THAILAND
Man arrested for killing
Police have arrested a man allegedly involved in killing a Japanese man and robbing the cash he had won from a Cambodian casino. Police Major General Ronasilp Phusara said 28-year-old Cambodian Sok Na fled to Thailand last month and was found in Chachoengsao Province on Thursday. Sok Na and four other suspects are accused of killing 44-year-old Japanese tourist Kitakura Kosei in March and taking the cash he won at a casino in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. The winnings were worth about US$18,000. Ronasilp said Sok Na confessed he was riding a motorcycle for the gunman.
CHINA
Kindergarten head arrested
Police have arrested the head of a kindergarten and her associate over the deaths of two children from a rival school who ate yoghurt injected with rat poison, state media said yesterday. The five and six-year-old girls from northern Hebei Province died after eating the yoghurt which they had found in a bag on the side of the road while walking to school with their grandmother. The rival kindergarten director, Shi Haixia, and her associate Yang Wenming “admitted that they injected the poison into the yoghurt and left it on the street,” the China Daily said. “Their intention was to damage the reputation of the rival kindergarten.”
CHINA
Suicides over homework
Two teens committed suicide after “failing to complete homework assignments,” state-run media said yesterday, in an extreme case highlighting the immense pressure schoolchildren can face. A 15-year-old boy in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province, who failed to finish homework from a three-day public holiday jumped to his death at about 11am on Thursday, the China Daily said. A 13-year-old boy in the same town got up at 4am on Thursday to complete holiday assignments, but was found hanged on a staircase at his home two hours later, it said. “In a suicide note, the boy said he loved his parents, felt sorry for them and hoped they could bring lilies, his favorite flower, to his grave,” it said.
SUDAN
Mine collapse kills scores
About 100 miners are estimated to have died inside a collapsed gold mine in the Darfur region and nine rescuers trying to free them are now trapped, a miner said yesterday. “Nine of the rescue team disappeared when the land collapsed around them yesterday [Thursday],” said the miner, who had visited the scene and asked to remain anonymous. On Monday the unlicensed desert gold mine began to collapse in Jebel Amir district, more than 200km from the North Darfur state capital El Fasher.
UNITED KINGDOM
Fake detectors lead to jail
A millionaire businessman who sold fake bomb detectors has been sentenced to 10 years in jail. James McCormick made an estimated £50 million (US$77.8 million) from the sales of his non-working detectors — which were based on a novelty golf ball finder — to countries including Iraq, Belgium and Saudi Arabia. Prosecutor Richard Whittam said the devices, which sold for up to £27,000 each, claimed to be able to find explosives and drugs under water and from the air. He said in fact they “lacked any grounding in science” and were no better than trying to detect explosives at random.
UNITED KINGDOM
Hall pleads guilty to assault
BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall has pleaded guilty to multiple assaults on young girls. Prosecutors said on Thursday that the 83-year-old sports broadcaster has pleaded guilty to 14 indecent assaults. Hall was arrested in January for questioning about alleged crimes committed between 1967 and 1986. He admitted guilt in court in mid-April but the information could not be made public for legal reasons until reporting restrictions on the case were lifted on Thursday. He earlier had denied wrongdoing. He will be sentenced on June 17. The corporation announced that Hall will “no longer be contracted by the BBC.”
UNITED STATES
Slayer guitarist passes
Heavy metal guitar legend Jeff Hanneman, 49, has died of liver failure, his band Slayer announced on Thursday. “Slayer is devastated to inform that their bandmate and brother ... passed away at about 11am this morning,” read a statement posted by the group on its Facebook page. Hanneman, who died at a hospital in Southern California, has been suffering since 2011 from necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh-eating disease that he is believed to have contracted from a spider bite, according to news reports. It is not known whether the illness played a role in his death. Hanneman was a founding member of Slayer, known for music that the group described as “punishing yet precise.”
UNITED STATES
Wildfire rages in California
A wildfire fanned by gusty winds raged along the fringes of Southern California communities on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of homes and a university while setting recreational vehicles ablaze. The blaze erupted during morning rush hour along a major highway about 80km northwest of Los Angeles. It was quickly spread by the winds, which also pushed other damaging blazes across the region. Flames quickly moved down slopes toward subdivisions, according to the Ventura County Fire Department. Fire officials said on Thursday afternoon that a hazardous materials team will deal with a store of highly toxic pesticides that caught fire at a Laguna Farms property, according to the Ventura County Star.
SPAIN
Police bust smuggling ring
Police say they have arrested 30 suspects who allegedly smuggled drugs into Spain through the southern coast using boats and jet skis. The Interior Ministry said on Thursday that the gang used fishing and recreational boats to carry drugs from Morocco to rendezvous points in the Mediterranean Sea. Once there, hashish was transferred to couriers on jet skis. The ministry said the organization laundered its profits using a catering business in the Sierra Nevada region.Police say they seized 488kg of hashish, 11 vehicles, three ships and two firearms worth an estimated 3.3 million euros (US$4.3 million).
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited