Around the World briefs
By Associated Press
Wreck of the last ship of famed
Anglo-Irish explorer Shackleton found off the coast of Canada
ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland | The wreck of the last ship belonging to Sir Ernest Shackleton, a famous Irish-born British explorer of Antarctica, has been found off the coast of Labrador in Canada, 62 years after it went missing. The wreck was found by an international team led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
The Quest was found using sonar scans on Sunday evening, sitting on its keel under 390 meters (1,280 feet) of churning, frigid water, the society said. Its towering mast is lying broken beside it, likely cracked off as the vessel was sucked into the depths after it struck ice on May 5, 1962.
“I heard that some Americans were interested in finding Quest, and I just had this picture in my mind of a few billionaires on yachts, up in the Labrador Sea,” John Geiger, leader of the Shackleton Quest Expedition and the chief executive of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, told an audience at the Memorial University’s Marine Institute in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Wednesday.
“We’ve done it the right way. It’s not about anyone’s ego, it’s about telling great stories and celebrating some of the finest human attributes,” Geiger said.
He called the Quest a historically very important ship.
Shackleton’s death aboard the ship in 1922 marked the end of what historians consider the “heroic age” of Antarctic exploration. The explorer led three British expeditions to the Antarctic, and he was in the early stages of a fourth when he died of a heart attack. He was 47.
The Norwegian-built Quest was a schooner-rigged steamship, and Shackleton bought it specifically to travel to Canada’s High Arctic, Geiger said. But the Canadian government at the time axed those plans, and Shackleton decided to set sail once again for the Antarctic.
He died when it was just off South Georgia, east of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.
After the explorer’s death, the Quest was used for Arctic research and then returned to its original intended use as a sealing vessel. It sank in 1962, after it was damaged by ice in the Labrador Sea while on a whaling trip.
The vessel appears to be in “incredible condition,” though it was damaged when it slammed into the seabed, Geiger said.
It won’t be brought to the surface — that would be far too expensive, he added — but it will be thoroughly documented and studied. A crew will likely head out some time before the end of summer to begin taking footage of the vessel with a remotely operated vehicle.
In 2022, researchers discovered another one of Shackleton’s ships, the Endurance in 10,000 feet — about 3,000 meters — of icy water, a century after it was swallowed up by Antarctic ice.
A team of marine archaeologists, engineers and other scientists used an icebreaker ship and underwater drones to locate the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, near the Antarctica Peninsula.
The expedition Endurance22 embarked from Cape Town, South Africa, in early February in a ship capable of breaking through 3-foot (1-meter)-thick ice.
The team, which included more than 100 researchers and crew members, deployed underwater drones that combed the seafloor for two weeks in the area where the ship was recorded to have sunk in 1915.
Shackleton never achieved his ambition to become the first person to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. In fact, he never set foot on the continent during the failed Endurance expedition, though he did visit Antarctica during earlier voyages.
1,000 days have passed since the Taliban barred girls from secondary education
ISLAMABAD | A thousand days have passed since girls in Afghanistan were banned from attending secondary schools, according to the U.N. children’s agency, which said Thursday that “no country can move forward when half its population is left behind.”
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell in a statement urged Taliban authorities to allow all children to resume learning immediately, and called on the international community to support Afghan girls, who she said need it more than ever. The agency estimates that more than 1 million girls are affected.
The U.N. has warned that the ban on girls’ education remains the Taliban’s biggest obstacle to gaining recognition as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan.
The Taliban, who took over in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces in 2021, has said girls continuing their education goes against the group’s strict interpretation of Islamic law.
Despite initially promising a more moderate rule, the Taliban have also barred women from higher education, public spaces like parks and most jobs as part of harsh measures imposed. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, they also banned girls’ education.
The Taliban has barred girls from attending classes beyond sixth grade, making it the only country in the world with such restrictions on female education.
In March, the new school year started with girls barred from attending classes beyond the sixth grade. Female journalists were not allowed to attend the opening ceremony.
The Taliban also have been prioritizing Islamic knowledge over basic literacy and numeracy with their shift toward madrassas, or religious schools.
UNICEF’s executive director called the systematic exclusion of girls “not only a blatant violation of their right to education, but also results in dwindling opportunities and deteriorating mental health.”
She said UNICEF works with partners to run community-based education classes for 600,000 children, two-thirds of them girls, and train teachers.
Although Afghan boys have access to education, Human Rights Watch has said the Taliban’s “abusive” educational policies are harming them. In a report published in December, the group said deep harm has been inflicted on boys’ education as qualified teachers — including women — left, including an increase in corporal punishment.
Also on Thursday, a spokesperson for the U.N. Human Rights Office said the Taliban have told female civil servants barred from working that their salaries would be cut to the lowest level regardless of their experience or qualifications.
The latest “discriminatory and profoundly arbitrary decision” further deepened the erosion of human rights in Afghanistan, said Liz Throssell.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called on authorities to rescind all laws, instructions, edicts and other measures that discriminated against women and girls, in clear violation of the country’s human rights obligations, Throssell added.
Nobody from the Taliban was immediately available for comment.
A Chinese military buff inadvertently bought four books of military
secrets for under $1
BEIJING | A military history buff in China appears to have made an alarming discovery after picking up four discarded books for less than $1 at a neighborhood recycling station: They were confidential military documents.
The country’s Ministry of State Security told the story in a social media post on Thursday, praising the retired man for calling a hotline to report the incident. It identified him only by his family name, Zhang, and did not say what the documents were about.
“Mr. Zhang thought to himself that he had ‘bought’ the country’s military secrets and brought them home,” the post reads, “but if someone with ulterior motives were to buy them, the consequences would be unimaginable!”
The post, which was reposted on at least two popular Chinese news websites, was the latest in a series by the powerful state security agency that appears to be trying to draw in new audiences with dramatic stories. Some have been told in comic-book style.
The campaign seems designed to raise awareness of the importance of national security at a time when confrontation with the U.S. is rising and both countries are increasingly worried about the possible theft or transfer of confidential and secret information.
The post describes Zhang as a former employee of a state-owned company who likes to collect military newspapers and periodicals. It says he found two bags of new books at the recycling station and paid 6 yuan (about 85 cents) for four of them.
State security agents rushed to the station after Zhang reported what had happened, the post says. After an investigation, they found that two military employees charged with shredding more than 200 books instead got rid of them by selling them to a recycling center as paper waste — 30 kilograms (65 pounds) in all — for about $2.75.
The agents seized the books and the military has closed loopholes in the handling of such material, the post says.
China’s opaque state security bodies and legal system often make it difficult to tell what is considered a state secret.
Chinese and foreign consultancies operating within the country have been placed under investigation for possessing or sharing information about the economy in an apparent broadening of the definition of a state secret in recent years.
Denmark recalls spicy South Korean noodles over health concerns
COPENHAGEN, Denmark | Food authorities in Denmark have recalled three types of spicy instant noodle products imported from South Korea over possible risks of “acute poisoning.” Consumers are asked to discard them or return the noodles to the retailer.
The noodles are made by Seoul-based Samyang Foods, one of South Korea’s largest companies, and sold across the globe. The recalled noodles include Buldak Samyang 3 x Spicy & Hot Chicken, Buldak Samyang 2 x Spicy & Hot Chicken and Buldak Samyang Hot Chicken Stew.
The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration said the products contain an overly high dose of capsaicin, an active ingredient in chile peppers but also a chemical that can be a neurotoxin and a health hazard.
Children and teenagers in Denmark have been daring each other on social media to eat “a strong bowl of noodle soup,” referring to the three South Korean products, the agency said.
“The noodle dishes marketed as extremely strong must no longer be sold because consumers and especially children risk acute poisoning,” it said late Tuesday. “The capsaicin content is so high that it can pose a health hazard.”
Children and frail adults and the elderly are at risk, said Henrik Dammand Nielsen of the Danish Food and Drug Administration. Possibly symptoms include burning and discomfort, nausea, vomiting and high blood pressure, he said.
“That is why we are now demanding shops remove the products from their shelves,” the agency said.
In a statement to reporters, Samyang said it understands that the steps taken in Denmark were not based on product quality issues but because local authorities thought “they were too spicy and could potentially cause problems.”
The company said the same noodles are exported worldwide but it was the first time they were ordered to recall them in any market.
“We will closely study local regulations while responding to this recall measure,” the company said.
Spicy food challenges have been around for years. From local chile pepper eating contests to restaurant walls of fame for those who finished extra hot dishes, people around the world have been daring each other to eat especially fiery foods.
In September, a Massachusetts teen with a congenital heart defect who participated in a spicy tortilla chip challenge on social media died from eating a large quantity of chile pepper extract. An autopsy report obtained by The Associated Press showed that the 10th grader died on Sept. 1, 2023, after eating the Paqui chip as part of the manufacturer’s “One Chip Challenge.”
In Denmark, a puzzled consumer reached out to the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration and asked how the instant noodles could be legal, the agency said, after which it had a lab assessing the products and determined the three noodle brands can be harmful to health, instigating the recall.
“It is important that parents are aware of the extreme noodle varieties and avoid them, Dammand Nielsen said.
—From AP reports
