标签： Oceania

A relentless, record-shattering heatwave that has already claimed nearly 20 lives and sickened thousands across South Korea has forced the nation’s top professional baseball circuit to scrap all scheduled matches for Wednesday and Thursday, marking one of the most visible public disruptions caused by the extreme weather event.

For more than two months, the country has baked under unrelenting high temperatures, with three new national all-time temperature records set over the past seven days alone. The peak of the heatwave so far came Sunday, when thermometers climbed to 42.5 degrees Celsius in parts of the country. As of Wednesday, the highest-level heat alerts remained in effect for both eastern and western districts of the capital Seoul, a warning triggered when heat index is projected to hit 38C or actual temperatures are forecast to reach 39C or higher.

The cancellation decision from the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) came just one day after South Korean President Lee Jae Myung directed government agencies to classify the ongoing heatwave as a national disaster, and ordered officials to deploy all necessary resources to implement emergency protective measures to save civilian lives.

In an official statement announcing the match cancellations, the KBO noted that the decision to call off all August 5 and 6 games was driven by ongoing safety risks for both competing players and attending spectators, and that the cancellations will remain in place until comprehensive heat safety protocols can be put in place. Local media reports confirm that 10 scheduled games across the country were scrapped as a result of the order.

The devastating public health toll of the heatwave is already substantial: data from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency shows that between May 15 and August 3, more than 2,200 people have been treated for heat-related illnesses, with at least 19 confirmed deaths linked to extreme heat.

The cancellations are not an unprecedented step for the league this week. On Tuesday, the KBO already called off two scheduled games: one at Seoul’s Jamsil Stadium and another in the southwestern city of Gwangju, after multiple spectators collapsed from heat exhaustion during pre-game and game activities. Even for matches that went ahead on Tuesday, heat-related medical incidents were widespread. An official with the SSG Landers franchise confirmed to AFP that a male attendee at the team’s Tuesday match against the LG Twins in Incheon collapsed from a suspected heat illness, forcing a nine-minute game stoppage before the fan was transported to a local hospital by ambulance. The team added that 25 additional spectators required on-site medical treatment for heat-related symptoms during the contest.

Moving forward, the KBO announced it will convene an emergency executive committee meeting, with representatives from member clubs and the KBO Players’ Association in attendance, to negotiate and adopt additional long-term heat safety protocols for the remainder of the season.

A destructive residential blaze in Queensland’s Southern Downs region has delivered a story of extraordinary luck, after seven people — including five young children between the ages of three and five — managed to escape the engulfed two-storey home on Wednesday morning.

Emergency services confirmed that first responders were dispatched to Leslie Parade in Stanthorpe shortly after 8:40 a.m. following reports of a structure fully engulfed in flames. When crews from the Queensland Fire Department arrived on scene, they found the two-storey brick home already burning heavily, with the fire confirmed to have originated in the property’s stairwell, a critical escape route for the occupants inside.

At the time the fire broke out, all seven residents were inside the home: the five young toddlers, a 26-year-old woman, and an 80-year-old man. Against significant odds, every person managed to evacuate the burning building before firefighters could gain entry to conduct search and rescue operations.

Local paramedics immediately provided on-site first aid to all seven evacuees. The five young children received initial assessment and treatment at the scene before being transferred to Stanthorpe Hospital for further observation. The 26-year-old woman was treated for two separate conditions: a soft tissue injury to her arm and smoke inhalation, while the 80-year-old man also received medical care for smoke inhalation.

To bring the blaze under control, fire crews were forced to remove a section of the home’s roof to access hidden hotspots and fully extinguish the fire. No further injuries were reported among first responders, and investigations into the exact cause of the fire are ongoing.

The incident marks the second residential fire escape making headlines in Queensland in recent days, following a separate event where seven children escaped an e-bike-related house blaze.

On Wednesday, South Korean law enforcement carried out a raid on the national headquarters of Starbucks Korea, the local operator of the global coffee giant confirmed to Agence France-Presse. The action comes in the wake of widespread public outrage over an ill-judged advertising campaign that stands accused of defaming pro-democracy activists killed in the 1980 Gwangju uprising.

The controversy erupted in May this year, when Starbucks Korea launched its ‘Tank Day’ promotion to coincide with the annual anniversary of the historic 1980 pro-democracy movement. The campaign centered on marketing a new line of extra-large tumblers, named to reference the large volume of coffee they could hold, timed to drop on May 18. For South Koreans, this date carries profound national meaning: it marks the day a military dictatorship deployed tanks to Gwangju to crush the popular pro-democracy uprising, a crackdown that left at least 165 civilian protesters dead. Those who lost their lives in the movement are widely revered as national martyrs across South Korea.

Critics quickly condemned the promotion for trivializing one of the most significant and traumatic events in modern South Korean history, and for insulting the memory of the fallen. A complaint was formally filed by a local civic group and family members of the Gwangju victims, who accuse senior leaders of Shinsegae Group — the South Korean conglomerate that holds the license to operate Starbucks Korea — of defamation and insult against the uprising’s victims and their surviving relatives.

“The Seoul police raided the headquarters of Starbucks Korea this morning as part of the ongoing investigation,” a spokesperson for Shinsegae Group told AFP, declining to share additional details on the search operation. Seoul police have only confirmed that the investigation into the company is ongoing, and have also declined to comment further on the specifics of the raid.

The formal complaint names two high-profile executives: Shinsegae Group chairman Chung Yong-jin, and Son Jung-hyun, the former CEO of Starbucks Korea who stepped down from his position in the immediate aftermath of the public furore. Further controversy also emerged when it was revealed that the campaign also used language that echoed phrases used by former authoritarian officials to dismiss claims that they had tortured a student activist to death during the uprising period.

South Korea is Starbucks’ third-largest market globally, trailing only the chain’s founding home the United States and China, making this controversy particularly high-stakes for the brand. Within weeks of the scandal breaking in May, Starbucks Korea issued a formal public apology, and took the extraordinary step of temporarily closing all more than 2,000 of its locations across the country for a one-time staff education event focused on the history of the Gwangju uprising in June.

Shinsegae Group previously conducted its own internal audit of the controversy, which found no evidence that the campaign was intentionally harmful. However, the conglomerate acknowledged that the internal probe faced significant limitations, most notably that the executive in charge of planning the ‘Tank Day’ promotion refused to hand over their mobile phone for investigation.

According to reports from South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency and national public broadcaster KBS, Wednesday’s police raid is aimed at gathering evidence that was not turned over or uncovered during the company’s internal investigation. The fallout from the controversy has already hit Starbucks Korea’s bottom line: Shinsegae confirmed that the chain saw a ‘sharp decline in sales’ in the first weeks after the scandal broke, and data from local platform provider IGAWorks shows that combined credit and debit card payment volume at Starbucks locations fell 17 percent between May and June.

A devastating two-car collision at a well-documented high-risk intersection in an Adelaide coastal suburb has left one young woman dead and a second fighting for survival, with local residents warning this outcome was a preventable tragedy long in the making.

Emergency dispatchers received multiple calls shortly after 10 p.m. on Tuesday, rushing first responders to the junction of Barramundi Drive and Lonsdale Road in Hallett Cove, where a Nissan station wagon carrying three women in their 20s had collided head-on with a Subaru sedan driven by a 27-year-old man. The force of the impact was so severe that one of the vehicles was sliced clean in half, turning the quiet residential intersection into a chaotic crash scene.

Among the three passengers in the Nissan, a 21-year-old Hallett Cove resident was pronounced dead at the scene. A second 20-year-old passenger was airlifted to a nearby major trauma center in critical condition, where medical teams continue to fight to save her life. The 21-year-old driver of the Nissan, a resident of Morphett Vale, sustained only non-life-threatening injuries and was treated on-site by paramedics before being transported to hospital for observation.

The deafening impact of the crash echoed through the surrounding neighborhood, drawing local residents outside to the disaster-strewn street. Seventy-seven-year-old Roger Hand, who was watching television at the time of the collision, described the sudden jolt of the event. “I was watching TV and all of a sudden there was this big bang. It is so sad,” he told local outlet The Advertiser.

Neighbors have long flagged this particular intersection as a persistent danger point for road incidents, with frequent minor crashes leading to repeated calls for infrastructure changes. Local resident Kevin Schwartz explained the root of the intersection’s poor safety record, noting: “There’s a lot of prangs because they try to beat cars doing 80 while going across.”

This latest fatal crash brings the total number of road fatalities on South Australian roads to 73 so far in 2026, a grim statistic that averages out to one road death every three days across the state.

South Australian Police have issued a public appeal for any members of the community who witnessed the collision, or who have dashcam footage captured in the area around the time of the crash that could aid the official investigation, to contact Crime Stoppers immediately on 1800 333 000 or submit information via the organization’s official website.