TOKYO (Kyodo) — A bluefin tuna fetched 193.2 million yen ($1.8 million) on Sunday at the New Year’s auction at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market, the second-highest price on record.
The price paid for the 276-kilogram tuna caught by a vessel operating out of a port in Oma, Aomori Prefecture, northeastern Japan, amounts to 700,000 yen per kg. The successful bidder was Kiyomura Corp., the Tokyo-based operator of sushi restaurant chain Sushizanmai.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump insisted Sunday that Iranian cultural sites were fair game for the U.S. military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law.
He also warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.
Trump’s comments came amid escalating tensions in the Middle East following the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds force. Iran has vowed to retaliate and Iraq’s parliament responded by voting Sunday to oust U.S. troops based in the country.
Trump first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites Saturday in a tweet. Speaking with reporters Sunday as he returned to Washington from his holiday stay in Florida, he doubled down, despite international prohibitions.
“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way,” Trump said.
The targeted killing of Soleimani sparked outrage in the Middle East, including in Iraq, where more than 5,000 American troops are still on the ground 17 years after the U.S. invasion. Iraq’s parliament voted Sunday in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.
Trump said the U.S. wouldn’t leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years — then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.
“We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame,” he said. “If there’s any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.”
He added: “We’re not leaving until they pay us back for it.”
The administration has scrambled to contend with the backlash to the killing of Soleimani. Though he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, the targeted American strike marked a stark escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. military may well strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates. He tip-toed around questions about Trump’s threat to attack Iranian cultural sites, a military action that likely would be illegal under the laws of armed conflict and the U.N. charter.
Pompeo said only that any U.S. military strikes inside Iran would be legal.
“We’ll behave inside the system,” Pompeo said. “We always have and we always will.”
Trump’s warnings rattled some administration officials. One U.S. national security official said the president had caught many in the administration off guard and prompted internal calls for others in the government, including Pompeo, to clarify the matter. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly to the issue, said clarification was necessary to affirm that the U.S. military would not intentionally commit war crimes.
Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defense Department’s legal office, said Trump’s threat amounted to “a pretty clear promise of commission of a war crime.”
The president’s threats to Iran did little to quell Tehran’s furor over the death of Soleimani. Iranian state television reported that the country would no longer abide by any limits of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the United States and other world powers. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and stepped up economic sanctions on Tehran — actions that accelerated a cycle of hostilities leading to the last week’s killing.
The administration also pushed back Sunday on questions about the legality of the strike on Soleimani. Pompeo said the administration would have been “culpably negligent” in its duty to protect the United States if it had not killed him. He did not provide evidence for his previous claims that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans. Instead of arguing that an attack had been imminent, he said it was inevitable.
“We watched him continue to actively build out for what was going to be a significant attack – that’s what we believed – and we made the right decision,” he said, adding later: “We continue to prepare for whatever it is the Iranian regime may put in front of us within the next 10 minutes, within the next 10 days, and within the next 10 weeks.”
Congressional Democrats were skeptical.
“I really worry that the actions the president took will get us into what he calls another endless war in the Middle East. He promised we wouldn’t have that,” said Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate’s top Democrat.
Schumer said Trump lacks the authority to engage militarily with Iran and Congress needs a new war powers resolution “to be a check on this president.” To which Pompeo said: “We have all the authority we need to do what we’ve done to date.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said the administration violated the Constitution by not consulting with Congress in advance.
“It’s also important because one, you potentially get members of Congress to buy in ahead of time, and two, they may ask that hard question that’s not asked in an insular group,” Warner said.
Congressional staffs got their first briefings from the administration on Friday, and members were expected to be briefed this week.
But Trump made clear Sunday that he saw little reason to give Congress advanced warning if he orders the military to carry out further actions against Iran.
“These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner,” he wrote on Twitter. “Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!”
Democrats in Congress have complained that Trump’s order to kill Soleimani took place without first consulting with or informing top lawmakers, noting that Congress still holds sole power to declare war. Trump did meet the 48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress of the deadly drone strike, though the document provided Saturday was entirely classified and no public version was released.
Some of the Democrats running to challenge Trump in November questioned whether he had a long-term plan for the Mideast.
Former Vice President Joe Biden said Trump was ill-prepared for the repercussions of the strike on Soleimani and had alienated allies by not alerting them of the plans. “I think we need a president who could provide steady leadership on Day One,” he said. “The next president is going to inherit a divided nation and a world in disarray.”
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. said: “When you’re dealing with the Middle East, you need to think about the next and the next and the next move. This is not checkers. And I’m not sure any of us really believe that this president and the people around him″ are “really going through all of the consequences of what could happen next.”
Pompeo appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” CNN’s “State of the Union,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,”′ CBS’ “Face the Nation,″ ”Fox News Sunday” and Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” Schumer was on ABC, Warner and Warren were on NBC, Petraeus was on CBS, Buttigieg was on CNN and Graham was on Fox News Channel.
SYDNEY (AP) — Australia’s government on Monday said it was willing to pay “whatever it takes” to help communities recover from deadly wildfires that have ravaged the country.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government was committing an extra 2 billion Australian dollars ($1.4 billion) toward the recovery effort in addition to the tens of millions of dollars that have already been promised.
“The fires are still burning. And they’ll be burning for months to come,” Morrison said. “And so that’s why I outlined today that this is an initial, an additional, investment of $2 billion. If more is needed and the cost is higher, then more will be provided.”
Morrison’s announcement of the funds, which will go toward rebuilding towns and infrastructure destroyed by the fires, came as authorities said two more people were missing in remote parts of New South Wales. Nationwide, at least 24 people have been killed and 2,000 homes destroyed by the blazes, which have so far scorched an area twice the size of the U.S. state of Maryland.
Rain and cooler temperatures on Monday were bringing some relief to communities battling the fires. But the rain was also making it challenging for fire crews to complete strategic burns as they tried to prepare for higher temperatures that have been forecast for later in the week.
“With the more benign weather conditions it presents some wonderful relief for everybody, the firefighters, the emergency services personnel, but also the communities affected by these fires,” Shane Fitzsimmons, commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, told reporters. “But it also presents some real challenges when it comes to implementing tactical and strategic back-burns and other techniques to try and bring these fires under control.”
More than 135 fires were still burning across New South Wales, including almost 70 that were not contained. Officials have warned that the rain won’t put out the largest and most dangerous blazes before conditions deteriorate again.
Victoria state Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville said at least 200 millimeters (8 inches) of rain would need to fall over a short period of time in order to snuff out the fires — around 20 times what has fallen across the region in the past day. And officials warned that the country’s wildfire season — which generally lasts through March — was nowhere near its end.
“No one can be complacent. We’ve got big fire danger coming our way toward the end of this week,” Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters in Melbourne. “We are by no means out of this. And the next few days, and indeed the next few months, are going to be challenging.”
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian also urged Australians not to let their guards down.
“Unfortunately, overnight, it’s become apparent that we have two people unaccounted for in New South Wales,” she said at a news conference, adding she still held out hope for some good news to emerge about them.
Australia’s capital, Canberra, had the worst air quality of any major city in the world on Monday. The Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for coordinating the country’s response to disasters, told all non-critical staff to stay home because of thick smoke choking the city.
The prime minister said the military was attempting to get food, fuel and water to burned-out communities, and engineers were working to reopen roads and resupply evacuation centers. On Kangaroo Island, a refuge off the coast of South Australia for some of the country’s most endangered creatures, teams had arrived to help euthanize livestock and wild animals injured in the blazes. Hundreds of millions of animals are believed to have died already in the fires across the country.
Heavy smoke, meanwhile, was hampering the navy’s efforts to airlift people out of Mallacoota, a coastal town in Victoria cut off for days by fires that forced as many as 4,000 residents and tourists to shelter on beaches over the weekend. Around 300 people were still waiting to be evacuated on Monday.
The prime minister’s announcement of relief funds comes as he finds himself under siege for what many Australians have viewed as his lax response to the crisis. On Saturday, he announced he would dispatch 3,000 army, navy and air force reservists to help battle the fires and committed 20 million Australian dollars ($14 million) to lease firefighting aircraft from overseas.
But the moves did little to tamp down the criticism that he had been slow to act, even as he has downplayed the need for his government to address climate change, which experts say helps supercharge the blazes.
Wildfires are common during the southern hemisphere summer, and Australians generally take a pragmatic view of them. But this year’s fires arrived unusually early, fed by drought and the country’s hottest and driest year on record.
Scientists say there’s no doubt man-made global warming has played a major role in feeding the fires, along with factors like very dry brush and trees and strong winds.
Environmental group Greenpeace said the relief funds announced by Morrison were “a drop in the ocean,” given the widespread devastation from the fires.
“Every single cent of that money should be contributed by the coal, gas and oil companies whose carbon pollution has caused the climate crisis that has created these extreme fire conditions, right across the country,” Greenpeace Australia Pacific Head of Campaigns Jamie Hanson said in a statement. “Slugging everyday taxpayers with the bill for this just adds insult to injury. These big polluters have become rich by trashing our climate and it’s time that they started coughing up for the repair bill.”
The Prayuth Chan-ocha administration has taken the right step by finally banning the use of single-use plastic bags at supermarkets and convenience stores starting New Year.
This should be the beginning of a long process in making Thailand a more environmentally friendly and responsible society.
While some complain about the sudden inconveniences caused by the policy, in the long run, Thailand will have to face the fact that she is one of the world’s major plastic polluters in the sea.
For those unconvinced that the problem has reached a critical level, check old and not so-old news about how big and small sea animals are found dead with their stomachs full of plastic, or visit any popular beach in Thailand yourself and start counting plastic trash you can see. In fact, Bangkokians can just head to the nearest canal or river bank, and observe.
Yes, it’s inconvenient. Yes, supermarket and convenience store now can make more money selling “earth-friendly” cotton bags or tote bags for you if you found yourself unprepared, but we have to remain unwavering in trying to reduce single-use plastic bag if we want a cleaner and safer environment.
Supermarkets and convenience stores will no longer have to pay for single-use plastic bags. There should be ways to extract this sum and put it to a good cause or recycling process.
Banning single-use plastic bags is actually just the beginning, since fresh market have yet to introduce the ban. Environmental Minister Varawut Silpa-archa admitted earlier this week that 40 percent of the plastic-bag trash is generated by fresh markets transactions.
What the government needs to do now is to win the hearts of those who are not convinced or too unwilling to adapt. They have to try harder to convince with statistics and environmental science that this is for the good of Thailand itself and our posterity.
Incentives, cash or technological, can and should be offered to businesses in green technologies to produce alternatives to myriad types of single-use plastic packaging that is limited not to just single-use plastic shopping bags but various plastic packaging and over-packing of fresh and not-so-fresh food.
Additionally, plastic straws should be phased out and banned soon while incentives given to the production and introduction of re-use of paper, metal and bamboo straws. There is no reason why this cannot be achieved within 2020.
Also, please ban the importation of waste, electronic or otherwise from the so-called First World countries into the kingdom – unless you want Thailand to have an even trashier reputation. It is hypocritical to allow massive imports of plastic waste, third largest destination of such goods in ASEAN, while trying to tell its own citizens to not dump more plastic waste.
Back to plastic packaging of fruits and food, the government should encourage companies that produce sustainable replacement packaging that’s environmentally friendly and offer them tax-reduction.
Incentives should also be handed to businesses such as supermarkets, convenience stores and fresh market operators that are willing to go beyond not using single-use plastic bags but introduce non-plastic food and fruit packaging as well.
Last but not least, the government should encourage more efficient waste separation and recycling.
What’s not needed, however, is simpleton and dictatorial measures. The latest attempt by the government to censor images of single-use plastic bags on eight major television stations is simply a knee-jerk simplistic reactions rooted in autocratic mindset. Such news should be treated as a joke, assigned to the rubbish bin, and never recycled.
It is too early to say whether this campaign to put an end to single-use plastic will last. Other campaigns like wearing seat belts and motorcycle helmets ended up largely unenforced.
The government alone cannot be relied on for the success of this effort. The public must realize that enough is enough.
Update: The event was cancelled on March 10 due to Covid-19 concerns.
BANGKOK — With “Frozen 2” having reaped 190 million baht and counting from Thai theaters, Disney’s icy grip won’t release us – Disney on Ice is coming to town this summer.
“Disney on Ice: Live Your Dreams” will be performing from April 1 to 5 at Impact Muang Thong Thani, with characters from Moana, Frozen, Beauty and the Beast, Tangled, Coco, and so on skimming across the rink to fans’ delight.
There will be 12 performances: 6:30pm on April 1, 2:30pm and 6:30pm on April 2, and at 10:30am, 2:30pm, and 6:30pm from April 3 to 5. The English language performances are at 6:30pm on April 3 and at 10:30am on April 4.
The show is approximately two hours long, and tickets range from 400 baht to 2,700 baht.
Tickets go on sale on Jan. 25 on Thai Ticket Major, but those who wish to get a 20 percent discount on their tickets can pre-register with organizer Bec Tero. However, the discounts will not be eligible for the most expensive ringside tickets priced at 2,700 nor for the English performances.
Disney on Ice is a regular, almost annual visitor to Bangkok, but April’s show will be the first time that the characters of Coco will be on skates in Bangkok. Live Your Dream added Coco and Winnie the Pooh to the show in 2019.
Impact Muang Thong Thani stadium can be reached by van, taxi or Impact Link shuttle via BTS Mo Chit exit No. 4 or MRT Chatuchak Park exit No. 3.
BANGKOK — Don’t worry if you missed the New Year Eve’s fireworks, a meteor shower will light up the skies Friday night.
The Quadrantids meteor shower will be visible starting late at night on Friday until the early hours of Saturday, according to the National Astronomical Research Institute.
Astronomers said this year’s annual astronomical phenomenon will fall on a moonless night, so the shower will become more visible with a peaking rate of 120 meteors per hour.
Stargazers across the country are advised to turn to the northeast, near the Capriconus and Boötes constellations. The phenomenon can be viewed with the naked eye. However, it’s still best viewed under dark skies away from urban light pollution.
The Quadrantids are a meteor shower that occurs annually around December and January. It is named after the now-obsolete constellation Quadrantids, which was first observed by French astronomer Jerome Lalande in 1795.
It is now part of constellation Boötes following the International Astronomical Union’s modernization of the list in 1922.
BANGKOK — Fans of K-pop superstar Lisa Blackpink are fuming Friday at the owner of a cafe visited by the celebrity for making sexually inappropriate comments about her.
Writing in a public Facebook post, the owner of Mqqn Cafe at Talad Rod Fai Night Market and his friends joked about selling furniture, cutlery, and even the toilet used by Lalisa “Lisa” Manoban after her Thursday visit to his ‘50s-themed diner. They also made graphic references to her body parts. The post soon went viral, drawing condemnation and review bombs from the fans.
“The owner of the MQQN cafe in which lisa had her photoshoot sexually objectified her on Facebook,” @Lilibot wrote in a tweet retweeted more than 3,000 times. “This is beyond unacceptable and that pervert must be punished.”
Lisa posted photos of her visit to the diner on social media platforms on Thursday. As of Friday, #LowClassMqqnCafe is one of the top trending tweets in Thailand.
“Lisa promoted your restaurant, but instead of being grateful, you chose to sexualize her. Your whole business will go downhill now mf take the taste of your own medicine,” @Lilibot wrote.
In comments that have since been deleted, Mqqn Cafe’s owner Masse Jacop said he was selling the sofa Lisa sat on: “Someone inboxed me with an offer of 100,000 baht, but the price isn’t right yet.”
“How much is it to sniff the sofa?” another comment asked, to which Masse replied, “A 1000 baht per sniff, but 100 for friends.”
Another user, Pruch Eakapksawat, went as far as suggesting to sell Lisa’s pubic hair for real estate in Bangkok’s downtown.
“If she went to the bathroom, I would buy the toilet seat too, since I could buy a car with it,” Pruch wrote. “If there’s some hair stuck to it, I could buy some Silom area land.”
Masse replied, “There’s about 10 hairs on it right now, so I’ll have to go get their DNA tested first.”
After criticism from the fans, Masse initially defended his comments. “If you really read what I wrote, I didn’t harass her at all. Calm down, fans,” he wrote.
He later backtracked and apologized: “I apologize for my bad posts. Sorry to Lisa and everyone involved. I accept all criticism. We all love Lisa. I’m sorry for what happened.”
But his contrition offered little damage control; fans of Lisa have also left multiple negative, 1-star reviews on the cafe’s Wongnai and Facebook pages. Some were also amazed at how the owner had blown away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attract fans of the K-pop supercelebrity to his cafe.
“Fans would’ve wanted to go to the cafe Lisa went to, but the owner seems to be so disrespectful of Lisa and sexually harassing her,” @Allskybykpop tweeted.
Lisa, of Blackpink girl group under YG Entertainment, is one of Thailand’s most popular artists. In December, Time magazine listed her as one of their most influential 100 people.
Related stories:
Thailand Cheers as ‘Lisa’ Blackpink Listed on Time 100 List
Chinese God of Wealth Becomes Unlikely Meme on Thai Internet
Lisa Blackpink Donates 100k Baht to Flood Victims
Black Pink Announces Tour, Bangkok Dates
Thaksin’s Son Declares for ‘Black Pink’ and K-Pop Sphere Erupts
Hear Prayuth Sing Black Pink, ‘Shape of You’ (Video)
Young Thai Girls’ K-Pop Parody is This Week’s Internet Catnip
PATTAYA — Police said Friday a group of 20 young men and women were arrested after beating up four jet ski rental operators on the popular island of Koh Lan yesterday.
Maj. Chainarong Chai-in of Pattaya Police Station said one of the vendors attacked by the suspects suffered serious injuries while the other three suffered minor wounds. Six male assailants were later charged with physical assault on Friday afternoon, after one of the victims gave his testimony to the police.
The jet ski owner, Jirakrit Chamroenchit, said the group agreed to hire four jet skis from his son while they were sightseeing on Koh Lan on Thursday. But as the payment was still being arranged, some of the men reportedly started posing for photos with the jet skis and tried to ride the vehicles away, according to Jirakit.
Jirakrit said his son rebuked the group and told them to leave the jet skis, prompting them to beat him, who then phoned Jirakrit for help. Jirakrit said he later arrived at the scene with two other men, and they were also attacked by the suspects with wooden sticks and rocks.
Jirakrit said he called police for help after one of his companions were beaten by the youths until he lost consciousness.
Police said 12 men and 8 women in the group were present during the assault, but officers believe six of them were responsible for the attacks.
Although police initially said 19 of the suspects tested positive for drug use, lab results from a hospital showed traces of narcotics in only two of the men, according to the police. The pair was detained along with the men wanted for assaults, while the rest were released without any charges.
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Hundreds of mourners and government officials in Mogadishu gathered at the capital’s Police School on Thursday to mourn the 79 people killed by a tragic truck bomb last week.
Somali government officials and residents marched through Mogadishu’s streets to show solidarity with those who lost their loved ones in the bombing that was the country’s biggest and most deadly in two years. Several mourners said that they reject terrorism.
Women and men carried flags and placards denouncing the killings. “Evil-doers are not our sons” and “Collaborate with the security forces” read some of the posters in the Somali language.
Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamic extremist rebels claimed responsibility for the weekend bomb at a busy checkpoint in which many of those killed were university students.
Mogadishu mayor Omar Filish, the mayor of Mogadishu who organized the event, told the crowd that the perpetrators of the attack failed to destroy the spirit of the Somali people and instead increased their anger at the extremist group.
”We will not cry but we will take revenge for the blood of the innocents killed in that truck bomb,” said Filish.
“We need to apprehend the al-Shabaab terrorists in their hiding places and assist each other to fight them,” said Dahir Jesow, a member of Somalia’s parliament. “They are trigger happy. We all need to be soldiers. Let’s promise to unite our fight against them.”
Story: Mohamed Sheikh Nor
TOKYO (Kyodo) — The Japanese government has been actively promoting teleworking, touting the many merits of it from easing traffic congestion and enhancing disaster preparedness to helping recruit and retain talent amid a chronic labor shortage.
Yet it seems there is a long way to go before many employees can take advantage of the scheme of working from a distance by communicating with their bosses or colleagues via phone, email or chat system on a regular basis.
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