32 2GM Monday February 21 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
Ethiopia presses the
button on dam power
Ethiopia The first stage of the
£3.1 billion Grand Ethiopian
Renaissance Dam on the Blue
Nile came into service yesterday,
with Sudan and Egypt, both
downstream of the project,
worried about reduced water
flow. Abiy Ahmed, the prime
minister of Ethiopia, pressed
buttons to begin the generation of
power at the largest hydroelectric
scheme in Africa. Eventually the
dam will produce more than
5,000 megawatts of electricity, at
least double the country’s present
output. Cairo denounced the
start-up, saying that Ethiopia was
“persisting in its violations”
of a declaration signed by the
three nations in 2015. (AFP)Seven children killed in
airstrike on ‘bandits’
Nigeria An airstrike by Nigeria’s
armed forces targeting “armed
bandits” killed four children and
wounded eight “by mistake” in
neighbouring Niger. Three of the
injured youngsters died later,
Chaibou Aboubacar, governor of
Maradi, said. “The parents were
at a ceremony and the children
were probably playing” when the
aircraft “missed their target”, he
said. (AFP)$500m US aid grant
triggers protest
Nepal Protesters and the police
clashed outside parliament as
Nepal’s government presented an
aid grant of $500 million from the
United States for approval. It is
opposed by two communist
parties that are part of the
coalition government, who say it
threatens Nepal’s sovereignty.
The money is meant to be used to
improve roads and build power
transmission lines. (AP)Electric car batteries
keep ship fire burning
The Azores Firefighters are
battling a blaze that broke out on
Wednesday on a ship carrying
luxury cars. The 22 crew
members have been evacuated
from the Felicity Ace, which is
adrift off the Azores. Some of the
4,000 cars on board, including
Porsches, Audis and Bentleys, are
electric, with lithium-ion batteries
that are “keeping the fire alive”, an
island port official said. (Reuters)Investigation prompted
by denial of miracle
Egypt The public prosecutor has
begun an investigation into a
journalist after he questioned a
miracle. Ibrahim Issa stated that
the mystical night journey of the
Prophet Muhammad from Mecca
to Jerusalem, where he ascended
to the heavens, was a “delusional
story”. Egypt’s highest theological
authority said the journey
“definitely happened and cannot
be denied in any way”. (AFP)Covid and corruption to
dominate new election
Malta Robert Abela, the prime
minister, has called a general
election for March 26, with the
campaign likely to be dominated
by the reaction to Covid-19 and
the fight against corruption. He
has led the country since Joseph
Muscat quit after a political crisis
over the murder of Daphne
Caruana Galizia, the journalist.
Polls suggest Abela’s Labour party
will win a third term. (AFP)Australia’s prime minister has accused
China of intimidation after one of its
ships shone a military-grade laser at an
Australian air force crew.
The Chinese Luyang-class guided
missile destroyer sailing off the north
coast of Australia aimed the laser at a
low-flying Royal Australian Air Force
P8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft,
which was conducting surveillance on
the Chinese vessel.
The incident occurred in the early
hours of Thursday as the destroyer
sailed through the Arafura Sea
between Australia’s Northern Territory
and Papua New Guinea.
Scott Morrison, the prime minister,
said that his government had made
official representations to Beijing over
the incident. “I can see it no other way
than an act of intimidation, one that
is unprovoked, unwarranted. And
Australia will never accept such acts of
intimidation,” he said yesterday. “I have
no doubt that if... it was done to a
Chinese surveillance aircraft, then
people could guess what the reaction to
that would have been. It was a danger-
ous act.”
Military-grade lasers, occasionally
known as dazzlers, emit a powerful
Australia condemns China
after laser shone at pilots
beam of light that can travel great
distances and can be used to illuminate
aircraft cockpits, temporarily blinding
pilots. Australian navy helicopter pilots
reported being hit by lasers while
exercising in the South China Sea in
2019, forcing them to land near by as a
precaution. In 2018 the United States
issued a formal complaint to the
Chinese government over the use of
military-grade lasers directed at air-
craft, which resulted in eye injuries to
two American pilots.
The Morrison government is putting
national security at centre stage as it
seeks to brand the opposition Labor
Party and Anthony Albanese, its
leader, as soft on China before a general
election in May that polls favour Labor
to win.
Morrison, 53, told parliament last
week that the Chinese government had
“picked their horse”, in reference to
Albanese, and he labelled Richard
Marles, Labor’s deputy leader, a “Man-
churian candidate”. The term comes
from the book and film of the same
name, a political thriller about the son
of a prominent US political family who
is brainwashed into being an unwitting
assassin for a communist conspiracy.
Yesterday Morrison was quick to
utilise the Chinese navy’s use of a laser
against the air force crew to bolster hisgovernment’s national security creden-
tials, saying that it “strengthens” his re-
solve to continue increasing Australia’s
resilience. “We’ve shown that resolve,
we’ve shown that strength and we’ve
done it in the face of criticism, including
here in our own country from those
who think an appeasement path should
be taken,” Morrison said.
Peter Dutton, the defence minister,
confirmed that the Australian aircraft
had the Chinese destroyer under sur-
veillance when the flight crew were hit
by the laser. “They’re in our economic
zone, so they’re in Australian waters, so
you would expect that we would con-
duct surveillance flights — as they
would do if our vessels are charting
through the South China Sea or
elsewhere closer to mainland China,”
he said.
China is Australia’s largest export
market, with overall exports increasing
by 21 per cent to about £98 billion in
2021, largely because of increasing iron
ore exports and rising ore prices. Al-
though China is heavily reliant on iron
ore from Australia, it has taken action to
curb other Australian exports, notably
coal, wine and seafoods. This has been
viewed as retaliation for Australia’s
close security relationship with the US
and its criticisms of the Communist
Party’s human rights record.Australia
Bernard Lagan Sydney
Taiwan is to carry out military exercises
to practise the defence of some of its
isolated islands, amid fears that a
Russian invasion of Ukraine could be
used by China to hasten its own claim
on the self-governing territory.
It will carry out live firing exercises
involving artillery, missiles and ground
troops on Dongyin, Quemoy and Peng-
hu. The seizure of one or more of the
islands has been seen as a way that Bei-
jing might embark upon an invasion.
Beijing considers Taiwan, which split
from China after the civil war of 1949, as
a renegade province. President Xi has
declared that its reunification is part of
his goal of national rejuvenation, to be
achieved by the middle of the century.
The island’s president, Tsai Ing-wen,
created a task force to consider the
ways that Russia’s threats to Ukraine’s
independence might help China. These
fears were cemented when President
Putin met Xi on the fringes of the
Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.
“The Russian side reaffirms its
support for the One-China principle,
confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable
part of China and opposes any forms of
independence of Taiwan,” the two
leaders said in a joint statement.Ukraine crisis
will spur Xi,
Taiwan fears
Ta i w a n
Richard Lloyd Parry Asia EditorTHE ASAHI SHIMBUN/GETTY IMAGES; RICHARD SPENCER FOR THE TIMESF
ive years ago its
blackened shell
was a symbol of the
destruction Islamic
State had brought
to Iraq (Richard Spencer
writes). Now the library of
Mosul University, once one
of the Middle East’s finest,
has reopened its doors as
the city boasts a revival it
says should be a model for
the rest of the country.
The renovation took two
years and is part of a
reconstruction of the
university that has required
the removal or detonation
of the remains of 3,000
bombs and 200 missiles.
The library was struck by
seven missiles fired by the
US-led coalition as it helped
the Iraqi army to recapture
the city. Isis then set it on
fire, destroying nearly all of
its remaining million books.
With the foundationsdamaged, it had been
feared that the library may
have to be totally rebuilt,
but a team supervised by
the United Nations
Development Programme
was able to use the
columns that remained as a
base.
The new building has a
collection of only 60,000
books so far, of which a
third have been provided by
Book Aid, a British charity.
Alaa Hamdon, a Mosulphysics professor who set
up the Mosul Book Bridge
appeal, said its target was to
have 200,000 on shelves by
the end of 2024.
Hamdon said that
Saturday’s reopening was
an emotional moment:
“When I returned to the
university in 2017 after it
was liberated I stood on the
steps and cried. I spoke at
the London Book Fair in
2019 and said it was my
dream to stand there againand see it open. So this is
my dream.”
Isis seized Mosul in 2014
and it was from the pulpit of
the Grand al-Nuri Mosque
that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
its leader, declared his
“caliphate”. The group later
blew up the mosque and its
leaning minaret amid thenear-complete destruction
of Mosul’s old city.
While reconstruction
work also has begun there,
it is further behind and it is
the university, in the
eastern, modern half of the
city, that has become a
symbol of Mosul’s revival.
The area around it is now
full of cafés, restaurants and
shopping malls. The
university has 50,000
students enrolled, higher
than before Isis took over.A million books were lost
when Isis fighters set fire to
the bombed library in Mosul.
It reopened at the weekendUniversity
library is a
model for
Iraq revival
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