Threat to asylum seekers
Papua New Guinea’s leader said authorities will apprehend those responsible for a nine-day stand-off at an Australian-run detention centre for asylum seekers, where almost 600 men have barricaded themselves inside despite having no water or food. The men in the Manus island facility have defied attempts by Australia and Papua New Guinea to close the camp in a standoff that the United Nations has described as a ‘‘looming humanitarian crisis’’. ‘‘Those involved in disruption have been identified and appropriate means will be used to apprehend individuals who are causing unnecessary anxiety and violence,’’ Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said. The men inside the camp, who include asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Syria, said they will continue to defy attempts to close it, and O’Neill’s comments stoked fears of confrontation.
Ross to sell Russian shares
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross plans to completely divest from a shipping company that counts a Russian gas producer with ties to the Kremlin among its major customers. A commerce department spokesman says Ross plans to sell all his shares of Navigator Holdings. That company ships products from Sibur, a Russian gas producer whose owners include two Russian oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin and a businessman believed to be Putin’s son in law. Details of the Ross stake in Navigator were revealed among the Paradise Papers leak of documents about offshore entities. Critics have said Ross should not hold the stock given his public office. He has said that he disclosed his stake in reports filed with the government.
Obama called for jury duty
Former President Barack Obama, free of a job that forced him to move to Washington for eight years, showed up to a downtown Chicago courthouse for jury duty yesterday morning. Then he heard the words most prospective jurors pray for: You’re dismissed. The 44th president’s motorcade - considerably shorter than the one when he lived in the White House - left his home in the Kenwood neighbourhood on the city’s South Side and arrived at the Richard J. Daley Centre shortly after 10am Obama - wearing a dark sport coat, dress shirt, but without a tie waved to people who gathered outside. Shortly before noon, Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans told reporters that the former president had not been selected for jury duty. But Obama was ready to serve if told to do so, Evans said.
Eruption shuts down oil link
An ash plume drifting from a Russia volcano has prompted flight cancellations in northern Alaska. William Walsh, a spokesman for Ravn Alaska, says the airline cancelled flights yesterday to and from Kotzebue and Deadhorse, the supply hub for the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. Alaska Airlines officials say no flights were immediately affected. Dave Schneider with the Alaska Volcano Observatory says the cloud originated from the Sheveluch Volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, which erupted Tuesday, sending an ash cloud about 7900m into the atmosphere.