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.
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
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing