World

Sri Lanka tightened import restrictions Wednesday with a ban on more than 300 additional items, as an economic crisis that has created months of shortages and toppled a president refuses to abate.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who replaced Gotabaya Rajapaksa after his ouster in July, slapped a ban on goods including home appliances, tools and sports gear.

The South Asian island nation of 22 million people has been suffering dire shortages of many essentials due to a lack of foreign currency.

The new bans come despite the central bank announcing last week that the foreign exchange shortage was easing thanks to better inflows.

However, Sri Lanka’s economy is projected to contract this year by a worse-than-expected 8.0 percent, according to the bank, with inflation forecast to peak at a record 65 percent by September.

The lack of foreign currency pushed Sri Lanka into defaulting on some of its $51 billion external debt pile in April.

A delegation from the International Monetary Fund was due on Wednesday to continue talks with Sri Lankan officials on a bailout.

But IMF assistance could be delayed if Sri Lanka’s creditors, the biggest being China, refuse to restructure some of their loans.

Beijing has not publicly shifted from its offer of issuing more loans rather than taking a haircut on existing credit.

Worker remittances, a key source of foreign exchange for Sri Lanka, have dropped by more than 50 percent to $1.6 billion in the six months to June compared to the same period last year.

Rajapaksa, 73, fled to Singapore after months of protests culminated in demonstrators storming his official residence in July. He has since flown to Thailand but wants to return home, according to his party.

Angolans started casting ballots on Wednesday in what is expected to be the most competitive vote in its democratic history, with incumbent president Joao Lourenco squaring up against charismatic opposition leader Adalberto Costa Junior.

A struggling economy, the high cost of living, soaring poverty compounded by the Covid pandemic, drought in southern parts of the country and the death of a former strongman president all loom large.

The ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party, which has held power for nearly five decades in the oil-rich nation, is facing the most serious challenge since the country’s first multiparty vote in 1992.

“It’s been 20 years of peace and we are still poor,” said Lindo, a 27-year-old electrician who only gave his first name while queuing up to vote in a middle class suburb of Nova Vida. “I’m going to vote for Unita. The people want change, the government doesn’t provide for the basic needs of the people”. 

Eight political parties are running, but the real contest lies between the MPLA and its long-standing rival and ex-rebel movement the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

Opinion polls suggest that support for the MPLA — which won 61 percent of the vote in 2017 elections — will dwindle, while the UNITA, which has entered an electoral pact with two other parties, will make gains. 

But UNITA’s inroads might not be enough to unseat Lourenco, who is expected to secure a second five-year mandate. 

Still, it is unlikely to be a smooth swing back into office for the 68-year-old, who succeeded veteran leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos five years ago.

“The margins will be closer than ever before… but the advantages of incumbency mean MPLA is still odds on to pip Costa (Junior),” said Eric Humphery-Smith, an analyst at London-based Verisk Maplecroft.

– ‘An alternative’ –

The MPLA has maintained its grip on the electoral process and public media in Angola, but the opposition tells its supporters not to be intimidated.

“Don’t be afraid of an alternative,” Costa Junior told supporters at his final rally in the capital Luanda on Monday. “There is no democracy with a single party in power.”

The 60-year-old Costa Junior who is popular among the youth  — a significant and growing voting bloc — pledges to “eradicate poverty” and create jobs.

His rival, a Soviet-educated former general who had promised to usher in a new era for Angola when he was first elected, has trumpeted a list of achievements to woo voters.

“We made and restructured our economy,” he told one of his final rallies in the capital at the weekend. 

But little has changed for most of Angola’s 33 million people for whom life is a daily grind in Africa’s second largest crude oil producer.

The petro-dollars benefited the former president, the late dos Santos who died in Spain last month, his family and cronies.

The night-time and low-key repatriation of dos Santos’s remains to Angola in the final leg of campaigning has added a macabre element to the election.

Analysts warn that ruling party attempts to capitalise on dos Santos’s funeral could backfire as opinions on his legacy are not “unanimous”, especially among young people.

Some 14.7 million people are registered to vote at 13,200 polling stations across the vast southern African nation.

Angolans living overseas are for the first time able to cast ballots from abroad.

Polling opened at 7:00 am (0600 GMT) and ends 11 hours later.

Results are expected within a few days. In past elections, results have been contested in a process that can take several weeks.

Thailand’s Constitutional Court is expected to announce on Wednesday whether it will consider a legal challenge that could see Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha thrown out of office.

The kingdom’s 2017 constitution bars the prime minister from serving more than eight years in total, and opposition parties say Prayut, who took power in a 2014 coup, has reached the limit.

If the court agrees to hear the case, Prayut could be suspended and an acting prime minister appointed.

Several hundred anti-government protesters rallied at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument on Tuesday ahead of the court ruling and further demonstrations are planned.

Supporters of the 68-year-old leader argue that the clock on his rule began when the 2017 constitution was instituted, or even after the 2019 general election.

If the court follows this logic, Prayut could technically continue to serve until 2025 or 2027 — if he wins a general election which is due by March.

The former army chief came to power in a military coup that ousted Yingluck Shinawatra’s democratically elected government.

He headed the junta regime for five years and continued as PM after the 2019 national elections.

The stern, blunt-speaking Prayut has found himself increasingly out of favour with voters. A recent opinion poll found two-thirds of respondents wanted him to vacate office immediately.

Under Prayut’s watch, the kingdom registered its worst economic performance in 30 years and his government has also faced criticism over its handling of the pandemic.

Youth-led pro-democracy rallies in Bangkok in 2020 attracted tens of thousands of people at their peak, and a key demand of the movement was for Prayut to resign.

On Wednesday, police had placed shipping containers on some streets near government buildings in anticipation of fresh protests.

Fifty years after the last Apollo mission, the Artemis program is poised to take up the baton of lunar exploration with a test launch on Monday of NASA’s most powerful rocket ever.

The goal is to return humans to the Moon for the first time since the last Apollo mission in 1972 — and eventually to Mars.

The 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is scheduled to blast off at 8:33 am (1233 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

The mission, more than a decade in the planning, may be uncrewed, but is highly symbolic for NASA, which has been under pressure from China and private rivals such as SpaceX.

Hotels around Cape Canaveral are booked solid with between 100,000 and 200,000 spectators expected to attend the launch.

The massive orange-and-white rocket has been sitting on KSC’s Launch Complex 39B for a week.

“Ever since we rolled out to the pad last week, you can feel the excitement, the energy,” said Janet Petro, director of KSC. “It’s really, really palpable.”

The objective of the flight, baptized Artemis 1, is to test the SLS and the Orion crew capsule that sits atop the rocket.

Mannequins equipped with sensors will take the place of crew members, recording acceleration, vibration and radiation levels.

Cameras will capture every moment of the 42-day trip and include a selfie of the spacecraft with the Moon and Earth in the background.

– Splashdown in Pacific –

The Orion capsule will orbit around the Moon, coming within 60 miles (100 kilometers) at its closest approach and then firing its engines to get to a distance 40,000 miles beyond, a record for a spacecraft rated to carry humans.

One of the primary objectives of the mission is to test the capsule’s heat shield, which at 16 feet in diameter is the largest ever built.

On its return to the Earth’s atmosphere, the heat shield will have to withstand a speed of 25,000 miles per hour and a temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).

Orion, its descent slowed by parachutes, will end its voyage with a splashdown off the coast of San Diego in the Pacific.

Monday’s liftoff will be at the mercy of the weather, which can be unpredictable in Florida at this time of year, and NASA has built in a two-hour launch window.

If the rocket is unable to take off on Monday, September 2 and 5 have been penciled in as alternative flight dates.

Otherwise, it’s all systems go.

NASA gave the green light for the mission on Tuesday after a detailed inspection known as a flight readiness review.

That doesn’t mean things can’t go wrong with a rocket and a capsule flying for the first time.

– ‘Inherent risk’ –

“We’re doing something that is incredibly difficult to do and does carry inherent risk in it,” said Mike Sarafin, the Artemis 1 mission manager.

Because it is an uncrewed flight, Sarafin said the mission will continue in conditions that would not be acceptable for a flight with astronauts.

“If we had a failed solar array deployment we would proceed, and that is something that we wouldn’t necessarily do on a crewed flight,” he said.

A complete failure would be devastating for a program that is costing $4.1 billion per launch and is already running years behind schedule.

The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts into orbit around the Moon without landing on its surface. The crew of Artemis 3 is to land on the Moon in 2025 at the earliest.

While the Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon were exclusively white men, the Artemis program plans to include the first woman and person of color.

And since humans have already visited the Moon, Artemis has its sights set on another lofty goal — an eventual crewed mission to Mars.

The Artemis program is to establish a lasting human presence on the Moon with an orbiting space station known as Gateway and a base on the surface.

Gateway would serve as a staging and refueling station for a voyage to Mars that would take a minimum of several months.

“I think it’s going to inspire even more than Apollo did,” Bob Cabana, associate NASA administrator and a former astronaut, said of Artemis. “It’s going to be absolutely outstanding.”

China’s autumn harvest is under “severe threat” from high temperatures and drought, authorities have warned, urging action to protect crops in the face of the country’s hottest summer on record.

The world’s second-largest economy has been hit by record temperatures, flash floods and droughts this summer — phenomena that scientists have warned are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change.

Southern China has recorded its longest sustained period of high temperatures and sparse rain since records began more than 60 years ago, the agriculture ministry said.

Four government departments issued a notice on Tuesday urging the conservation of “every unit of water” to protect crops.

“The rapid development of drought superimposed with high temperatures and heat damage has caused a severe threat to autumn crop production,” the statement said.

China produces more than 95 percent of the rice, wheat and maize it consumes, but a reduced harvest could mean increased demand for imports in the world’s most populous nation — putting further pressure on global supply already strained by the conflict in Ukraine.

Temperatures as high as 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) have led multiple Chinese provinces to impose power cuts, as cities struggle to cope with a surge in demand for electricity that is partly driven by people cranking up the air conditioning to cope with the heat.

The megacities of Shanghai and Chongqing have cut outdoor decorative lighting, while authorities in Sichuan province have imposed industrial power cuts after water levels dropped at key hydroelectric plants.

More than 1,500 people were moved out of the area surrounding Chongqing on Monday after hot and dry conditions sparked multiple wildfires, according to state news agency Xinhua.

The searing heat is also drying up the critical Yangtze River, with water flow on its main trunk about 50 percent lower than the average over the last five years, state media outlet China News Service reported last week.

– ‘Worst heatwave ever’ –

The national meteorological service renewed its warnings for drought and high temperatures on Tuesday, calling for 11 provincial governments to activate emergency responses.

Authorities have already turned to cloud seeding — a method to induce rainfall — in parts of the country. 

State broadcaster CCTV published footage this month showing meteorological staff shooting catalyst rockets into the sky and firefighters transporting water to farmers in need.

“This is the worst heatwave ever recorded,” climate and energy expert Liu Junyan of Greenpeace East Asia told AFP.

“Climate science shows extreme heat is becoming exponentially worse,” she said.

“So it’s more likely that next year will have record-breaking heat.”

This year’s extreme weather is raising public awareness of climate change in China, with state media “now coming around to covering climate impacts” with unprecedented urgency, Liu said.

Government climate expert Zhou Bing warned over the weekend of mass displacement caused by climate change, describing extreme weather as nature’s “revenge” on humanity.

China has experienced three other episodes of intense heat so far this century — in 2003, 2013, 2017.

The gap between heatwaves is “significantly shortening”, Zhou said.