分类： society

A young male wolf that broke free from a South Korean theme park zoo remained unaccounted for on Thursday, forcing local education officials to shutter a nearby elementary school out of public safety concerns, as hundreds of emergency personnel continue a widespread manhunt for the animal.

The escape unfolded Wednesday at a zoo located within a Daejeon theme park, a major metropolitan city roughly 150 kilometers south of the capital Seoul. Weighing approximately 30 kilograms, the 2024-born wolf escaped after digging under and damaging the zoo’s perimeter fence, according to officials from Daejeon Fire Headquarters. Local media has released public imagery showing the predator wandering openly along a public road in the area.

In response to the breach, authorities assembled a joint search team of more than 300 people, drawing resources from local fire departments, law enforcement agencies, and military personnel. The operation hit an early setback Thursday, however, when ongoing heavy rain forced crews to retrieve deployed search drones, cutting off a key aerial surveillance tool for tracking the animal.

Confirming the school closure, a spokesperson for the Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education told Agence France-Presse that Daejeon Sanseong Elementary School suspended all classes Thursday in direct response to the escape. The decision comes as local communities remain on high alert for the loose wild animal.

The incident marks the latest high-profile animal escape from a South Korean zoo in less than two years. In 2023, a male zebra named Sero captured global public attention after breaking out of a Seoul zoo and roaming through the city’s residential and commercial streets. That incident ended without harm to the zebra or the public, after Sero was cornered in a narrow alleyway, tranquilized safely, and returned uninjured to his enclosure.

As the 2025 Asian Games in Aichi and Nagoya draw near, Japanese sports authorities are sending a clear message to internet trolls targeting competing athletes: all abusive activity will be closely monitored and acted upon. After decades of unaddressed harm to competitors across sports, Japan has finally launched a multi-pronged strategy to curb online harassment, a crisis that has devastated athletes’ mental health, impaired on-field performance, and forced many talented competitors to walk away from their careers entirely.

Online abuse is not a uniquely Japanese problem: athletes across every sport and every region have faced dehumanizing, threatening comments on social media for years. But Japan’s response, coming later than many global initiatives, builds on lessons learned from major international events to create a structured framework for protection. At the 2025 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) ran its first large-scale social media monitoring program, testing the model ahead of the home Asian Games. Six staff based in Milan and 22 working from Tokyo conducted 24/7 checks for abusive content targeting Japanese athletes, combining manual reviews with AI-powered search tools to identify harmful posts. The team collaborated directly with major social platforms including Meta — owner of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — and domestic tech giant LINE Yahoo to remove violating content. Across the course of the Games, the JOC requested the removal of nearly 2,000 abusive posts, successfully securing the takedown of approximately 600 of the most harmful entries.

This successful test run has paved the way for expanded protection at the upcoming Asian Games. Not only will the JOC repeat its monitoring program for Japanese athletes, but event organizers are rolling out a broader initiative to protect competitors from all participating nations. For JOC officials, the pilot program at the Milan-Cortina Games provided invaluable insight into the scale and nature of online harassment targeting athletes. “We now understand what kinds of comments appear on a daily basis and how they upset athletes,” said JOC official Hirofumi Takeshita. “We’ve learned how much energy we need to devote to this.”

JOC official Misa Chida, who participated in the Milan-Cortina monitoring effort, explained that even a single harsh comment can cause lasting harm. Many athletes respond by stepping back from social media entirely to avoid abuse — a choice that means they also miss out on the overwhelming majority of positive, supportive messages from fans. “Even a single negative comment can cut deeply,” Chida told AFP. “Athletes don’t want to see things like that, so a lot of them choose not to look at social media at all, and that means they miss the 99 percent of messages that are supportive. That’s a real shame.” Chida added that as more athletes and support staff become aware of these protection initiatives, it directly boosts competitors’ psychological safety, letting them focus on competition rather than fearing online harassment.

Beyond in-house monitoring, Japan has added legal support for athletes facing abuse, a step that experts say fills a long-empty gap in the country’s sports ecosystem. Lawyer Shun Takahashi leads a seven-person legal group founded in 2024 specifically to support athletes targeted by online trolls. Takahashi notes that Japan was relatively slow to adopt formal protections compared to other nations, and many athletes face cultural barriers to speaking out about abuse. Many are raised with the expectation that they must always project strength, leading to fears that acknowledging the harm of harassment will lead coaches to see them as unfit to compete and bench them. Takahashi’s group serves as a confidential “safe haven” for athletes to seek support without risking their careers.

One high-profile case the group supported underscores the severity of the abuse many athletes face: professional baseball player Taiki Sekine took legal action against online abusers last year after receiving threatening messages including “I hope your whole family dies in an accident”. Sekine has secured multiple civil settlements and filed criminal complaints against the worst offenders, a process that was simplified by the fact that all abusers in the case were based in Japan. Cross-border abuse cases remain far harder to prosecute, a persistent challenge for global anti-harassment efforts. Takahashi says that visible legal action carries a strong deterrent effect, particularly since most online trolls are teenagers or young adults who often underestimate the legal consequences of their actions. “It makes them realise the risk involved,” he explained.

While Japan’s new proactive approach marks a major shift from years of inaction, stakeholders across the board agree that there is still a long way to go to fully solve the problem. During the Milan-Cortina monitoring program, less than a third of the posts the JOC requested to be removed were actually taken down by social media companies. Though Takeshita emphasized that tech platforms have been cooperative, he acknowledged that platform’s standards for what counts as offensive content often do not align with the JOC’s perspective. “Yes, there was a gap, but it was a gap that we were able to identify by actually doing this work,” he said. “That’s better than having an unidentified gap that never gets bridged. Now that we know where the differences lie, we can work to close them.”

Japan’s effort joins a growing global movement to protect athletes from online abuse: the International Olympic Committee ran a multi-language monitoring program covering more than 35 languages at the 2024 Paris Games, and similar initiatives have been launched by governing bodies in football and tennis. As the Asian Games approach, Japan’s expanding framework sets a new example for regional event organizers, while highlighting ongoing work needed to align platform policies with athlete protection needs.

Almost a year after the body of 49-year-old father-of-two Chris Robertson was discovered in a suburban South Australian workshop, the state’s police investigation has yielded a major new development: four additional people have been taken into custody in connection with the killing, joining a former Hells Angel already charged with murder.

Robertson, a resident of the coastal suburb of Moana, was last seen alive by the public on September 25 last year – the date of Australian Football League’s annual premiership grand final. Three days after that public appearance, on September 30, his remains were found inside an industrial workshop on O’Sullivan Beach Road in Lonsdale. Post-mortem analysis confirmed his death was the result of homicide, with fatal injuries matching those sustained in a violent assault. The case was immediately upgraded to a major criminal investigation, drawing senior detective resources from across the region.

The first major break in the case came in December 2023, nearly three months after Robertson’s body was found. Investigators had spent weeks tracing a grey Mitsubishi Triton that Robertson was believed to have been traveling in as a passenger on the day he was last seen; the vehicle was finally located in late November. That breakthrough set the stage for the first arrest: 30-year-old Dylan Danaher, a former member of the Hells Angel outlaw motorcycle club from Happy Valley, who was formally charged with murder. Danaher has remained in custody since his arrest, and is scheduled to next appear before the Adelaide Magistrates Court on July 7 this year.

Now, the investigation has expanded further, with police taking four more people into custody, all of whom face charges linked to the murder and efforts to derail the official inquiry. All four suspects were denied bail following their arrest, and are set to make their initial court appearances at Adelaide Magistrates Court on Thursday.

The charges against the newly arrested four vary in severity. A 33-year-old woman from Happy Valley faces the most counts: two charges of assisting an offender, alongside one count of making threats or carrying out reprisals against people connected to the criminal investigation. A 61-year-old man, also from Happy Valley, has been charged with two counts of assisting the person responsible for the killing. Two younger men from Christies Beach – a 29-year-old and a 27-year-old – each face one count of threats or reprisals against investigation participants.

Detective Superintendent Darren Fielke, the senior officer leading the investigation, made a public statement Wednesday reaffirming police commitment to pursuing all parties linked to the crime. “We will not hesitate to investigate offending of this nature and will vigorously pursue prosecutions against any person found to be assisting those responsible, interfering with investigations or threatening witnesses,” Fielke said, signaling that the inquiry may still be open to further arrests as new evidence emerges.

The case has drawn sustained public attention in South Australia, due to its link to the high-profile AFL grand final day and the connection to an outlaw motorcycle club member already charged in the killing.

A coordinated, multi-agency law enforcement crackdown on worker exploitation and illegal business practices has led to surprise inspections of 18 vineyards across three of Australia’s most celebrated wine-growing regions, law enforcement officials confirmed this week. Codenamed Operation Zephyr, the initiative brings together the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), and Australian Border Force (ABF) to root out systemic unlawful activity in South Australia’s iconic wine districts of Barossa Valley, Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale. The targeted vineyards have not been publicly named as the investigation remains ongoing.

The operation was launched to address longstanding concerns about unfair and illegal labor practices in Australia’s viticulture sector, an industry that employs thousands of seasonal and casual workers across the country. Investigators are specifically probing a range of violations, including underpayment of wages, penalty rates and superannuation entitlements, failure to provide mandatory pay slips to employees, and unreported cash-in-hand (off-the-books) payments that cut government revenue and leave workers without legal protections. The probe also covers broader regulatory noncompliance, such as failure to lodge tax returns and activity statements, incorrect reporting of business income and expenses, refusal to remit Pay as You Go Withholding tax, and breaches of the Migration Act, including the exploitation of migrant workers and unlawful immigration assistance.

ATO Assistant Commissioner Tony Golding emphasized that these illegal shortcuts do not just harm individual workers—they damage the reputation of the entire Australian wine industry, which relies on global consumer trust and ethical production standards. “Paying workers off the books, ignoring ATO obligations and using disreputable labour hire providers doesn’t just break the law, it erodes trust in the viticulture industry which employs thousands of people across Australia,” Golding said. He warned vineyard owners against turning a blind eye to problematic practices from contracted labour hire firms, noting that implausibly low labour costs almost always signal illegal activity. “In the end, those shortcuts don’t just exploit workers, they leave the whole industry with sour grapes,” he added.

FWO Assistant Director Anna Booth echoed Golding’s concerns, pointing out that the South Australian wine sector is globally celebrated for its high-quality produce, but labor standards have not always matched that reputation. “We know there are a large number of vulnerable workers employed in grape-picking, packing and pruning vineyards. Not paying workers their entitlements cannot be part of any grower’s business model,” Booth said. ABF Commander John Taylor reinforced the joint agencies’ commitment to ending worker exploitation and visa abuse, sending a clear warning to noncompliant employers. “Exploiting vulnerable workers or misusing the visa system is unacceptable and the consequences can be serious,” Taylor said. “Operations like this send a clear message: Australia is not a safe haven for worker exploitation or visa abuse.”

As of the latest update, the investigation remains active, with authorities yet to announce any formal charges or penalties following the surprise inspections.