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North Korea sends 600 more trash balloons over border, South says

North Korea sends 600 more trash balloons over border, South says
South Korean military officers check unidentified objects, believed to be North Korean trash from balloons that crossed the inter-Korea border, on a street in Seoul on June 1. (South Korean Defense Ministry/AFP)
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Updated 02 June 2024
Reuters
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North Korea sends 600 more trash balloons over border, South says

North Korea sends 600 more trash balloons over border, South says
  • Balloons carrying garbage such as cigarette butts, cloth, paper waste and plastic were found across Seoul overnight
  • Military monitoring the starting point and conducting aerial reconnaissance to track down and collect the balloons
Updated 02 June 2024
Reuters
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SEOUL: North Korea sent some 600 balloons carrying trash into South Korea overnight, Seoul said on Sunday, in Pyongyang’s latest move to rile its rival neighbor.
The balloons carrying garbage such as cigarette butts, cloth, paper waste and plastic were found across the capital from 8 p.m. to 10 a.m. (1100 GMT on Saturday to 0100 GMT on Sunday), South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
It said the military was monitoring the starting point and conducting aerial reconnaissance to track down and collect the balloons, which have large bags of trash suspended beneath them.
North Korea on Wednesday sent hundreds of balloons carrying trash and excrement across the heavily fortified border as what it called “gifts of sincerity.” Seoul responded angrily, calling the move base and dangerous.
South Korea’s Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said during a meeting with US Defense Secretary Austin Lloyd on the sidelines of the Shangri-La security dialogue in Singapore on Sunday that the balloons violated the armistice agreement, according to South Korea’s military.
The two reaffirmed a coordinated response to any North Korean threats and provocations based on the South Korea-US alliance’s combined defense posture, it added.
Emergency alerts were issued in North Gyeongsang and Gangwon provinces and some parts of Seoul on Sunday, urging people not to come into contact with the balloons and to alert police.
South Korea’s National Security Council standing committee will meet on Sunday afternoon to discuss whether to resume blasting loudspeakers at North Korea in response to the trash balloons, Yonhap news agency reported, citing the presidential office.
South Korea stopped blaring propaganda across the border in 2018 after a rare summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Topics: South Korea North Korea

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Indonesia mine landslide toll up to 13 as search ends

Indonesia mine landslide toll up to 13 as search ends
Updated 22 sec ago
AFP
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Indonesia mine landslide toll up to 13 as search ends

Indonesia mine landslide toll up to 13 as search ends
Updated 22 sec ago
AFP

JAKARTA: The death toll after a landslide at an illegal mine in western Indonesia was raised to 13 on Sunday, an official said, as search efforts for any further victims ended.
Heavy rains caused a landslide at a remote illegal mining site on Thursday evening in West Sumatra province on Sumatra island, where rescue workers had to walk for hours from the nearest village to reach the area.
Provincial disaster mitigation agency spokesperson Ilham Wahab said 13 people were found dead, while 12 others were injured, raising the death toll by two.
“Since all 25 reported victims have been found and evacuated, we decided to close the search and rescue operation,” Ilham told AFP.
But he said a public reporting post would remain open for the next seven days to allow families to report any missing relatives to authorities.
Unlicensed mines are common across the mineral-rich Southeast Asian archipelago, where abandoned sites attract locals who hunt for leftover gold ore without proper safety equipment.
Indonesia is prone to landslides during the rainy season, typically between November and April, but some disasters caused by adverse weather have taken place outside that season in recent years.

Topics: Indonesia landslide

China says it opposes any violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty

China says it opposes any violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty
Updated 12 min 3 sec ago
Reuters
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China says it opposes any violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty

China says it opposes any violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty
  • China urges all parties and especially Israel to immediately cool the situation and prevent the conflict from expanding
Updated 12 min 3 sec ago
Reuters

SHANGHAI: China opposes any violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, China’s foreign ministry said on its website on Sunday after an Israeli airstrike on Beirut killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Nasrallah’s death is widely considered a significant blow to the Iran-aligned group as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks.
China urges all parties and especially Israel to immediately cool the situation and prevent the conflict from expanding or “even getting out of control,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its website.
China “opposes and condemns all action that harms innocent civilians and opposes any move that exacerbates conflict,” the foreign ministry said.

Topics: Battlefield Lebanon

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Muslim women break taboos navigating east London’s waterways

Muslim women break taboos navigating east London’s waterways
Updated 59 min 54 sec ago
AFP
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Muslim women break taboos navigating east London’s waterways

Muslim women break taboos navigating east London’s waterways
  • The initiative has grown in the last two years from a pilot project with 18 women to a group of around 70
Updated 59 min 54 sec ago
AFP

London: Paddle dipped gently below mossy water, Dilruba Begum guided the kayak and a trainee sat in front of her down a canal in east London.
“Out here, you can be anyone,” she whispered as she lifted the paddle up to allow the kayak to drift with the current.
Two years ago, when Dilruba, 43, was swamped with mothering duties, a friend told her about a free, women-only program to learn paddle sports near her home.
Now she is a qualified paddle sport instructor, after taking part in the program run by local housing and community regeneration body Poplar HARCA.
Dilruba and her fellow paddlers are breaking new ground, encouraging women from London’s less advantaged eastern neighborhoods to embrace water sports that many felt were inaccessible to ethnic minorities like them with stretched resources and limited leisure time.
The initiative has grown in the last two years from a pilot project with 18 women to a group of around 70.
Among them are women who are “working, some are full-time mums, some haven’t been out of the house in years,” Dilruba told AFP.
Nine of them, including Dilruba and Atiyya Zaman, 38, have qualified as instructors and started London’s first boat club with an all-female, Muslim committee.
On a rain-soaked September afternoon, the pair led their first session, teaching a small group of women how to use kayaks and inflatable paddle boards.
Life vests secured, they demonstrated different maneuvers to participants on a small pontoon before lowering themselves into kayaks to begin the session on Limehouse Cut.
The canal runs through Poplar and Bow in Tower Hamlets, one of the city’s most deprived and densely populated boroughs.
One aim of the initiative is to improve local people’s access to “blue spaces” in Poplar, which lies at the heart of 6.5 kilometers (3.7 miles) of uninterrupted waterways.
“I live next to the canal, and I used to see people going (on it) all the time. I did always wonder how it would feel if I could do that?” said Atiyya, bobbing up and down on an orange kayak.
Jenefa Hamid, from Poplar HARCA, said many people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds that make up most of the local community “thought water sport was not something that’s typically for them.”
This could be due to a fear of drowning, as well as cultural and religious reasons. “I think it is just feeling socially excluded,” she added.
According to Sport England data from 2017 to 2019, less than one percent of Asian (excluding Chinese) adults participated in water sports, and all BAME communities were under-represented in swimming activities.
Some of the women in the group “haven’t even been in the water before,” said Atiyya.
“When I started, especially women within this community, we would never do this sort of thing.”
Making the program women-only and allowing different attire made it welcoming to local Muslim women.
Naseema Begum, 47, who was part of the initial cohort and is now an instructor, said there was a “taboo” preventing Asian women and those wearing headscarves from taking part in water sports.
Wearing a niqab, Naseema wanted to show that “you can wear anything and go in the water. As long as you’ve got the right equipment... anyone can take part.”
Women were also attracted by the affordability. Private boating clubs are “quite unaffordable if you’ve got a family to maintain,” said Naseema, adding that she could not justify spending the amount on her own “leisure.”
Naseema now chairs the “Oar and Explore” boat club. With Atiyya and Dilruba, they hope to raise enough funds to acquire their own boats and a storage space by a new pontoon planned for the area.
“The way I felt, the enjoyment and the confidence that I’ve built from this, I want to pass it on to others and tell them there’s more to life,” said Dilruba.
Part of the enjoyment for her was a rare chance to “just sit down with your thoughts, not think about anything else.”
Atiyya agreed. “During Covid, it was quite hard with three young children at home, and then with work, it was very stressful. This was a way to escape,” she said.
Dilruba credits the instructors for helping her become one herself — and opening up a new world.
“They have lifted us up and made us into some new people, with new experiences... new skills we never thought we would have,” she said.

Topics: London Muslim

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More than 60 dead from storm Helene as rescue, cleanup efforts grow

More than 60 dead from storm Helene as rescue, cleanup efforts grow
Updated 29 September 2024
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More than 60 dead from storm Helene as rescue, cleanup efforts grow

More than 60 dead from storm Helene as rescue, cleanup efforts grow
Updated 29 September 2024
Cedar Key: Rescuers struggled on Saturday with washed-out bridges and debris-strewn roads in the search for survivors of devastating Storm Helene, which killed at least 63 people across five states and caused massive power outages.
Helene slammed into Florida Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane and surged north, gradually weakening but leaving in its wake toppled trees, downed power lines and mudslide-wrecked homes.
Federal emergencies were declared in six states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee — with more than 800 personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) deployed.
Now classified as a “post-tropical cyclone,” the remnants of the storm are expected to continue inundating the Ohio Valley and central Appalachians through Sunday, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
In affected communities across the eastern coast and midwest, storm victims and volunteers toting trash bags, mops and hammers tried to repair what they could and clean up the rest.
“There’s only a couple businesses open. They have limited supply. So I’m just worried about families that have kids and stuff like that, getting somewhere to stay and have something to eat,” said Steven Mauro, a resident of Valdosta, Georgia.
At least 24 people died in South Carolina, 17 in Georgia, 11 in Florida, 10 in North Carolina and one in Virginia, according to local authorities and media tallied by AFP.
The National Weather Service said conditions would “continue to improve today following the catastrophic flooding over the past two days.”
But it warned of possible “long-duration power outages.”
“Main issue is the electrical power,” said another man from Valdosta who declined to give his name. “With the whole town down, the traffic lights are out. So driving around... people should just stay home.”
More than 2.6 million customers were still without electricity across 10 states from Florida in the southeast to Indiana in the midwest as of early Sunday morning, according to tracker poweroutage.us.
Helene blew into Florida’s northern Gulf shore with powerful winds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour. Even as it weakened into a post-tropical cyclone, it has wreaked havoc.
Record levels of flooding threatened to break several dams, but Tennessee emergency officials said Saturday that the Nolichucky Dam — which had been close to breaching — was no longer in danger of giving way and people downriver could return home.
Massive flooding was reported in Asheville, in western North Carolina. Governor Ray Cooper called it “one of the worst storms in modern history” to hit his state.
There were reports of remote towns in the Carolina mountains without power or cell service, their roads washed away or buried by mudslides.
In Cedar Key, an island city of 700 people off Florida’s Gulf Coast, several pastel-colored wooden homes were destroyed by record storm surges and ferocious winds.
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and it breaks my heart to see it. We’ve not really been able to catch a break,” said Gabe Doty, a Cedar Key official, referring to two other hurricanes in the past year.
In South Carolina, the dead included two firefighters, officials said.
Georgia’s 17 deaths included an emergency responder, according to state officials.
In the Tennessee town of Erwin, more than 50 patients and staff trapped on a hospital roof by surging floodwaters had to be rescued by helicopters.
In a statement Saturday, President Joe Biden called Helene’s devastation “overwhelming.”
Biden was briefed by FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell and Homeland Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall on “the tragic loss of life across the region,” the White House said.
Criswell, who went to Florida on Saturday to survey damage, will visit Georgia on Sunday and North Carolina on Monday.
September has been an unusually wet month around the world, with scientists linking some extreme weather events to human-caused global warming.
The North Atlantic hurricane season runs from the beginning of June to the end of November, with most of the severe storms historically forming around the end of August or beginning of September.
Forecasters are carefully watching two more named storm systems expected next week: Joyce and Hurricane Isaac.
Isaac is expected to weaken into a powerful post-tropical cyclone by Sunday night or early Monday, while Joyce is expected to be a tropical storm for a couple more days, according to the NHC.

Russia says destroyed 125 Ukrainian drones

Russia says destroyed 125 Ukrainian drones
Updated 29 September 2024
AFP
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Russia says destroyed 125 Ukrainian drones

Russia says destroyed 125 Ukrainian drones
Updated 29 September 2024
AFP

Moscow: Russia downed 125 Ukrainian drones over its territory overnight, the defense ministry said Sunday, with regional governors reporting some damage but no casualties from the attack.
“125 Ukrainian fixed-wing UAVs were destroyed and intercepted by air defense systems on duty,” the ministry said on Telegram.
Sixty-seven were destroyed over Volgograd region in southern Russia, where governor Andrey Bocharov said falling debris from the drones sparked grass fires but no casualties or damage.
Another 17 were downed over Belgorod region and 17 over Voronezh region, where governor Aleksandr Gusev said several fell on Voronezh city and its suburbs causing fires in two residential buildings but no casualties.
Another 18 drones were destroyed over Rostov region where governor Vasily Golubev said on Telegram: “According to operational information, there are no casualties or damage on the ground.”
Single drones were intercepted over the Bryansk and Kursk regions and Krasnodar, which neighbors Crimea, and three over the waters of the Sea of Azov, the defense ministry said.
Russia has recently announced shooting down Ukrainian drones almost daily in response to what Kyiv says are retaliatory strikes for Russian attacks during its offensive launched in February 2022.

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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