THAILAND
Elephant ride goes bad
An elephant went berserk yesterday, killing its mahout before running off into the jungle with three Chinese tourists still on his back, police said. “The mahout who was killed was Karen and he was not familiar with the elephant. They [the tourists] are safe now,” said Colonel Thawatchai Thepboon, police commander of Mae Wang District in Chiang Mai Province. The Karen are an ethnic minority common in the north of the kingdom. Police said the incident took place at 9:30am as a couple and their young child were riding on a male elephant. Channel 3 television broadcast footage of the three frightened tourists being led back to camp, still on the elephant’s back, once it had been calmed down by other mahouts and their rides.
THAILAND
Ivory stockpile destroyed
The government yesterday destroyed more than 2 tonnes of ivory in a ceremony that saw raw tusks and carved trinkets fed into an industrial rock crusher before being incinerated. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha presided over the event. It is the first time the kingdom has taken steps to destroy part of its stockpile confiscated as part of criminal investigations.
INDIA
Australia to join exercise
New Dehli and Australia are to hold their first-ever joint naval drills next month, as the two countries seek to deepen defense ties and counter China’s growing sway in the Indian Ocean. The maritime exercises, to be held in the Bay of Bengal, include anti-submarine warfare and coordinated anti-submarine drills, the Australian High Commission in Delhi said in a statement. Canberra said it would send a frigate, tanker, submarine and a Lockheed AP-3C maritime surveillance aircraft for the exercises.
PHILIPPINES
Marcos Jr eyes presidency
The son and namesake of former president Ferdinand Marcos yesterday said that he might run for president in next year’s elections. Ferdinand Marcos Jr, popularly known as “Bongbong,” said he would not seek a second term as senator and was aiming for higher office. “The discussions I have been having with different groups, with other individuals have really centered on higher office,” the 57-year-old said on ABS-CBN television. Asked directly if he would run for president or vice president, he said that it was “extremely difficult to make a decision at this point.”
AFGHANISTAN
Attackers kill NATO soldiers
Two men wearing national security force uniforms yesterday opened fire inside a military base in Helmand Province, killing two NATO service members before being shot dead themselves, the international force said. NATO said the attackers opened fire on a vehicle with international troops inside it. Both shooters were killed when NATO forces returned fire, it said.
NORTH KOREA
Rain, floods kill 40
Forty people were killed as heavy rain brough flash floods and caused “massive” damage on the weekend, the International Federation of the Red Cross and locals said yesterday. More than 11,000 people were forced from their homes or otherwise affected by the floods, which hit Rajin, near the border with Russia and China, on Saturday and Sunday, said Hler Gudjonsson, a spokesman for the Red Cross in Beijing. State media said there had been 40 “casualties” and “massive” damage after 250mm of rain fell.
GERMANY
Refugee shelters attacked
Two refugee shelters in the east of the country have been attacked, police said yesterday, hours before Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to visit a center for asylum-seekers that was hit by violent far-right protests. A man was seen flinging a Molotov cocktail into a refugee home in Leipzig which was due to house 56 asylum-seekers from yesterday, police said in a statement. Only a mattress was burned as a witness was able to raise the alarm swiftly. Meanwhile in the town of Parchim, police arrested two men who had charged into a refugee shelter wielding a knife. Several residents, who were outside when the incident took place, alerted the police after noticing that one of the two suspects was holding a 20.5cm knife. Both were shouting anti-migrant comments. Police ran blood tests on them for alcohol levels.
BRAZIL
Graft investigation widens
A federal judge overseeing a sweeping corruption investigation on Tuesday said there were signs that President Dilma Rousseff’s former chief of staff had received bribes. Judge Sergio Moro asked the Supreme Court to authorize an investigation into whether a graft case involving the planning ministry might have benefited former chief of staff Gleisi Hoffmann, now a senator and still personally close to the president. Hoffmann has not been formally charged with any wrongdoing.
UNITED KINGDOM
Big Ben behind the times
The bongs of London’s Big Ben have been running fast over the past two weeks, clocksmiths said on Tuesday. The great clock that towers over the British parliament can be out by up to six seconds. However, in the past two weeks, the early bongs have messed up BBC domestic and world radio transmissions that broadcast the hour chimes live. “The error started building up and went slightly unnoticed over a weekend,” clocksmith Ian Westworth told BBC radio. “We don’t know why it happened. You’re talking about a 156-year-old clock; it does have a little fit every now and then.” Clocksmiths regulate the mechanism by stacking heavy old one penny coins on the pendulum, or removing them.
UNITED STATES
White House attacker killed
A knife-wielding intruder, who scaled a wall on the White House perimeter in March, was shot dead by a sheriff at a Pennsylvania county court house on Tuesday, an official said. The incident took place in the lobby of the county justice center in West Chester, the local district attorney said. The assailant, Curtis Smith from Coatesville, “pulled out a knife and attacked a deputy sheriff, slashing him,” district attorney Tom Hogan told reporters. “Another deputy sheriff immediately pulled his firearm and shot Smith.”
UNITED STATES
Lonely rhino sent to Sumatra
The only Sumatran rhinoceros in the nation is to be sent to Indonesia so it can have a chance to mate, an Ohio zoo famous for breeding the endangered species said on Tuesday. Eight-year-old Harapan, one of three Sumatran rhinos born at the Cincinnati Zoo, is to move to the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary later this year, said Terri Roth, director of the zoo’s Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife. “For many years we were hopeful we would receive a female,” Roth said. “Indonesia has been clear recently that they never plan to send another Sumatran rhino out of the country again.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese