MELBOURNE, March 14 -- Formula One's long-serving and widely respected race director Charlie Whiting died suddenly in Melbourne on Thursday, leaving a "huge void in the sport" just days before the opening Grand Prix of the season. The 66-year-old Briton, who had been at the helm since 1997 and was in charge of everything rules-related in the highly technical sport, suffered a pulmonary embolism, or blood clot. "It is with immense sadness that I learned of Charlie's sudden passing," FIA president Jean Todt said in a statement. "I have known Charlie Whiting for many years and he has been a great race director, a central and inimitable figure in Formula One who embodied the ethics and spirit of this fantastic sport," he said. "Formula 1 has lost a faithful friend and a charismatic ambassador in Charlie," he added. Whiting, a popular and pivotal figure in the sport, began his F1 career in 1977 working at the Hesketh team, then in the 1980s at Bernie Ecclestone's Brabham, where he was chief mechanic during the world title successes of Nelson Piquet in 1981 and 1983. He rose to chief engineer before becoming an integral part of organising the world championship after joining the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile in 1988. His broad role included overseeing track and car safety, procedural matters on Grand Prix weekends and starting the race itself. Whiting died just a day before he was scheduled to officiate at the first practice session of the season at Albert Park in Melbourne. It was not clear who would replace him. Throughout his career, Whiting was a driving force in pushing improved safety and played a key role in the introduction of the halo, the ring-like barrier fitted over drivers' heads as protection. Formula one managing director Ross Brawn said he was "devastated" at the news, after knowing Whiting all his racing life. "We worked as mechanics together, became friends and spent so much time together at race tracks across the world. I was filled with immense sadness when I heard the tragic news. I'm devastated," he said. "It is a great loss not only for me personally but also the entire Formula 1 family, the FIA and motorsport as a whole." Red Bull chief Christian Horner said Whiting's death would leave "a huge void in our sport". "He was a man with great integrity who performed a difficult role in a balanced way," he said. "At heart, he was a racer with his origins stretching back to his time at Hesketh and the early days of Brabham." The Haas team said the "entire motorsport community is in mourning", while Renault called him "one of the pillars and leaders of the sport". "His drive to ensure exciting, safe and fair racing was unparalleled and his passion will be sorely missed," Renault said. Racing great Mario Andretti said the news of Whiting's death was "totally shocking". "Charlie was a true giant in our sport and very possibly irreplaceable. RIP my friend," he said.
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ADELAIDE, January 29 -- A Dutch man who has driven 89,000km from Amsterdam to Adelaide in a small electric car says he is proving to Australians that electric vehicles are a viable alternative. Since March 2016, adventurer Wiebe Wakker has driven across 33 countries from Europe to the Middle East to south-east Asia and finally to Australia in a 2009 Volkswagen Golf, converted to electric. Over the past seven months he has continued the journey around Australia from Darwin down to Perth, across the Nullarbor to Newcastle, up to Queensland, and back down to Adelaide. After Adelaide, Wakker will finish once he reaches Melbourne and then Sydney. “I expected that by this time I would be exhausted and starving but I’m still having a lot of fun,” he told Guardian Australia from Adelaide. “I’m actually a little bit sad that I’m coming to the end of the journey.” By driving such extreme distances, Wakker said he hoped to bust Australian anxieties over the lack of charging stations and how far electric cars can travel. Australia has one of the slowest uptakes of electric vehicles in the developed world. In 2016, only 0.1% of all new car sales were electric, compared to 29% in Norway, 6% in Wakker’s native Netherlands and 1.5% in China and the UK. “In Australia the infrastructure for electric cars is still getting off the ground, but it’s already possible to drive all around Australia using charging stations,” he said. “A lot of people say they are just waiting for the price to come down. Others say the electric car is just not viable for Australia because the distances are so big, which is a bit weird I think. The average daily commute is just 20km or so. “My car is from 2009 and it has a limited range of 200km. Most cars that are available on the market now do 300km to 500km, so if you buy a current car in Australia you won’t have this problem. You can cover the whole country.” Wakker’s car, which he calls “Blue Bandit”, is a first-generation electric car that can be charged on domestic power sockets. “When I started this journey I thought I would mainly charge at people’s homes and whenever I get a charging station that will be a bonus,” he said. He said those with newer electric cars would find the journey even easier. The Royal Automobile Club has built a chain of charges in WA, and the Queensland statement government has built a 2,000km superhighway of chargers from Cairns to Coolangatta, which Wakker used. “Some states are supportive of installing infrastructure – Queensland has been doing very well. But it’s a pity that the [federal] government doesn’t really support it,” he said. “Most Western countries where electric cars are taking off, the government is giving a lot of incentives for electric cars.” In Norway, electric cars are exempt from import taxes and the 25% VAT, users are exempt from tolls and sometimes get free parking and the right to bus lanes. Despite his positive experience, Wakker said he found the journey between Glendambo to Coober Pedy in South Australia a challenge in his 2009 car. “It was 255km – I knew I wasn’t going to make it,” he said. “So I checked on my app to see how the wind was going, I saw that 12 hours later I would have a tailwind. I waited and drove very slow to save energy – 60km. I did 235km, which was my record. Just 20km from Coober Pedy I ran out, I put on a lot of sunscreen and waited for someone who could give me a tow. Someone came by within 10 minutes and said yes.” Australian diplomatic officials released a statement early Thursday morning that said “Chinese authorities informed the Australian Embassy in Beijing that they have detained Mr Yang Hengjun”. “The Department is seeking to clarify the nature of this detention and to obtain consular access to him, in accordance with the bilateral consular agreement, as a matter of priority,” the statement said. On Wednesday afternoon, The Age reported that Mr Yang Hengjun had been detained by a squad of 10 security agents shortly after arriving at an airport in China. His arrest was confirmed by a source who witnessed the incident, confirming the worst fears of those close to him.The confirmation that Mr Yang, a democracy activist and former Chinese diplomat, was taken by secret police on Saturday comes after days of silence, with friends and family increasingly concerned for his safety. He left New York for the southern Chinese city Guangzhou on January 18 despite friends warning the Australian citizen it was too dangerous for him to travel to China. Friends abroad have not heard from him since.
After arriving in Guangzhou on January 19, Mr Yang was prevented from boarding his connecting flight to Shanghai with his wife and her daughter. It is understood the agents swooped on the Australian citizen as he was awaiting processing in the foreigners' queue. The rapid arrest suggests that Mr Yang was on a list and authorities were prepared to strike should he set foot on Chinese soil. His wife, Yuan Rui Juan, was detained briefly but then permitted to go to Shanghai with her daughter. After leaving her child with family, it appears Ms Yuan proceeded to Beijing, where her husband may be detained. According to sources, she has now returned to Shanghai and has not been permitted to speak to Mr Yang. Mr Yang's detention comes amid heightened tensions between Beijing and Western governments, with fears his case might be connected to the detention of two Canadian men by Chinese secret police. SYDNEY, January 23 -- The Australian government is seeking information about the whereabouts of a prominent Chinese-Australian writer who has been out of contact after arriving in China over five days ago. Yang Hengjun, a dissident and former Chinese diplomat, was traveling with his wife and child. He flew from New York to the Chinese city of Guangzhou on January 18 and had originally planned to travel to Shanghai on January 19, but did not take the flight. His friends fear Yang has been detained by Chinese authorities. Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs said it is seeking information on the whereabouts of Yang, ABC News reported. Yang, a former employee of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, later gained Australian citizenship and became a prominent writer and an outspoken online political commentator. Two friends of Yang, the U.S.-based publisher Shi Wei and Feng Chongyi, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney, told The Washington Post they lost contact with the writer after he landed in China early on Saturday. Yang's wife told friends that she was questioned in Guangzhou and that her husband had been detained by state security, according to Feng. Yang's absence on both Chinese social media and Twitter, where he has more than 130,000 followers, has also raised concerns. China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to queries, ABC reported. During a 2011 trip to China, Yang had been unreachable for several days. He later said the whole episode was a "misunderstanding". The detention comes a month after China detained two Canadians in what was seen as retaliation for Canada's arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou at the behest of the United States. ROTTERDAM, January 19 -- Temperatures plunged down to -57.5 °C in Delyankir (Oykmyakonski District, Sakha Republic) in far eastern Russia last night. This part of Russia is the one of the coldest places on Earth and the coldest inhabited area – the (fairly) nearby Oymyakon holds the official lowest recorded temperature in the northern hemisphere: -67.7 °C on February 6, 1933. Meanwhile parts of Australia have been undergoing a scorching heat wave. Yesterday temperatures peaked at a blistering 48.3 °C at Tibooburra Airport (NSW), while a number of stations recorded peak temperatures above 45 °C. The official highest temperature in Australia recorded so far was 50.7 °C in Oodnadatta on January 2, 1960. The record for the highest minimum (night) temperature was broken last night: Noona (NSW) recorded a minimum temperature of 35.9 °C, as reported by the Bureau of Meteorology, New South Wales. SYDNEY, January 17 -- China's Wang Qiang reacts after a point against Serbia's Aleksandra Krunic during their women's singles match on day four of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne. Wang Qiang of China achieved her personal best in the Australia Open after beating Aleksandra Krunic of Serbia 6-2, 6-3 in the second round of women's singles on Thursday morning in Melbourne. The tournament's 21st seed Wang has attended the Australia Open since 2015 but lasted only one round all three times she's participated. In the third round, she will play against the winner of the match between Bianca Andreescu of Canada and the 13th seed Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia. BANGKOK, January 10 -- Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne was in Bangkok on Thursday after Canberra said it would consider giving asylum to an 18-year-old Saudi woman who fled to Thailand, saying she feared her family, which she accused of abuse, would kill her. Payne is also expected to discuss the case of a Bahraini footballer with Australian asylum status who has been jailed in Thailand and faces extradition back to Bahrain. Saudi teen Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun is currently staying in a Bangkok hotel under the care of the United Nation's refugee agency (UNHCR), which has been processing her application for refugee status ahead of possible resettlement in Australia. She has refused to meet her father and brother, who arrived in Bangkok this week to try to take her back to Saudi Arabia while denying accusations that her family was abusing her physically and emotionally, Thai authority said. Qunun was initially denied entry to Thailand when she arrived at the Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport on Saturday, intending to fly from there to Australia to seek asylum. She was later allowed to enter Bangkok on Monday evening by the Thai authorities after a tense 48 hours that saw her refuse to board a flight to Saudi Arabia and barricade herself inside a transit lounge hotel room, while the world watched the drama unfold on social media. Payne's visit will also put a spotlight on another refugee case, involving a Bahrain footballer Hakeem AlAraibi, who has refugee status in Australia but was arrested at Bangkok airport last year after arriving for his honeymoon. AlAraibi is currently being detained in a Thai prison awaiting the outcome of extradition proceedings to Bahrain where he was previously convicted and is wanted by the authority. Payne said in her statement that she will raise his case with the Thai government to find ways for his safe return to Australia. World football governing body FIFA says AlAraibi should be freed and allowed to return to Australia where he plays for Melbourne football club Pascoe Vale in the second tier of the Australian League. Activists have called on Thai authorities to "show humanity" to Alaraibi in the same way that they had to Qunun. Payne will meet with Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Prajin Juntong as well as holding a bilateral meeting with her Thai counterpart, Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai, as part of her first official visit to Thailandas foreign minister. SYDNEY, December 16 -- Australia has decided to formally recognize west Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but won't move its embassy until there's a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Saturday. Morrison said in a speech that Australia would recognize east Jerusalem as Palestine's capital only after a settlement has been reached on a two-state solution. The Australian Embassy won't be moved from Tel Aviv until such a time, he said. While the embassy move is delayed, Morrison said his government would establish a defense and trade office in Jerusalem and would also start looking for an appropriate site for the embassy. "The Australian government has decided that Australia now recognizes west Jerusalem, as the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of government, is the capital of Israel," Morrison said. He said the decision respects both a commitment to a two-state solution and long-standing respect for relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions. Australia becomes the third country to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, following the U.S. and Guatemala. Unlike its predecessors, however, Australia recognized only the western part of the city. The move, therefore, is unlikely to please either side entirely. For the Palestinians, it offers a partial resolution to an issue that they believe should be resolved through negotiations. That decision is softened, though, by recognizing their claim to east Jerusalem. The Israelis welcome recognition of Jerusalem as their capital, but the Australian decision falls far short of their claim to all of the city. Refusing to include east Jerusalem, home to the city's most important religious sites, is likely to upset Israeli nationalists who dominate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition. Israel's foreign ministry commended Australia's move as "a step in the right direction." In a statement, it also praised the Australian government's stance against anti-Semitism and its pro-Israel position at the U.N. Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat slammed Australia's "irresponsible policies" that led to the recognition. "The policies of this Australian administration have done nothing to advance the two-state solution," Erekat said in a statement, stressing the Palestinian view that the holy city remains a final-status issue in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which have run aground. Morrison had earlier floated the idea that Australia may follow the contentious U.S. move of relocating its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, but it was seen by many Australians as a political stunt. Critics called it a cynical attempt to win votes in a by-election in October for a Sydney seat with a high Jewish population. The consideration had sparked backlash from Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, threatening a free trade deal that has now been delayed. Opposition leader Bill Shorten said the decision to recognize west Jerusalem as Israel's capital but not move the embassy there was a "humiliating backdown" from the October by-election campaign. "What I'm worried is that Mr. Morrison put his political interest ahead of our national interest," Shorten told reporters. Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it in a move that is not internationally recognized. Israel considers east Jerusalem an indivisible part of its capital, while the Palestinians seek the area, home to the city's most sensitive holy sites, as the capital of a future state. PARIS, November 11 -- An Instagram model has accused the Louvre of cramping her style after a guard at the world-famous art gallery reportedly refused her entry over a skimpy outfit. Social media model Newsha Syeh, who has 243,000 followers on Instagram, claimed that while people at the Louvre may appreciate art, one guard was not best pleased with her sightseeing attire when she turned up in a revealing dress. Syeh, who hails from Australia, later posted an image of her outside the world-renowned art gallery in the offending dress. It shows the model in a black mesh dress with a plunging neckline.
BRISBANE, November 16 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has left the G20 summit in Australia early, live footage showed, after he came under intense pressure from the West over Moscow's alleged support for separatist fights in eastern Ukraine. But Putin said his decision to leave early had nothing to do with tensions over Ukraine. Instead, he said he had a long flight and wanted to catch up on some sleep ahead of a full day's work back home on Monday. "We need nine hours to fly from here to Vladivostok and another nine hours from Vladivostok to Moscow," he said in comments reported by the RIA Novosti news agency. "Then we need to get home and return to work on Monday. There's a need to sleep at least four to five hours." The two-day summit in Brisbane, which gathered leaders of the world's most powerful economies, was focused on economic growth but was to some extent overshadowed by the tension over Ukraine. Leaders at the event, who included US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, committed to reform measures aimed at lifting their collective growth by an extra 2.1 percent by 2018. "This will add more than $2 trillion to the global economy and create millions of jobs," the leaders said in the summit communique. The fact that the Russian President left before the official communique announcement could be seen as a snub, Al Jazeera's Andrew Thomas, reporting from Brisbane, said. "But it has been the case that he himself was snubbed by Western leaders," Thomas said. In unusually frank language between two leaders, Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, was reported to have told Putin as they shook hands to "get out of Ukraine". According to Jason MacDonald, Harper's spokesman, the prime minister told the Russian leader: "I guess I will shake your hand but I have only one thing to say to you: You need to get out of Ukraine." Russia accused of bullying British Prime Minister David Cameron was among other leaders who publicly criticised Russia, accusing it of "bullying a smaller state in Europe" and warning that Moscow would face further sanctions if it continues "destabilising Ukraine". "I think what has been good about this G20 is that a very clear message has been delivered by the countries of the European Union and America to Russia about how we're going to approach this in the months and years ahead," Cameron told a news conference after the summit. Putin, in remarks made before he left, thanked Tony Abbott for hosting the event, despite the Australian prime minister threatening to confront him over the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine in July. The West says the Malaysia Airlines plane was downed by pro-Russian rebels, using a missile supplied by Russia. Moscow denies the charges. The plane was carrying 298 people, including 38 Australian citizens and residents. The announcement of Sunday's communique was delayed about an hour after Putin left. "These events usually take place on time. It could be that Western leaders were still trying to formulate their response to his early departure," SYDNEY, October 23 -- Australian authorities have alerted Indonesia that wreckage from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may wash up on its coastline. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the search for the aircraft off the coast of Western Australia, said in its latest operational update on Wednesday that floating debris from the aircraft may have drifted west away from Australia 's western coastline and towards Indonesia. The missing plane disappeared in March with 239 people on board, and despite an extensive search, there has been no sign of any part of the aircraft. ATSB said it had informed Indonesian authorities about finding possible aircraft debris. The bureau said members of the Australian public have reported finding material washed up on the Australian coastline thinking it was the MH370. "The ATSB reviews all of this correspondence carefully, but drift modelling undertaken by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority has suggested that if there were any floating debris, it is far more likely to have traveled west, away from the coastline of Australia," the ATSB said. A new underwater search began in October and so far approximately 1,200 square km of the ocean floor has been covered. The search is focusing on a long, narrow arc in the southern Indian Ocean where MH370 made its last satellite communication. The updated, highest probability search area is 60,000 square km and is expected to take vessels one year to cover. Earlier this month, ATSB chief commissioner Martin Dolan told local media that while there was no certainty, there was a "high probability" that the wreckage of the plane would be found in the new search area. "There are a range of scenarios that would fit the data, it's just that some are more likely than others and there is a high probability that the aircraft will be found close to the ark," Dolan said. CANBERRA, October 20 -- Parliament House backtracks on controversial decision to make women covering their faces sit in separate enclosures. Australia's parliament has abandoned amid an outcry a controversial plan to make women wearing the niqab or the face veil sit in separate glassed public enclosure in the building due to security concerns. The backdown on Monday followed a decision on October 2 to seat people wearing face coverings in areas normally reserved for noisy school children while visiting parliament. It followed heated debate about potential security risks since the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) organisation. The ruling was condemned by human rights and race discrimination groups, and Prime Minister Tony Abbott asked that it be reconsidered. Race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane told Fairfax Media the original ruling meant Muslim women were being treated differently to non-Muslim women. "No-one should be treated like a second-class citizen, not least in the parliament," he said. "I have yet to see any expert opinion or analysis to date which indicates that the burqa or the niqab represents an additional or special security threat." 'No security reason' Labor opposition member Tony Burke welcomed the backdown but said the initial decision should never have been made. "What possessed them to think that segregation was a good idea?" he said. "Segregation was previously introduced, apparently, with no security advice attached to it and no security reason attached to it." The October 2 announcement was made a few hours before the end of the final sitting day of Parliament's last two-week session and had no practical effect. A statement announcing the reversal of the ban said face coverings would have to be removed temporarily at the security check point at the front door so that staff could "identify any person who may have been banned from entering Parliament House or who may be known, or discovered, to be a security risk.'' Security has increased at Parliament House since the government stepped up its terror warning to the second-highest level on a four-tier scale last month in response to the domestic threat posed by supporters of ISIS. Australia is participating in the US-led coalition against the fighters in Iraq. |
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