World 12 Ashburton Guardian
www.guardianonline.co.nz
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
In brief
■ JAPAN
China ‘jeopardising peace’ Japan’s defence minister says China is jeopardising peace, days after China warned any bid to shoot down its drones over disputed islands would constitute “an act of war”. Itsunori Onodera’s comments are likely to further heighten fears that the two countries could be sliding towards conflict over the outcrops in the East China Sea, with China showing off its fleet of nuclearpowered submarines and Japan readying for wargames. “The intrusions by China in the territorial waters around the Senkaku islands fall in the ‘grey zone’ (between) peacetime and an emergency situation,” Onodera told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. The two sides have been at loggerheads over the island chain, which China claims and calls the Diaoyus, since Tokyo bought three of them from a private Japanese owner in September 2012. The comments from Onodera follow those from China’s defence ministry at the weekend and appear to have taken the verbal fisticuffs to a new level. On Monday, China’s coastguard sent four vessels into the waters around the islands, where they stayed for two hours, shadowed by their Japanese counterparts. That came after three consecutive days in which Tokyo scrambled jets to meet Chinese aircraft as they traversed a strait leading to the Pacific. They did not enter Japanese airspace. “They were two early-warning aircraft and two bombers,” Onodera told reporters yester-
Taiwan says it has lodged a complaint with Apple over new iPhone and computer operating systems that describe the island as a province of China. The move came after local internet users found that maps on the operating systems iOS 7 and version 10.9 of OS X automatically displayed “China Taiwan province” in simplified Chinese characters whenever they searched for “Taiwan”. “It does not fit with the reality,” Kelly Hsieh, the head of the foreign ministry’s Department of North American Affairs, told reporters yesterday. “We’ve made representations to Apple. Matters like this must not be compromised.” - AFP
Gunmen kill tribal elder A pro-government tribal elder and six members of his family have been killed by unknown gunmen who stormed their home in southwest Pakistan, officials say. The pre-dawn attack occurred early yesterday in Dera Bugti district, about 450 kilometres southeast of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, a hub for separatist rebels, Islamist insurgents and sectarian militants. Abdul Jabbar, a senior government official, said said more than a dozen attackers armed with assault rifles and other sophisticated weapons came in and sprayed the family with bullets. - AFP Drones flying over the islands disputed by Japan and China may cause tensions to rise to dangerous levels in the area. ap photo
day. “It was unusual that so many aircraft flew between the Okinawan main island and Miyako island. “We consider that it is also very unusual that it occurred for three days in a row. “We understand that it is one of the trends showing that China is now vigorously expanding its areas of activities, including into the open ocean.” China’s defence ministry said on Saturday that Japan’s firing on its aircraft “would constitute
a serious provocation, an act of war of sorts” and vowed “firm countermeasures”. On Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Japan should “stop hyping up the external threat theory and elaborate to the international community the true intent of (its) military buildup”. Akira Kato, professor of defence and security at Obirin University in Tokyo said the two sides appeared to be painting themselves into a corner,
and things could only get worse without a diplomatic channel of communication. “Since China is unlikely to tone down its stance, tensions are likely to increase further,” he said. “For Tokyo, the Japan-US security alliance is the fallback,” he said, referring to the security pact under which the United States must come to Japan’s aid if it is attacked. “The case will be a crucial test to see if the alliance can function.” - AFP
■ AUSTRALIA
Wild weather rips through New South Wales A woman has been struck by lightning, a couple trapped when their car was wrapped in fallen powerlines and roofs blown away by wild weather in NSW. Large hailstones and damaging winds thrashed parts of the state yesterday, with the hardest hit areas south and north of Sydney making up a large proportion of emergency call outs. The NSW State Emergency Service (SES) received 630 calls for assistance by 6:30pm yesterday, while Ausgrid received 500 reports of hazards on the electricity network and worked to restore power to 9000 homes in Sydney and the Central Coast.
Apple upsets Taiwan
Most SES call outs were for trees down and damaged roofs, including in Newport where a roof was blown away. There was relief for parts of the fire-ravaged Blue Mountains with as much as 50mm of rain, but other areas received just 2mm and lightning sparked new blazes elsewhere. “It was helped in some areas but in other areas, if it hasn’t put the fires out, it will stop us doing back burning operations for a couple of days,” Rural Fire Service spokesman Ben Shepherd told AAP. He said that there are new fires in the Coffs Harbour and Clarence Valley areas, adding that the RFS would reassess all
the fires on Wednesday morning. A Catholic school in Balmain lost part of its roof as gusts of up to 90 km/h lashed the Sydney metropolitan area. Louise McNeill escaped unscathed following a lightning strike in Kincumber on the Central Coast. “Something hit my arm and I thought I had been struck by lightning,” she told the Seven Network. “(But) it’s the tree that had been (struck) and it’s affected me and had given me a jolt.” An elderly couple were trapped in their car at Lansvale, a town near Liverpool, for half an hour after a tree and
powerlines fell on their vehicle. They were taken to hospital with possible back, neck and limb injuries. Trees and powerlines also fell on three people at Engadine in Sydney’s south, with the trio taken to St George Hospital where they are in a stable condition. A verandah at a boarding house in the central Sydney suburb of Newtown also collapsed, pulling down powerlines. A severe thunderstorm warning for damaging winds and hailstones is still in place for the Northern Rivers and parts of the Mid North Coast and Northern Tablelands. - AAP
Militant killed by drone A senior militant in charge of suicide attacks for al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab rebels has been killed in a drone strike, a Somali government official says. Interior Minister Abdikarin Hussein Guled said that Somali intelligence services had been tracking Ibrahim Ali Abdi, for some time before the strike took place on Monday. The minister did not say who carried out the attack, but an official in Washington said the US military carried out a drone strike targeting al-Shabab in Somalia that day. - AFP
Dozens die of thirst Dozens of migrants from Niger, most of them women and children, have died of thirst in the Sahara desert earlier this month after their vehicle broke down, officials say. One survivor recalled how a man watched his wife and nine children die, and said the migrants, headed for Algeria, had been packed “like cattle” into overcrowded vehicles. “Thirst was the main cause of the deaths of our wives and children,” Sadafiou said, adding that “hunger and the travelling conditions also took their toll”. - AFP
Divorce soars in Beijing Beijing’s divorce rate has rocketed as couples seek to avoid a property tax by using a loophole for those whose marriages end. Nearly 40,000 couples divorced in the Chinese capital in the first nine months of this year, up 41 per cent on the same period in 2012. In March China introduced a capital gains tax of 20 per cent on the profits owners make from selling residential property. But the terms allow couples with two properties who divorce and put each house into one person’s name to then sell them tax-free under certain conditions - after which they can remarry. - AFP