THAILAND
Chemical mishap kills eight
A bank said eight workers were killed in the basement of its Bangkok headquarters after mistakenly releasing chemicals during an upgrade of the building’s fire safety system. Siam Commercial Bank said seven other people were injured in the accident on Sunday night. The bank said in a statement yesterday that the accident was believed to have been caused by “negligence on the part of our contractors hired to improve fire protection of the building.” It said workers activated a system that released pyrogen aerosol, which is normally intended to deprive fire of oxygen. The bank identified those who died as a security guard and seven contractors.
INDONESIA
Alleged militants arrested
The nation has detained 14 people, including several children, as they allegedly tried to travel to Syria, police said, where hundreds of their countrymen have joined extremist groups such as the Islamic State. The people were stopped on Sunday at the international airport serving Jakarta as they tried to board a flight to Bangkok, from where they planned to continue to Syria, Jakarta police spokesman Muhammad Iqbal said. Among those identified were a family of five with three children from Tangerang, west of Jakarta, Iqbal said in a statement. Five others, including at least one child, were from the Indonesian part of Borneo island. The group is being held at the airport while police work to establish the identities of the remaining suspects.
UNITED STATES
Deadly floods hit south
Several people were killed after drenching thunderstorms moved through the states of Louisiana and Mississippi at the weekend, triggering flooding across the lower Mississippi valley, authorities said. Rainfall killed three people in Louisiana and one in Oklahoma. Two fishermen were missing in Mississippi on Sunday, according to emergency management officials. President Barack Obama declared flooding in Louisiana a major disaster on Sunday, providing aid for victims. Louisiana’s emergency management office warned in a statement “the crisis is not over.” It said about 5,000 homes had already been damaged.
UAE
Fighter jet goes missing
An Emirati fighter jet taking part in a combat mission against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen has gone missing, the nation said yesterday. “The Supreme Command of the Armed Forces announced today that a fighter jet taking part in the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia... in Yemen was missing,” a statement on the official WAM news agency said, without giving further details. It is the first known case of an Emirati jet from the coalition going missing since the campaign began in March last year.
ECUADOR
US$40m cocaine seized
The nation seized 1.9 tonnes of cocaine off the coast of the Galapagos Islands, as traffickers ply new routes to smuggle their illicit cargo, officials said on Sunday. The operation conducted on Thursday and Friday — part of a joint effort by police and the Ecuadoran navy — intercepted the equivalent of more than seven million individual doses of the contraband drug, the interior ministry announced. The shipment had an estimated street value of about US$40 million. Traffickers, many based in Colombia, are exploiting a vast and expanding swath of ocean, from one end of the Americas to the other, for the illicit drug trade, officials said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion