AFP UK

Ly son (Vietnam) (AFP) – Vietnamese fisherman Nguyen Van Loc has been attacked by Chinese coast guard vessels so many times, he has lost count. One summer day in 2020, while sailing through the Paracel Islands — resource-rich waters in the South China Sea claimed by both Hanoi and Beijing — his boat was rammed by a Chinese ship repeatedly until it capsized. Thirteen of his crewmen were left clinging to a fishing basket in the water, desperately awaiting help.

Malang (Indonesia) (AFP) – Indonesian President Joko Widodo arrives at hospital where the victims of the deadly stampede at a football stadium in the city of Malang are being treated. He greets the relatives of the victims before entering the hospital.

Noida (India) (AFP) – India has the world’s highest rate of women aviators but when trailblazing pilot Zoya Agarwal said she dreamed of conquering the skies, her mother cried and told her to find a husband instead. The 40-year-old has enjoyed an illustrious career since gaining her wings in 2004, including her inauguration last year, with an all-female crew, of the longest non-stop Indian commercial flight.

Infanta (Philippines) (AFP) – Filipino fishermen are prevented from accessing a reef that is permanently guarded by Chinese maritime guards, as the country claims sovereignty over this natural shelter for sailors, which is exceptionally abundant in fish and on which an entire industry is based.

Malang (Indonesia) (AFP) – Arema FC fans and local communities light up candles and hold a mass prayer outside Kanjuruhan stadium in the Indonesian city Malang, where scores of people died in one of the deadliest disasters in football history.

Walnut Creek (United States) (AFP) – American physicist John Clauser has won the 2022 Nobel Prize for a groundbreaking experiment vindicating quantum mechanics — a fundamental theory governing the subatomic world that is today the foundation for an emerging class of ultra-powerful computers. “It’s a vindication of work that I had started more than 50 years ago, and at that time everybody told me I was wasting my time,” Clauser says.

South Korea (South Korea) (AFP) – The South Korean and US militaries fired a volley of missiles into the sea in response to North Korea firing a ballistic missile over Japan, Seoul said Wednesday. Nuclear-armed North Korea fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan for the first time in five years on Tuesday, prompting Tokyo to issue evacuation warnings for some residents. South Korea and the United States staged a drill of their own in response, firing ground-to-ground missiles into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, Seoul’s military said.

Lokoja (Nigeria) (AFP) – Hundreds of homes are destroyed, thousands of people homeless, and roads left inaccessible, after the worst flooding in a decade in Nigeria’s Kogi State.

Kotka (Finland) (AFP) – The eastern Finnish city of Kotka removes a statue of Lenin from a public park in the city centre, near a wooden house where the Bolshevik Party founder is rumoured to have stayed. The statue is the last large public monument to the Soviet leader to remain in the Nordic country.

Atacama (Chile) (AFP) – Flowers bloom in the southern part of the Atacama Desert, the most arid region of the world. Chilean President Gabriel Boric recently announced that the area would be made a national park to protect the flowering phenomenon.

Zelenodolsk (Ukraine) (AFP) – Hundreds of abandoned bicycles in a small warehouse in the town of Zelenodolsk, near Ukraine’s southern front line, tell the stories of their owners, who were forced to flee Russia’s invasion. They come in all colours: green, red, black, blue… One has a knitted saddle cover, another a small pouch attached to the frame, many others look rusty and tested by time. “People were running away with what they could take,” says municipal worker, Vitaliy Rekhlitsky, “you could see that there were bags on the bikes.”

Panmunjom (South Korea) (AFP) – Images of the Panmunjom, Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and North Korea seen from South Korea. North Korea fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) over Japan on Tuesday, prompting Tokyo to activate the country’s missile alert system and order people to take shelter. The last time North Korea fired a missile over Japan was in 2017, at the height of a period of “fire and fury” when Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un traded insults with then-US president Donald Trump. South Korea’s military said it had detected the launch of an IRBM, which flew around 4,500 km (2800 miles) at an altitude of about 970 km and speeds of around Mach 17. IMAGES