分类： world

A devastating scuba diving accident in a remote deep underwater cave off the Maldives has left five Italian divers dead, with rescue teams launching a dangerous, high-priority search operation Friday to recover the four remaining missing bodies. The tragedy unfolded Thursday morning, when the group — which included one certified diving instructor — set out to explore an uncharted cave system near Alimathaa in the Vaavu Atoll, an area marked by extreme depth that even experienced divers avoid under normal circumstances.

Initial reports confirmed the divers failed to resurface by midday Thursday, triggering an immediate large-scale search and rescue deployment. Maldivian authorities mobilized coast guard vessels, search aircraft, and specialized dive teams to the accident site, where they recovered the first victim’s body from approximately 60 meters (200 feet) below the ocean surface late Thursday. An initial search sweep for the remaining four divers, who are believed to be trapped inside the deep cave, returned no results.

Maldivian presidential spokesperson Mohamed Hussain Shareef emphasized the extreme risks of the search area, noting that the cave reaches such extreme depths that even divers with top-tier commercial equipment do not attempt entry. Italy’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the accident occurred while the group explored cave systems at around 50 meters (164 feet) depth, adding that the full circumstances of the fatal incident remain under active investigation.

Complicating recovery efforts, a yellow weather alert was already in effect for the region Thursday, with rough ocean conditions and poor water visibility persisting into Friday. Search teams were scheduled to conduct a preliminary assessment dive Friday to map access to the cave, but adverse weather could push back the recovery timeline, Italian officials confirmed. Italy’s ambassador to the Maldives has already joined the search mission on-site, and a specialist Italian diving expert has been deployed to assist Maldivian coast guard and search vessels with the operation. Maldivian officials have stated they will not hesitate to request additional international support if the complex mission requires it.

The Italian Embassy in the Maldives has been in direct contact with the victims’ families, who have been updated on the status of the recovery mission and are receiving consular assistance. As of Friday, no further details on the identities of the victims have been released to the public, and the joint investigation into the accident is ongoing. The Maldivian government has maintained regular communication with Italian authorities throughout the response to the incident.

When discussions turn to World War II concentration and internment camps, Auschwitz, the haunting symbol of Nazi atrocities in Europe, immediately comes to mind for most people. Half a world away, however, in China’s eastern Shandong Province, sits a lesser-known site that holds a equally powerful story of suffering, courage, cross-cultural solidarity and enduring hope for peace: the former Weihsien Internment Camp, now preserved at the Courtyard of the Happy Way in Weifang.

The site’s origins stretch back to 1882, when an American missionary built a sprawling complex that housed a church, school, and hospital. After Japan launched its full-scale invasion of China during World War II, the occupying Japanese military seized the property and repurposed it into an internment camp to detain non-Chinese citizens from Allied nations. Established in retaliation for the United States’ internment of Japanese and Japanese American civilians following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the camp would go on to hold more than 2,000 civilians from 30 different Allied countries, making it the largest Allied civilian internment camp in Asia during the war.

Unlike the extensively documented Nazi concentration camps of Europe, the Weihsien Internment Camp’s history has remained largely out of global public consciousness, even for descendants of those who were imprisoned there. For Professor John Stanley, a history scholar at Pennsylvania’s Kutztown University, this forgotten chapter of World War II became a life-long research passion, sparked by a 1991 trip to the site with his father, Charles A. Stanley, who had been interned at Weihsien as an infant. Imprisoned alongside his parents at 10 months old in 1943, Charles remained in the camp until it was liberated by US soldiers and a Chinese translator in August 1945. Like many other survivors, Charles never spoke of his experience growing up; the trauma of internment led generations of survivors to leave this painful chapter of their lives unspoken.

Stanley’s 1991 visit was originally organized to dedicate a memorial to Eric Liddell, the legendary 1924 Olympic 400-meter gold medalist who died of illness in the camp due to severe shortages of food and medical care. That trip ignited Stanley’s broader interest in Chinese and East Asian history, and he has spent decades uncovering the details of daily life in the camp and the critical role local Chinese residents played in supporting the imprisoned civilians.

Among the detainees were several prominent figures, including Arthur W. Hummel Jr., who would later go on to serve as the second United States Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. Hummel successfully escaped the camp months before liberation with help from local Chinese rescuers. Stanley’s research highlights that the support local residents provided went far beyond escape aid: it kept internees hopeful as the war dragged on and outside news grew increasingly scarce.

Most famously, local residents risked harsh punishment, even death, to smuggle scarce food and supplies into the camp through an informal underground network referred to as the “black market.” While eggs were the most common contraband thrown over the camp’s walls, Stanley even documented accounts of a live chicken being smuggled in to feed hungry detainees.

Zhang Zhiren, a Europe-based writer who spent years researching the camp for his book *Weihsien West Civilians Concentration Camp: 1943-1945*, says the quiet bravery of local Chinese people who risked their lives to help is the most moving part of the camp’s history. His book details the harsh conditions detainees faced: overcrowding, malnutrition, inadequate medical care that led to the deaths of at least 31 internees, and complete isolation from outside news. It also documents the selfless acts of solidarity from nearby residents who, despite facing their own hardship under Japanese occupation, chose to help the trapped foreigners.

One of the most notable stories of courage centers on Zhang Xingtai, a local villager who worked as a latrine cleaner inside the camp. Japanese guards dismissed him as an unthreatening ordinary farmer, but Zhang secretly operated as a critical information lifeline for internees cut off from the outside world. Working alongside his son, he smuggled outside news into the camp and carried notes from internees out — and it was the pair that secretly spread the word of Japan’s surrender to detainees days before the formal liberation, at enormous risk to their own lives.

Tragedy is also part of this story: Zhang documents the death of a local Chinese child who was electrocuted on the camp’s perimeter fence while attempting to deliver food to starving internees. Japanese guards refused to allow the child’s family to retrieve his body, leaving the small body caught on the electric wire as a grim warning.

“What strikes me most is that the people of Weifang did not care what nationality the internees were,” Zhang explained. “They only knew that people were suffering, and they had a duty to help. This simple kindness crossed all lines of war and national borders.”

As the decades passed after the war, survivors remained largely silent about their experiences, and the camp’s history began to fade from collective memory. Today, as the number of living survivors dwindles, Zhang and other researchers are working to preserve this shared history for future generations. Zhang notes that the story of mutual aid between Chinese civilians and foreign internees 80 years ago serves as a powerful example of shared humanity in the face of war, perfectly embodying the vision of a global community with a shared future.

The importance of this history has not gone unrecognized. In 2021, International Cities of Peace, a global non-profit dedicated to advancing the international peace movement, designated Weifang as the 308th International City of Peace — only the second Chinese city to receive the designation, after Nanjing. This year marks the fifth anniversary of that designation, and International Cities of Peace chair J. Frederick Arment has praised Weifang for its intentional work to heal historical trauma and turn a site of suffering into a beacon of hope for future peace.

In 2024, to mark the 45th anniversary of formal diplomatic relations between China and the United States, the story of the Weihsien Internment Camp reached a new international audience through a special traveling exhibition hosted in San Francisco. Stanley attended the opening as a representative of survivors’ descendants, and he praised Weifang’s ongoing work to preserve the camp’s original buildings and share its story with global audiences.

“These efforts show a real commitment to raising public awareness of the true human cost of war, and why we must work to avoid it whenever possible,” Stanley said. Speaking to the enduring relevance of the camp’s legacy today, he expressed hope that remembering this story would encourage global leaders to prioritize diplomacy and collaborative conflict resolution through international institutions, rather than turning to violence or coercive pressure to resolve disputes.

In a landmark moment marking nearly two centuries of formal ties between Māori people and the British Crown, New Zealand’s newly installed Māori Queen Te Arikinui Kuini Nga Wai hono i te po has held her first official audience with King Charles III at London’s Buckingham Palace. This meeting comes two years after Te Arikinui ascended to the Māori throne in 2024, following the passing of her father Kiingi Tuheitia, the previous Māori monarch.

Earlier the same week, the Māori Queen was formally welcomed by Prince William at Windsor Castle, in a meeting that covered a broad spectrum of pressing global issues. In an Instagram post following the encounter, Prince William shared that it had been a great pleasure to welcome Te Arikinui and host her at the royal residence. A post-meeting statement from Kīngitanga, the Māori monarchy institution, confirmed that Te Arikinui used the discussion to reaffirm her conviction that indigenous knowledge and long-term, cross-generational environmental stewardship are critical tools to address the world’s most urgent environmental and social challenges.

Te Arikinui’s ascension in 2024 made her only the second Māori queen in the history of the Kīngitanga movement; the first was her grandmother, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, who held the role for four decades. The institution of Māori monarchy was first established in the 19th century, when disparate Māori iwi (tribes) united to create a single unifying leadership figure modeled on the European monarchical structure. At its founding, the movement was conceived as a defensive strategy to slow widespread land loss to British colonial settlers and protect Māori cultural identity from erasure. Today, the role remains largely ceremonial, but carries enormous cultural and symbolic weight for Māori communities across New Zealand.

The historic meeting at Buckingham Palace underscores a bilateral relationship that was first formalized with the 1840 signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, one of the foundational founding documents of modern New Zealand. According to a spokesperson for Te Arikinui, the conversation between the Māori Queen and King Charles III was warm and heartfelt. It included reflections on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, the late mother of King Charles III, alongside discussions focused on deepening and strengthening the long-standing relationship between the Māori monarchy and the British Crown.

The ongoing Iran war has triggered crippling energy supply shocks across Asia, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — the world’s most critical energy shipping chokepoint — upending fuel access and sending prices soaring for millions of ordinary households. From the crowded streets of New Delhi to the coastal hubs of Southeast Asia, consumers are grappling with steep cost hikes and disrupted daily routines, pushing regional governments to accelerate plans to expand biofuel use as a buffer against global energy volatility.

In New Delhi, taxi driver Ravi Ranjan, who supports his wife and young child on his driving income, has seen his cooking fuel costs triple amid widespread shipping delays and supply shortages. “I used to pay 1,000 rupees ($11) for a standard LPG cylinder. Now I’m forced to pay 3,000 rupees ($31) on the black market just to put food on the table,” he explained. Halfway across the country in Chennai, advertising executive Sushmita Sankar faces similar strains: her gasoline and cooking fuel bills have skyrocketed, and the 20% ethanol-blended gasoline that is now standard at Indian pumps has cut her car’s fuel efficiency, adding extra time and stress to her already packed schedule of work and childcare.

“With prices going up and mileage dropping, I now have to spend far more time queuing to fill my tank or track down cooking gas,” Sankar said. “It’s turned a routine chore into another major source of stress.”

For India, which imports nearly 90% of its crude oil to meet domestic energy demand, the supply disruptions from the Iran war have hit every corner of the economy — from private motorists and home cooks to industrial operations reliant on natural gas. Only the country’s national power grid, powered mostly by coal with a growing share of renewables, has remained largely unaffected. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has publicly called on Indian citizens to make “nationally responsible choices” to conserve fuel, urging more carpooling, greater use of public transport, and cutting back on non-essential international travel.

To address the long-term risk of global energy shocks, New Delhi has laid out aggressive plans to ramp up domestic ethanol production and increase the share of biofuel blended into national gasoline supplies. The country already hit its 20% ethanol blending target nationwide in 2025, five years ahead of its original schedule, and policymakers are now weighing a push to 27% blending by 2030. In a policy shift that signals a major push for higher biofuel adoption, India’s transport ministry has recently proposed allowing passenger and commercial vehicles to run on blends of 85% ethanol, or even 100% pure ethanol, a move designed to pressure automakers to begin manufacturing engines compatible with these higher concentrations. To protect domestic supplies of feedstock for ethanol production, the government has also banned all sugar exports through at least September, ensuring enough raw material is available to scale up output.

Proponents frame the policy shift as a win for both energy security and climate action. “Moving toward higher ethanol blends reflects the government’s long-term vision for energy security, lower emissions, and reduced dependence on imported crude oil,” explained Chandra Kumar Jain, president of the Grain Ethanol Manufacturers Association. Data from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) shows the current 20% ethanol blend already cut India’s crude oil imports by 2.5% in 2025.

But the rapid push for higher crop-based ethanol blending has drawn sharp criticism from analysts, who warn of multiple trade-offs for consumers, food security, and the environment. Drivers already report reduced fuel mileage with existing 20% blends, and ethanol’s lower energy density means higher blends will lead to even greater efficiency losses. Environmental and energy analysts warn that diverting large volumes of corn, rice, and sugarcane — staples of India’s food system — to ethanol production could create competition for arable land, drive up food prices, and worsen existing water stress. Producing just one liter of grain-based ethanol requires between 3,000 and 10,000 liters of water, a major concern in a country already facing widespread groundwater depletion.

“It’s not clear how higher ethanol blends will perform in existing vehicle engines, and it will take years to scale up manufacturing of new engines built to handle these higher concentrations,” said Shyamasis Das, a senior researcher at the New Delhi-based Centre for Social and Economic Progress. “The broader climate benefits of crop-based ethanol are also very limited when you account for land use change and water consumption. Only ethanol produced from agricultural residues, municipal waste, and used cooking oil — materials that don’t require new land or water inputs — can truly qualify as sustainable.”

India is not alone in turning to biofuels amid the current energy crisis. Across Southeast Asia, governments are also rolling out new policies to expand biofuel blending to boost energy sovereignty and insulate their economies from global price shocks. In Indonesia, President Prabowo Subianto launched a new program in March that aims to increase biodiesel blending from 40% to 50%, with the country relying on palm oil as its primary biofuel feedstock.

“We are going in a big way to biofuel,” Subianto said. The policy also helps support Indonesia’s domestic palm oil industry by creating a larger local market for the commodity, but analysts warn that expanded production could drive new land clearing and deforestation of old-growth tropical forests.

Malaysia, another major palm oil producer, followed suit in April, approving a plan to gradually increase biodiesel blending to 15%, with a future target of 20% under consideration. “Skyrocketing fuel prices from the Iran war have revived political and public support for expanded biofuel use,” said Kuala Lumpur-based energy analyst Ahmad Rafdi Endut. “But higher blends require extensive additional testing, and many consumers are already wary of the reduced fuel efficiency that comes with higher biofuel mixes.”

Despite the sudden policy momentum driven by the Iran war energy crisis, industry analysts caution that it will still take years for higher ethanol and biodiesel blends to become widely available across Asia. Developing the full supply chain, testing new fuel formulations, and rolling out vehicles compatible with high-concentration blends all require significant lead time. Many analysts also note that biofuels are at best a temporary buffer against energy shocks, arguing that electric vehicles paired with expanded renewable energy generation represent a more sustainable long-term solution for both energy security and climate action.

“The current crisis has pushed governments to prioritize near-term energy independence, but rapid expansion of crop-based biofuels carries new long-term risks for food security and environmental protection,” said IEEFA analyst Charith Konda. “Moving forward, the focus needs to be on scaling sustainable non-crop biofuels and accelerating the transition to electric vehicles and renewables.”