44 2GM Saturday September 5 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
Hopes fade of finding
Beirut blast survivors
Lebanon Rescue teams in Beirut
were beginning to lose hope that
they would find a child buried in
rubble a month after the huge
explosion in the port. Parts of a
collapsed building where thermal
imaging cameras picked out two
bodies — one with signs of life —
have been cleared. Nothing was
found under the rubble and work
paused while a fresh scan was
taken. On Thursday scans had
showed a breathing rate of about
18 a minute. By yesterday this
had dropped to seven or eight.
More than 190 people were
killed and 6,000 injured when
ammonium nitrate blew up in a
warehouse on August 4. Seven
people are still missing.Serbia and Kosovo
agree economic deal
United States President Trump
said that Serbia and Kosovo have
normalised economic relations in
US-brokered talks. As part of the
agreement, a boost for Mr Trump
before November’s election, Serbia
will move its Israeli embassy to
Jerusalem, the first European
nation and only the third in the
world to do so. Kosovo, which is
predominantly Muslim, agreed to
mutual recognition with Israel.Dutch rightwinger’s
hate conviction upheld
Netherlands An appeals court has
upheld the conviction of the
right-wing politician Geert
Wilders for insulting Moroccans in- It overturned his conviction
for inciting discrimination. The
Party for Freedom leader had
asked supporters at an event
whether they wanted more or
fewer Moroccans in the country
and said “We’ll take care of it”
when they chanted “Fewer!” (AP)
New tunnel speeds up
journey through Alps
Switzerland The 15.4km-long
Ceneri rail tunnel has opened to
link Bellinzona and Lugano,
completing a new corridor
through the Alps for freight
between northern and southern
Europe. As well as reducing lorry
traffic on Alpine roads, the route
will make passenger journeys
faster, with trains between Zurich
and Milan taking three hours, a
reduction of 40 minutes. (AFP)US military invited to
build base in Pacific
Palau The small Pacific nation of
Palau has invited the United
States to build military bases on
its islands in a sign of growing
strategic competition in the
region between the West and
China. President Remengesau
made the suggestion in a letter to
Mark Esper, the American
defence secretary. Palau has been
fully independent since 1994 and
is protected by the US.15th century fish found
preserved in shipwreck
Sweden A 6ft sturgeon has been
found preserved in a barrel inside
the wreck of a 500-year-old
warship excavated by a team from
Lund University. King Hans of
Denmark’s Gribshunden, sank in
1495 off Ronneby, a town in
Sweden that was then part of
Denmark. Low oxygen levels and
a clay seabed in the Baltic aided
the preservation, the Journal of
Archaeological Science said. (AFP)Nato said yesterday there was no ques-
tion that Alexei Navalny had been poi-
soned with novichok and called on
Russia to disclose to international
authorities its programme for the pro-
duction of the nerve agent.
“There is proof beyond doubt that Mr
Navalny was poisoned using a military-
grade nerve agent from the novichok
group. The use of such a weapon is hor-
rific,” said Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato
secretary-general. “Any use of chemi-
cal weapons shows a total disrespect for
human lives and is an unacceptable
breach of international laws and rules.
“Nato allies agree that Russia now
has serious questions it must answer.
The Russian government must fully
co-operate with the Organisation for
the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
[OPCW] on an impartial international
investigation,” he said. Mr Navalny, 44,
Nato urges Moscow to release
details of novichok programme
a critic of the Kremlin, collapsed on
August 20 during a flight from Siberia
to Moscow. He was later flown to Berlin
where he is still in a serious condition.
Angela Merkel, the German chancel-
lor, said this week tests showed that the
opposition politician was targeted with
novichok, the same type of poison used
to try to kill Sergei Skripal, a former
Russian spy, in Salisbury in 2018.
Western experts believe that novi-
chok, or “newcomer”, nerve agents
were developed by the Soviet Union at
the end of the Cold War. The Kremlin
insists that they were never produced in
Russia.
A number of Russian scientists have,
however, admitted working on Mos-
cow’s novichok programme during the
1990s. Among them is Leonid Rink, a
professor who has previously said that
Russian specialists creating the novi-
chok group of nerve agents achieved
“very good results”.
Experts say that lax security at Rus-sian chemical weapons facilities after
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
would have enabled criminal groups to
get their hands on small doses of the
poison. Mr Rink received a one-year
suspended prison sentence in 1995 after
admitting that he had sold the poison to
Chechen gangsters. It was used to kill a
banker and his secretary.
“It’s possible that [Mr Navalny’s poi-
soners] may have used old supplies —
maybe even reserves that I created my-
self,” Vladimir Uglev, another one of the
developers of novichok, told the Medu-
za news website.
The Kremlin insists that no poisons
were detected in Mr Navalny’s body
during his two-day stay at a hospital in
Omsk, Siberia. It has described allega-
tions that Russian agents targeted him
for his opposition to President Putin as
“empty noise”. Interfax reported that
Russia had not yet completed all of the
scientific tests connected with the case.
The chief toxicologist in Omsk said thatMr Navalny’s condition could have de-
teriorated because of stress, fatigue or
excess dieting.
German doctors detected traces of
novichok in Mr Navalny’s blood, skin,
urine and on a water bottle from which
he drank, Der Spiegel, the German news
magazine, said yesterday.
Nato’s statement came shortly after a
court in Moscow dismissed a complaint
by Mr Navalny’s FBK anti-corruption
foundation about Russia’s refusal to
open a criminal investigation.
The FBK released a report yesterday
on corruption in the Tomsk area, which
Mr Navalny was working on before he
fell ill. It alleges that officials loyal to the
Kremlin have taken control of the area’s
public utilities. Allies of Mr Navalny say
it is unlikely that it would have prompt-
ed officials in Tomsk to try to kill him.
“No regional official would have dared
an attempt on Alexei’s life without a dir-
ect order from Putin,” Ksenia Fadeyeva,
an ally of the opposition leader, said.Russia
Marc Bennetts Moscow
A wiser and less capricious monarch
than Maha Vajiralongkorn, the king of
Thailand, would be keeping his head
down. In the past few weeks he has
faced something unknown in modern
Thai history: direct and outspoken
criticism of the monarchy.
Students have drafted a list of
demands to curb his power and place
him under the law. Protesters have
marched in their support; despite some
arrests, slogans that once would have
resulted in swift arrest and lengthy
imprisonment have gone unpunished.
Yet far from heeding the warnings,
Vajiralongkorn, 68, has continued to
act with the bizarre impulsiveness for
tion, as a violent-tempered womaniser
who spends much of his time living with
his wife, as well as his consort, at a luxu-
ry hotel in Germany.
In June, General Prayuth, the prime
minister, revealed that Vajiralongkorn
had told him not to pursue any more
prosecutions for the crime of lèse-ma-
jesté, or insulting the monarchy.
It was a courageous move, nonethe-
less, for a 22-year-old female student
named Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul
to stand up in the campus of Thamma-
sat University in Bangkok last month
and read out ten demands, including
removing the king’s legal immunity.
Smaller demonstrations have
continued since the university rally; a
big one is planned on September 19, the
anniversary of a military coup in 2006.Thailand
Kenneth Denby
RAJESH KUMAR SINGH/APPhilandering king angers critics by welcoming back mistress
which he has become notorious. Thai-
land’s solemn Royal Gazette recounted
the latest episode in the royal soap
opera this week with the announce-
ment that Sineenatra Wongvajirab-
hakdi, a former nurse who used to
hold the title of royal consort, was
being restored to favour 11 months
after being locked up without trial
for “disloyalty”.
It was not just that Ms Sineena-
tra, 35, was forgiven, the Ga-
zette explained in a statement
like something out of George
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four— she had never been in trouble in the
first place. “It will be regarded that she
was never stripped of the royal consort
title, military ranks and royal decora-
tions,” the Gazette reported.
The absurdity of this might
seem comic, but for many Thais it
is a symptom of the lack of ac-
countability at the core of the
country’s royal family.
For decades the mildest criti-
cism of the king or his family
could be punished by 15
years in prison. Under the
widely respected king
Bhumibol Adulyadej, who
died in 2016, many Thais
accepted this. His son Vaji-
ralongkorn, however, has
a very different reputa-Sineenatra
Wongvajirabhakdi is back
in favour as royal consort
after being locked upA day on the water The swollen Ganges caused flooding in Prayagraj, northeast India, after heavy monsoon rains. The river was expected to rise another 10cm today