Month: January 2024

Sydney — Campaigners will gather Sunday at Sydney Town Hall for a rally to urge Australia to send unwanted helicopters to Ukraine. The Australian Defence Force plans to decommission 45 Taipan helicopters later this year and replace them with U.S.-made Blackhawks.  Australia’s entire fleet of MRH-90 Taipan helicopters was grounded after a crash during a multinational military exercise off the coast of Queensland state in July. Officials have said that the aircraft will not return to “flying operations” before they are due to be withdrawn from active service in December of this year. The Taipans will be replaced by U.S.-made Blackhawk …

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Sydney — While Denmark was preparing to celebrate the coronation of a new king, there are festivities too, half a world away, in Australia. Crown Princess Mary was born on the Australian island of Tasmania and met Prince Frederik in a chance encounter in a busy Sydney bar during the 2000 Olympic Games. Before she was a princess, Mary Donaldson graduated with a degree in law and commerce from the University of Tasmania in Australia. A career in advertising and real estate followed. In 2000, she met Denmark’s Prince Frederik in a bar in central Sydney during the Olympic Games. The …

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BUCHAREST — Romanian farmers and truck drivers continued sporadic protests across the country on Sunday as negotiations with the coalition government over high insurance rates and slow subsidy payments resumed. Convoys of tractors and trucks began gathering five days ago on national roads, mainly near large Romanian cities, slowing or blocking traffic. Farmers and haulers also briefly blocked a border crossing with Ukraine in northeastern Romania on Saturday, and tried to prevent entrance to the Black Sea port of Constanta. They are demanding the government address high insurance premia and excise levels on diesel fuel, loan moratoriums, the time taken to …

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London — A volcano has erupted in southwestern Iceland for the second time in less than a month, sending semi-molten rock spewing toward a nearby settlement.  The eruption just before 8 a.m. Sunday came after a swarm of earthquakes near the town of Grindavik, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said. The community was evacuated overnight, Iceland’s RUV television reported.  “Lava is flowing a few hundred meters north of the town, this is 400 to 500 meters,” Kristín Jónsdóttir from the Icelandic Meteorological Office told Iceland’s RUV television. “Lava flows towards Grindavik.”  Residents of Grindavik were previously evacuated from their homes in November …

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washington — China’s car industry groups have said the country is set to surpass Japan to become the world’s top car exporter for 2023, driven by the Russian market and a growing global appetite for electric vehicles (EVs).    The official China Daily newspaper reported the Association of Automobile Manufacturers on Thursday said China’s vehicle production for the first time reached 30 million units last year, 4.91 million of them exported. The exports are a 58% increase from 2022’s 3.11 million vehicles exported, appearing to overtake Japan as the world’s top car exporter.    Japan’s NHK news agency reported Thursday that …

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MOSCOW — A huge fire tore through a large warehouse used by Russia’s largest online retailer south of St. Petersburg on Saturday morning. The blaze covered an area of 70,000 square meters (more than 750,000 square feet), with 50,000 square meters (around 540,000 square feet) of the Wildberries warehouse collapsing, according to Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry. No casualties were reported. Videos posted to social media appeared to show employees running down fire escapes and fleeing the scene. A video shot from a passenger jet flying nearby showed flames totally engulfing the warehouse, sending huge plumes of smoke into the sky. The …

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LONDON — Children joined thousands of other demonstrators making their way through central London for a pro-Palestinian march Saturday, part of a global day of action against the longest and deadliest war between Israel and Palestinians in 75 years. The plight of children in the Gaza Strip after nearly 100 days of the Israel-Hamas war was the focus of the latest London march, symbolized by the appearance of Little Amal, a 3.5-meter (11.5-foot) puppet originally meant to highlight the suffering of Syrian refugees. The puppet had become a human rights emblem during an 8,000-kilometer (4,970-mile) journey from the Turkish-Syrian border to …

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