Around the World briefs
By Associated Press
India’s top court creates task
force on workplace safety after doctor was raped and killed
NEW DELHI | India’s top court on Tuesday set up a national task force of doctors who will make recommendations on safety of health care workers at their workplace, days after the rape and killing of a trainee doctor that sparked outrage and nationwide protests.
The Supreme Court said the doctors’ panel will frame guidelines for ensuring safety and protection of medical professionals and health care workers across the country.
“Protecting safety of doctors and women doctors is a matter of national interest and principle of equality. The nation cannot await another rape for it to take some steps,” Chief Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud said.
Doctors and medics across India have been holding protests, candlelight marches and even temporarily refused care for non-emergency patients since Aug. 9 when the killing in the eastern city of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state. The doctors say the assault highlights the vulnerability of health care workers in hospitals and medical campuses across India.
The court also asked the federal agency investigating the killing to submit a report on Thursday on the status of its investigation. A police volunteer has been arrested and charged with the crime, but the family of the victim alleges it was a gang rape and more people were involved.
The suspension of work by doctors has affected thousands of patients across India. They are demanding more stringent laws to protect them from violence, including making any attack on on-duty medics an offense without the possibility of bail.
The rape and killing of the 31-year-old trainee doctor at Kolkata city’s R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital has also focused rage on the chronic issue of violence against women.
Thousands of people, particularly women, have marched in the streets of Kolkata and other Indian cities demanding justice for the doctor. They say women in India continue to face rising violence despite tough laws that were implemented following the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012.
That attack had inspired lawmakers to order harsher penalties for such crimes and set up fast-track courts dedicated to rape cases. The government also introduced the death penalty for repeat offenders.
Despite tougher legislation, sexual violence against women has remained a widespread problem in India.
In 2022, police recorded 31,516 reports of rape — a 20% jump from 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
World’s ‘largest solar precinct’ approved by Australian government
NEWCASTLE, Australia | An ambitious plan to build a massive solar farm in remote northern Australia that would transmit energy by submarine cable to Singapore is a step closer after the Australian government granted environmental approvals for the 30 billion Australian dollar project Wednesday.
Australian company Sun Cable plans to build a 12,400-hectare solar farm and transport electricity to the northern Australian city of Darwin via an 800-kilometer overhead transmission line, then on to large-scale industrial customers in Singapore through a 4,300-kilometer submarine cable.
The Australia-Asia PowerLink project aims to deliver up to six gigawatts of green electricity each year, which according to Australian Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek will “help turn Australia into a renewable energy superpower” and boost its economy.
“This massive project is a generation-defining piece of infrastructure,” Plibersek said in a written statement on Wednesday. “It will be the largest solar precinct in the world – and heralds Australia as the world leader in green energy.”
The project was initially backed by Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest and Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes. The plans were highlighted during a state visit by then Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as part of a ‘ Green Economy ‘ agreement in 2022.
In January 2023, the project collapsed when Sun Cable entered voluntary administration due to a funding dispute between Forrest and Cannon-Brookes. By May of that year, a consortium led by Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures acquired the company, finalizing the takeover in September 2023.
SunCable Australia’s managing director Cameron Garnsworthy said it was pleased to have cleared a major regulatory hurdle “and will now focus its efforts on the next stage of planning to advance the project towards a Final Investment Decision targeted by 2027.”
The company said electricity supply would commence in the early 2030s.
Energy has been a politically charged issue for nearly two decades in Australia, which is reliant on coal and gas as well as royalties from exporting those fuels to help underpin its economy.
This reliance on fossil fuels has historically made it one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters on a per capita basis.
Australia’s main opposition party in June announced plans to build the country’s first nuclear power plants as early as 2035, ensuring the major parties will be divided on how Australia curbs its greenhouse gas emissions at elections due within a year.
The parties haven’t gone to an election with the same carbon reduction policies since 2007.
“Australians have a choice between a renewable energy transition that’s already underway creating jobs and driving down prices; or paying for an expensive nuclear fantasy that may never happen,” Plibersek said.
Spanish woman believed to be the oldest person in the world has died at age 117
MADRID | Maria Branyas, an American-born Spaniard considered the world’s oldest person at 117 years old, has died, her family said on Tuesday.
In a post on Branyas’ X account, her family wrote in Catalan: “Maria Branyas has left us. She has gone the way she wanted: in her sleep, at peace, and without pain.”
The Gerontology Research Group, which validates details of people thought to be 110 or older, listed Branyas as the oldest known person in the world after the death of French nun Lucile Randon last year.
The next oldest person listed by the Gerontology Research Group is now Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, who is 116 years old.
Branyas was born in San Francisco on March 4, 1907. After living for some years in New Orleans, where her father founded a magazine, her family returned to Spain when she was young. Branyas said that she had memories of crossing the Atlantic Ocean during World War I.
Her X account is called “Super Catalan Grandma” and bears the description: “I am old, very old, but not an idiot.”
At age 113, Branyas tested positive for COVID-19 during the global pandemic, but avoided developing severe symptoms that claimed tens of thousands of older Spaniards.
At the time of her death she was living in a nursing home in Catalan town of Olot.
Her family wrote that Branyas told them days before her death: “I don’t know when, but very soon this long journey will come to an end. Death will find me worn down from having lived so much, but I want to meet it with a smile, feeling free and satisfied.”
Trinidad is redrawing its coat of arms to remove Columbus’ three famous ships
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico | Officials in Trinidad and Tobago are redrawing the island’s coat of arms for the first time since its creation in 1962 to remove references to European colonization in a move that many are celebrating.
Christopher Columbus’ three ships — the Pinta, the Niña and the Santa María — will be replaced with the steelpan, a popular percussion instrument that originated in the eastern Caribbean island.
Prime Minister Keith Rowley made the announcement on Sunday to a standing ovation, saying the coat of arms would be reconfigured before late September.
“That should signal that we are on our way to removing the colonial vestiges that we have in our constitution,” he said.
The current coat of arms also features hummingbirds, a palm tree and a scarlet ibis, Trinidad’s national bird.
Rowley’s announcement comes roughly a week before Trinidad and Tobago is scheduled to hold a public hearing on whether certain statues, signs and monuments should be removed.
The upcoming change is part of a worldwide movement that aims to eradicate symbols of the colonial era, with statues of Columbus removed or toppled across the U.S. in recent years.
Columbus arrived in Trinidad and Tobago in 1498.
—From AP reports
