THAILAND
Lao airforce plane crashes
A Laos airforce plane carrying about 20 people including the country’s defense minister and other senior officials crashed on Saturday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. There was no immediate word on casualties, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Sek Wannamethee said. The plane took off from the Lao capital, Vientiane, yesterday morning and crashed in the Lao province of Xiangkhoung, about 470km away. The aircraft was carrying Lao Defense Minister Douangchay Phichit, who is also a deputy prime minister, and several other high-ranking officials, including the governor of Vientiane. They were heading to an official ceremony for the Ministry of Defense, said Sek, who was informed of the crash by authorities in neighboring Laos. He did not immediately have any other details, and there was no official statement on the crash from authorities in Laos.
CHINA
Pipeline collapse kills 11
A pipeline in a coal mine has collapsed, killing 11 people, Xinhua news agency and a local work safety official said yesterday. The official at the provincial work safety bureau, who only gave his last name, Han, said that two more people were missing from the accident that took place on Wednesday in the city of Yulin in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. He said odds were slim they would be found alive. Xinhua said 37 people were in a shaft when a cement pipeline collapsed in the state-owned mine that was under construction. It said rescued recovered two bodies and pulled out 24 people alive on Wednesday. The nation has some of the world’s deadliest mines, killing more than 100 people since the start of the year, but they are getting safer with stricter work safety enforcement.
CHINA
Former executive probed
A former executive of state-owned China Resources Co, a conglomerate of energy, land and consumer businesses in China and Hong Kong, is under investigation, the nation’s top anti-corruption body said. Wang Shuaiting (王帥廷), vice chairman of China Travel Service Hong Kong, is suspected of serious disciplinary violations — Beijing’s official jargon for graft — during his tenure at China Resources, the nation’s Central Discipline Inspection Commission said in a one-line statement on its Web site. The probe follows a similar investigation into Song Lin (宋林), the ex-chairman of China Resources who has been sacked from his post, state media said. Such investigations are part of a wider anti-corruption drive launched by President Xi Jinping (習近平), who has vowed to tackle pervasive graft, saying he will go after high-flying “tigers” as well as lowly “flies.”
JAPAN
Star held for drug possession
Pop star ASKA was arrested yesterday for possessing illegal stimulant drugs in his apartment in Tokyo, reports said. Investigators were probing how ASKA — who is part of the popular music duo CHAGE and ASKA — obtained the “small dose” of drugs and whether he had used them, NHK and Tokyo Broadcasting System Television said. ASKA, 56, whose real name is Shigeaki Miyazaki, reportedly denied the charges. Before his arrest, he also rejected news reports that he was a drug addict. Authorities were not immediately available to confirm his arrest. CHAGE and ASKA made their musical debut in 1979 and remain hugely popular in Japan and other Asian countries where the duo have toured places such as Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
UNITED STATES
Watergate aide dies at 79
Jeb Magruder, the aide to former US president Richard Nixon who was imprisoned for his role in the Watergate scandal and later claimed he overheard the president order the break-in, has died. He was 79. Magruder died on Sunday last week from complications from a stroke, according to Connecticut’s Hull Funeral Service home, which posted an obituary on Friday. He joined Nixon’s administration in 1969 as a White House deputy communications director, moving two years later to manage Nixon’s re-election campaign. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice in the cover-up that followed the burglary of the US Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington. Magruder spent seven months in prison. He was one of two dozen people eventually jailed for their role in the planning, execution and cover-up of what became one of the largest political scandals in US history. Magruder coordinated with White House counsel John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy, a member of Nixon’s special investigations team, on plans to gather intelligence for Nixon’s re-election campaign. Dean and Liddy went to prison for their roles in the scandal.
ARGENTINA
‘Unthinkable’ fossils found
Dinosaur fossils found in Patagonia provide the first evidence that long-necked, whip-tailed diplodocid sauropods survived well beyond the Jurassic period, when they were thought to have gone extinct, Argentine paleontologists said on Thursday. Pablo Gallina, a researcher at Buenos Aires’ Maimonides University, described the find as the first definitive evidence that diplodocids reached South America, and the most recent geologic record of this branch of sauropod anywhere. “It was a surprise, because the first remains we found were very deteriorated and we didn’t think much of them, but later through careful laboratory work, cleaning rock from the bones, we could see that they were from a diplodocid, something unthinkable for South America.” Gallina’s team says the fossils show that diplodocids roamed South America during the early Cretaceous era, well after scientists thought these kinds of dinosaurs became extinct.
FRANCE
Man dives under dress
A man rushed onto the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival and dove beneath actress America Ferrera’s dress. Security officials quickly pulled the man away as he tried to hide under Ferrera’s voluminous dress before the Friday premiere of How to Train Your Dragon 2. Ferrera did not seem ruffled on the carpet and was in good spirits at the movie’s afterparty, laughing with guests and taking pictures. She declined comment on the incident and festival organizers did not immediately return messages about the matter.
CANADA
Rob Ford spotted in Ontario
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been spotted in a small Ontario town despite his lawyer insisting that he is still in rehab. Dozens of people spotted Ford outside a shopping plaza in Bracebridge, a community in the province’s countryside, resident Brody Lisle, 19, said on Friday. Lisle was one of many locals who posed with the mayor for a photo. Ford’s lawyer Dennis Morris would not confirm his client’s whereabouts, but said he remains in rehab. Ford announced late last month that he was seeking treatment for an alcohol problem after new allegations of substance abuse surfaced in the media.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of