23/04/2026

THURSDAY | APR 23, 2026

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Fiji villagers reject ‘Pacific ashtray’ plan

Salavador mass trial hears testimonies SAN SALVADOR: Witnesses gave testimonies under court protection on Tuesday on the second day of a collective trial against hundreds of alleged members of the powerful Central American gang Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), including 22 historic leaders, according to El Salvador’s Attorney General’s office. El Salvador is holding mass trials of thousands of suspected gang members, with 486 suspected MS-13 members on trial for 47,000 crimes committed between 2012 and 2022, officials said. Media outlets, including AFP, were given access on Tuesday to the courtroom where the trial was taking place, with video of the defendants visible on screens. Max Munoz, deputy prosecutor against organised crime, said in a video posted on X that the goal of the witness testimony was to “illustrate” to the court that MS-13 operated as a “criminal corporation” led by 22 “ranfleros”, or top leaders, accused of ordering thousands of crimes. Salvadoran authorities accuse MS-13 of a range of crimes, including killing 87 people in a single weekend in March 2022. In the wake of those killings, President Nayib Bukele declared“war”on gangs, imposing a state of emergency in 2022 which has since been used to arrest more than 91,000 suspected gang members, including thousands of people who were later declared innocent. – AFP ‘Salmon exposed to cocaine swim farther’ SYDNEY: Salmon exposed to cocaine in the water swim longer distances than those who go without, according to a study. Cocaine use is on the rise, with the UN reporting an estimated 25 million people used the stimulant in 2023 and the drug being increasingly found in waterways. Joint research released on Monday by scientists at Australia’s Griffith University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences studied how the drug affected the movements of wild fish in their natural habitats. Researchers took a hundred wild Atlantic salmon in Sweden’s Lake Vattern and exposed them to both cocaine and benzoylecgonine, a metabolite created by the drug in the liver, and then tracked their movements. They found the river-dwellers living the high life travelled 1.9 times further per week than their clean-living control cousins. Those exposed to the by-product also swam up 12.3km farther, the study found. “Any unnatural change in animal behaviour is a concern,” said report co-author Marcus Michelangeli from Griffith University’s Australian Rivers Institute. Researchers have warned the pollution of waters by common drugs poses “a major and escalating risk to biodiversity”. Associate professor Michael Bertram at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences said the study showed the need for improving wastewater treatment and monitoring. – AFP

o Project under review, says environment official

SYDNEY: An Australian billionaire’s plan to burn rubbish for energy in Fiji amounts to “waste colonialism” and risks spoiling a “beach paradise”, villagers and the Pacific nation’s UN ambassador said. Traditional landowner Inoke Tora boarded a bus to the capital Suva on Tuesday with a petition from villagers opposing the US$630 million (RM2.5 billion) waste-to-energy incinerator, which is forecast to consume 900,000 tonnes of non-recyclable rubbish each year. The fashion entrepreneur behind the Paris-born Kookai label and an Australian billionaire who made his fortune in rubbish disposal want to build a port and waste incinerator within 15km of Fiji’s tourism gateway Nadi. Ian Malouf and Rob Cromb told Fiji’s government the project could meet 40% of the small nation’s electricity needs, cutting its reliance on diesel. However, an environmental impact statement lodged by their company TNG shows it would also raise Fiji’s national emissions by 25%. Residents say the emissions will spoil Fiji’s eco-tourism reputation and pose a safety risk with hotels and schools nearby. “There are hundreds of people living in villages in this place and they fish each day, eat fresh crabs. They call that beach paradise,” Tora told AFP by telephone on his way to petition Fiji’s prime minister. “The government should stop this.” Fiji’s ambassador to the United Nations, Filipo Tarakinikini, wrote on social media on Monday that the Vuda coast north of Nadi “must not become the Pacific’s ashtray”. Ash residue and dioxins would contaminate the food chain, Tarakinikini warned, likening the plan to send up to 700,000 tonnes of non-recyclable rubbish to Fiji each year to “waste colonialism”. “Dial-a-Dump” founder Malouf spent seven years trying to get a similar waste-to energy incinerator approved in Sydney before it was rejected as a risk to human health in 2018, planning and court documents show. Stephen Bali, then mayor of Blacktown in Sydney, led opposition to the project in his suburb and urged Fiji to seek independent scientific data. “Gathering up rubbish from Australia, driving it in a diesel truck to port, putting it on a diesel ship to Fiji to be offloaded – it would be interesting to look at those emissions,” said Bali, now a lawmaker in the New South Wales state parliament.

Villagers at a community meeting with Cromb on Saturday in Viseisei. – FIJI’S MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE HANDOUT/AFPPIC

broader lifecycle emissions benefits,” he said. The project would manage waste generated in Fiji, reduce landfill and support the country’s energy needs, he said. “It is not a project intended to import waste from overseas,” he said. However, the plan for a port and incinerator lodged with Fiji’s government showed it would feed in local waste as well as waste shipped from Australia and across the region. Opponents have told the government it would be a breach of a 1998 convention signed by Australia to ship hazardous waste to a Pacific island country. Tourism Minister Vilame Gavoka said tourism across Nadi could be jeopardised by the incinerator. “Such facilities in other countries are located away from businesses and densely populated areas,” his office said. And Fiji’s permanent secretary for environment and climate change, Michael Sivendra, said the project is under review. – AFP

“We need to deal with our own waste,” Bali said. Malouf did not respond to AFP’s request for comment. His business partner Cromb, who bought the Paris fashion label Kookai in 2017, said he maintains business links to Fiji, where he was born, because Kookai manufactures clothes there. Cromb has held community meetings with villagers as the incinerator proposal spurs a backlash. “There are genuine concerns around environmental safety, transparency, and the scale of the proposal and those concerns are valid and are being taken seriously,” Cromb said in a statement sent to AFP. Energy-from-waste systems “are widely used in jurisdictions with some of the world’s highest environmental protections”, he said. “By diverting waste from landfill where it would otherwise produce methane, a significantly more potent greenhouse gas and reducing reliance on fossil fuel-based energy sources, energy-from-waste can contribute to

Australian online watchdog targets extreme content SYDNEY: Australia’s internet

Australia in December banned under-16s from a raft of the world’s most popular social media sites, citing the need to protect young minds from“predatory algorithms”filled with sex and violence. Three months since the landmark laws came into effect, Australia’s online safety watchdog found a “substantial proportion of Australian children” were still scrolling banned platforms. – AFP

Inman Grant said examples included gaming platforms recreating mass shootings and World War II concentration camps. Roblox said it had policies in place that strictly prohibited extreme content. “We welcome engagement with eSafety on this important topic. “We encourage anyone who sees anything concerning on Roblox to report it to us,” the platform said.

extremist narrative in gameplay,” she said. Online gaming platforms Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and Steam will be required to show how they are identifying and eliminating online harms, Inman Grant said. “We’ve seen numerous media reports about grooming taking place on all four of these platforms, as well as terrorist and violent extremist themed gameplay.”

Australia is at the forefront of global efforts to protect children from online harm, enacting laws last year that ban teenagers under 16 from social media. eSafety boss Julie Inman Grant said research had shown the vast majority of Australian children played some sort of online game. “Predatory adults know this and target children through grooming or embedding terrorist and violent

watchdog raised fears yesterday that popular online gaming platforms such as Roblox and Minecraft were being used by “predatory adults” to target children. The nation’s eSafety Commission has sent legal notices to a host of the world’s most popular gaming platforms, demanding they explain how they are working to stamp out dangerous content.