Six In The Morning Saturday 25 September 2021

 

Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou freed by Canada arrives home in China

A Chinese tech executive released after being detained in Canada for nearly three years has returned home.

Huawei's Meng Wanzhou flew to Shenzhen on Saturday evening, hours after two Canadians freed by China had gone back.

In 2018 China accused Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig of espionage, denying detaining them was in retaliation for Ms Meng's arrest.

The apparent swap brings to an end a damaging diplomatic row between Beijing and the West.

Judge recommends tribe be allowed to hunt gray whales off Washington state

Makah chairman welcomes ruling opposed by animal welfare groups and says: ‘We’re doing it for spiritual and cultural reasons’

Associated Press in Seattle

Sat 25 Sep 2021 15.30 BST

An administrative law judge has recommended that a Native American tribe in Washington state be allowed to hunt gray whales – a major step in its decades-long effort to resume the ancient practice.

“This is a testament to what we’ve been saying all these years: that we’re doing everything we can to show we’re moving forward responsibly,” Patrick DePoe, vice-chairman of the Makah Tribe on the remote north-western tip of the Olympic Peninsula, said on Friday. “We’re not doing this for commercial reasons. We’re doing it for spiritual and cultural reasons.”

German election: The party programs

When laying out their election programs, parties aim to distinguish themselves while also signaling to potential partners that they're open to working together. Here's an overview of the six main parties' platforms.

CDU/CSU

The center-right Christian Democrats and their sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union, want to "make good things better," according to their program. The message is that, after 16 years under Angela Merkel, Germany is doing well but could do even better.

Climate and transport 

The CDU/CSU plan to focus on "efficient market-economy tools" to meet the Paris climate goals. They want air travel to stay a "competitively priced mode of transportation" and aircraft to use synthetic fuels in the future. They oppose introducing a speed limit on the autobahn and banning diesel fuel.

Who is out to get the judge in charge of Lebanon port explosion probe?

Political pressure and an intense smear campaign have targeted for several weeks Tarek Bitar, the Lebanese judge in charge of the probe into the August 2020 Beirut port blast – stepping up a gear with threats from a senior Hezbollah official. In the eyes of some victims’ family members, this suggests Bitar’s investigation is pointing in the right direction.

Bitar has been engaged in a standoff with the Lebanese political class since early July, as powerful figures have refused to waive the immunity of several former ministers and security officials the judge wants to investigate.

While this impasse has paralysed the probe into the cataclysmic double explosion that killed 214 people, injured some 6,500 people and left large parts of Beirut in ruins, the pressure on Bitar stepped up a gear.

Japan's universities tightening background checks on foreign students

Japan's major universities including those with close ties with China are moving to tighten background checks on foreign students seeking to study civil-military technologies, according to a Kyodo News survey.

Their efforts to keep sensitive information from being transferred out of Japan comes after the government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced a plan in June to tighten control on exports of technologies that can be used for military purposes, requiring students under strong influence of foreign governments to gain the industry ministry's approval for working on such research.

The survey collected responses from 56 universities including those having student exchange agreements with Chinese universities known as the "Seven Sons of National Defense" which have close links to China's defense industry.

Sleeping Beauty's forest is dying. It's not the only climate crisis facing Germany's next chancellor

Words by Sheena McKenzie
Video by Sofia Couceiro and Nina Avramova
Photographs by Helena Schätzle

Gazing out from the rocky ledge of Sleeping Beauty's castle in central Germany, the countryside below stretches out in a patchwork of light and dark green forests before stopping dead.

At the heart of this lush landscape sits a swath of dry, bare earth. The ground is empty, save for a few ghostly white trunks pointing skywards.

Viewed up close, this scene in the Reinhardswald nature park is equally desolate. Brittle sticks crunch underfoot and tree stumps dot the empty landscape, which stretches over some 50 acres.

The spruce trees that once stood here have been killed by a bark beetle infestation. The insects thrive in the warmer and drier weather conditions that occur more frequently because of climate change.