Briefly

UNITED STATES

Intelligence official ousted for 'doing my job'

Michael Atkinson, the outgoing top watchdog of the US Intelligence Community, said on Sunday that he was fired by US President Donald Trump for acting impartially in his handling of the whistle-blower complaint that triggered an impeachment probe of the president last year. On Friday, the White House told Atkinson, the Intelligence Community's inspector general, that he would be terminated from his position in 30 days. Atkinson was a key figure in the run-up to Trump's impeachment, having found credible a complaint from a still-unnamed whistle-blower within the administration that the president abused his office in attempting to solicit Ukraine's interference in the 2020 US election for his political benefit.

VANUATU

Pacific nation braces for monster storm

A deadly cyclone bearing down on the Pacific nation of Vanuatu has intensified into a Category 5 super storm, generating destructive winds and "phenomenal" seas, forecasters said on Monday. Tropical cyclone Harold, which claimed 27 lives when it swept through the Solomon Islands last week, strengthened overnight on Sunday as it moved east, Vanuatu's meteorology service said. It said the cyclone was now packing winds of up to 235 kilometers per hour. Officials warned residents in the nation of 300,000 to expect flash flooding and said ships should stay in port or risk facing huge swells on the high seas. Harold was expected to pass north of the capital Port Vila early on Tuesday.

JAPAN

Clean-hands effort awash with success

Japanese social media celebrity Pikotaro has returned as a leading Twitter trend in Japan with a coronavirus hand-washing song that repurposes his signature Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen, or PPAP, to Pray-for-People-and-Peace. The video was among the top five in a Twitter trend ranking in Japan on Monday. Pikotaro, whose real name is Kazuhito Kosaka, wore the same gold animal print outfit he wore in the PPAP video that went viral in 2016. His hand-washing video－shorter than the 2016 two-minute hit that was recognized by the Guinness World Records as the shortest song to make it into the Billboard Hot 100 chart－had also been viewed a quarter of a million times on YouTube since it was uploaded on Saturday.

Agencies - Xinhua