
A Russian tourist attempting to smuggle a drugged orangutan out of Indonesia in his suitcase to bring home and keep as a pet has been arrested in Bali, police said on Saturday.
Andrei Zhestkov was detained in Denpasar airport late on Friday while passing through a security screening before a planned flight back to Russia.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has announced that he is ordering the withdrawal of recently announced North Korea-related sanctions imposed by the US treasury department.
Related: North Korea warns US sanctions could derail plans to denuclearise
Continue reading...Vigils and silences held as country remembers the victims of the mosque shooting
Continue reading...Bocelli to sing for China’s president as Italy becomes first G7 nation to back ‘Silk Road’ plan
Rome gave a lavish welcome to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, his wife and entourage on Friday as Italy and China controversially pledged to strengthen trade and investment ties.
Xi is in the Italian capital on a two-day state visit, along with about 200 officials. He is expected to strike a range of deals worth up to €7bn and attend a gala dinner, where the tenor Andrea Bocelli will perform, during his visit.
Continue reading...Company blames loss of passenger trust after Ethiopia Airlines and Lion Air disasters involving the aircraft
Indonesia’s national carrier Garuda has cancelled a multibillion-dollar order for 49 Boeing 737 Max 8 jets after two fatal crashes involving the plane, the company said, blaming passengers’ loss of trust in the aircraft.
In what is thought to be the first formal cancellation for the model, Garuda spokesman Ikhsan Rosan said: “We have sent a letter to Boeing requesting that the order be cancelled.
Continue reading...Thousands of fossils date back to huge burst in diversity of life on Earth known as Cambrian explosion
A “mindblowing” haul of fossils that captures the riot of evolution that kickstarted the diversity of life on Earth more than half a billion years ago has been discovered by researchers in China.
Paleontologists found thousands of fossils in rocks on the bank of the Danshui river in Hubei province in southern China, where primitive forms of jellyfish, sponges, algae, anemones, worms and arthropods with thin whip-like feelers were entombed in an ancient underwater mudslide.
Continue reading...Women from Kachin minority are allowed to go home only if they leave baby behind, says HRW report
Burmese and Chinese authorities are turning a blind eye to a growing trade in women from Myanmar’s Kachin minority, who are taken across the border, sold as wives to Chinese men and raped until they become pregnant, a report claims.
Some of the women are allowed to return home after they have given birth, but are forced to leave their children, according to an investigation by Human Rights Watch, titled Give Us a Baby and We’ll Let You Go.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern asked New Zealand to remember the names of the victims of the Christchurch shooting, not that of the perpetrator. Here are their stories
Continue reading...Muslim associations have expressed despair that no one in government heeded their warnings about a rise in racism and violence
As the alleged killer sits in an isolated, maximum security jail cell on the outskirts of Christchurch, many people in New Zealand are wondering how an alt-right extremist who allegedly amassed an arsenal of military grade weapons went undetected for so long.
Holed up in a wooden bungalow in the seaside town of Dunedin, the alleged shooter was an active member of the local gun club and pumped weights at a South Dunedin gym. He was quiet, but not reclusive, and appears to have made no effort to hide his obsession with military grade weaponry.
Continue reading...Sources say flight crew of Indonesian jet tried to find procedure to halt dive
The pilots of the Lion Air Boeing 737 Max that crashed in Indonesia were searching a flight manual to try to find why the plane kept lurching downwards against their commands, according to reports of the cockpit voice recording.
The investigation into the crash, which killed all 189 people on board last October, has become even more significant for Boeing and airlines due to its suspected links with the Ethiopian Airlines disaster, where 157 died on the same model of plane.
Continue reading...Kunxun was cloned from a police sniffer dog in Beijing but cost of process remains an obstacle
Scientists in south-west China’s Yunnan province have reportedly cloned what they called the “Sherlock Holmes of police dogs” in a programme they hope will help cut training times and costs for police dogs.
The dog, named Kunxun, was cloned from a police sniffer dog by the Beijing-based Sinogene Biotechnology Company and the Yunnan Agricultural University, with support from the Ministry of Public Security, the state-owned tabloid Global Times reported.
Continue reading...New Zealand prime minister returns to city where 50 were killed as foreign minister heads to Turkey
Burials for the 50 people killed the New Zealand terrorist attack have begun in Christchurch as the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, returned to the city to pay her respects and comfort those affected by the killings.
On Wednesday, father and son Khaled and Hamza Mustafa, who arrived in New Zealand as refugees from Syria, were the first victims to be buried. The prime minister told reporters: “I cannot tell you how gutting it is to know that a family came here for safety and for refuge, and they should have been safe here.”
Continue reading...Dozens of posts containing disinformation spread, with fears people may not trust results of a legitimate election
The spread of fake news and disinformation has spiked in Indonesia in recent months, weeks before millions are scheduled to vote in the country’s elections.
Data released in a new report from Mafindo, an organisation focused on combating fake news and improving digital literacy, shows that political fake news and disinformation shot up by 61% between December 2018 and January this year.
Continue reading...Government says it needs extra land around main island of Lantau for housing
Hong Kong plans to build one of the world’s largest artificial islands, city officials have announced.
The government’s HK$624bn (£60bn) proposal to reclaim 1,000ha of land around the territory’s largest island, Lantau, has been touted as a solution to the pressing housing shortage in the city, which is notorious as one of the least affordable markets on the planet.
Continue reading...The prime minister has spoken at Cashmere high school, which lost two students and a former student in Friday’s massacre
We’re going to wrap up the blog. Thank you for following along. Here’s what has happened today:
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New Zealand's prime minister has said she will never speak the name of the Christchurch attack suspect, and urged the public to remember the victims’ names instead. Addressing parliament for the first time since Friday’s attack, Jacinda Ardern said the accused would face 'the full force of the law'
• Ardern says she will never speak name of Christchurch suspect
Continue reading...The Hong Kong MTR’s ‘rail plus property’ model keep fares cheap and makes the company completely self-sustaining. Could loss-making metro systems in other cities learn lessons?
“Once we build the railway, the value of land rises and we capture the increase in value,” says Jacob Kam, managing director and soon-to-be chief executive, of Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Corporation.
Related: Hong Kong faces commuter chaos after rare train collision
Continue reading...NSW Labor leader says ‘no offence’ meant after video surfaces of him saying ‘our kids are moving out and foreigners are moving in’
The New South Wales opposition leader, Michael Daley is under sustained pressure over his comments in a 2018 video in which he said young Sydneysiders were leaving and being replaced by workers from Asia.
Despite repeatedly apologising “if anyone took offence” Daley insisted his comments were not racist or dogwhistling and were about housing affordability in Sydney.
Continue reading...Officials in Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria examine Brenton Tarrant’s travels before attack
Authorities in Europe are working to establish whether the man suspected of carrying out the most deadly terrorist attack in New Zealand’s history had any links to far-right groups on the continent.
Since Friday, officials in Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece have begun formal investigations into the alleged gunman’s extensive travel through Europe in the years before he moved to New Zealand.
Continue reading...Beijing launches propaganda campaign to counter abuse claims by human rights groups
China has claimed to have arrested 13,000 “terrorists” in Xinjiang over the last five years, as it launched an aggressive propaganda campaign in defence of its restrictive measures in the far-western region.
Human rights advocates and researchers believe more than 1 million Muslims – mostly Uighurs as well as Kazakhs and other groups – are being systematically imprisoned in internment camps where they are forced to undergo political re-education.
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