Six In The Morning Tuesday 30 March 2021

 

Vengeance is served with a jackhammer or death metal: South Koreans strike back at noisy neighbors

 By VICTORIA KIM

MARCH 30, 2021 3 AM PT 

Before the rubber mallet, ear-splitting music, songs with obscene lyrics or the bass speaker affixed to his ceiling, Victor Park tried a gentle, neighborly request with a smile.

The family upstairs from his 11th-floor apartment had young children who stomped above him well into the night. He asked if they could keep it down. But his repeated phone calls and pleas to apartment management went nowhere. He suffered heart palpitations and a perpetual sense of panic from the relentless pounding invading his home.

So he took matters into his own hands — an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, unbearable noise for unbearable noise. He thumped his ceiling with a rubber mallet, and the war between floors began.

Climate crisis 'likely cause' of early cherry blossom in Japan

Peak bloom reached on 26 March in Kyoto and experts say impact of global warming is to blame

Associated Press

Tue 30 Mar 2021 14.45 BST

Japan’s famous cherry blossoms have reached their flowery peak in many places earlier this year than at any time since formal records began nearly 70 years ago, with experts saying the climate crisis is the likely cause.

Referred to in Japan as sakura, the blossoms used to reach their peak in April, coinciding with the start of the new school and business year. Yet the blooms have been creeping earlier, and now most years the flowers are largely gone before the first day of school.

This year, peak bloom was reached on 26 March in the ancient capital of Kyoto, the earliest since the Japan Meteorological Agency started collecting the data in 1953 and 10 days ahead of the 30-year average. Similar records were set this year in more than a dozen cities across Japan.

Vaccine DiplomacyThe Surprising Success of Sputnik V

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the development of the Sputnik V vaccine is a welcome boost to his country's image. And it has been received with open arms in Latin America. In Europe, though, people remain skeptical. Rightly so?

By Christian Esch, Jens Glüsing und Christina Hebel, in Moscow and Rio de Janeiro

Last week, Vladimir Putin finally got vaccinated against COVID-19. For almost half a year, the Russian president has been tirelessly praising the vaccine developed in Russia. Sputnik V, he has said, is the "best vaccine in the world." Nevertheless, he was disinclined to take it himself, and even withdrew from the public eye for a time. Now, though, it appears that he has changed his mind.

But there's a catch. No information was provided about which vaccine he chose to use. Nor were any images or video footage provided. Why not? "As to being vaccinated on camera, well he has never been a fan of that," Putin's spokesman said. "He doesn't like that."

Women lead cultural reckoning as claims of sexual abuse, sexism besiege Australian government

Cascading scandals of alleged rape, sexual misconduct and discrimination inside Australia’s parliament have destabilised the conservative government as accused ministers are sidelined and assault victims, women’s groups and female politicians demand a shakeup of what they describe as an endemic culture of ‘toxic’ masculinity within politics. 

Repeated reports of sexual misconduct, abuse and harassment of women by Australia’s political elite have triggered the biggest mass women’s rallies the country has seen. Using the #March4justice hashtag, hundreds of thousands of women gathered all over the country in a second-wave #Metoo moment that galvanised women – from the very young to the elderly – and from all political stripes.

At the march on the capital, the wives of former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd stood hand in hand in a show of solidarity with Australian women, despite their allegiances to opposing political parties.

Suez crisis creates winners and losers in the global supply chain

The Greek shipowning community, which controls more than a fifth of the world’s ocean-going merchant fleet and more than half of the EU fleet, is poised for a potential bonanza in rates.

By 

John Psaropoulos

30 Mar 2021

For someone who was losing $30,000 a day, Greek shipowner Yiorgos Gourdomihalis sounds very sanguine.

Hours before the Suez Canal shut down last week when one of the world’s largest container ships became wedged in the globally crucial waterway, the CEO of Phoenix Shipping and Trading had clinched a lucrative deal. The so-called time charter – an agreement between a shipowner and a charterer who wants to use a cargo ship for a specified period – would have made his company nearly half a million dollars.

Thailand pushes back thousands fleeing Myanmar as death toll surpasses 500

By Kocha Olarn and Helen Regan, CNN

Updated 0913 GMT (1713 HKT) March 30, 2021

Thailand has reportedly pushed back more than 2,000 people attempting to flee neighboring Myanmar following a series of air strikes carried out by the ruling junta in the southeast of the country.

Activist group the Karen Information Center said 2,009 people are now internally displaced and hiding in the jungle, having been forced back into Myanmar shortly after crossing the border with Thailand.

Thousands of people fled their homes in Myanmar's southeastern Karen state Sunday, after Myanmar's military jets carried out a bombing raid on villages controlled by an ethnic armed group. The Karen National Union (KNU), which holds large swathes of territory in the borderlands with Thailand, had overrun an army post near the border, killing 10 people, Reuters reported.