MALI
Explosion kills five soldiers
Five soldiers were killed on Friday and four others wounded in the nation’s north when their vehicles were hit by an explosion, authorities said. “Two vehicles from the Malian armed forces were blown up by an improvised explosive device causing the death of five Malian soldiers and wounding four others,” an army statement said. The government pledged in the statement that “everything will be done to locate and bring those responsible to justice” for the attack between the localities of Ansongo and Indelimane.
VENEZUELA
Poll outlines shortages
More than 80 percent of basic consumer products, including food and medicine, are now in short supply, a poll showed. Stores are facing greater shortages than households, pollster Datanalisis president Luis Vicente Leon said on Friday. The company’s latest study, with data from last month, saw a jump in that index as the oil-rich country grapples with political and economic crisis. “The deterioration has been exponential over the last two months,” Leon said. “We are seeing indices worsen in a really dramatic way.” Datanalisis said inflation would reach 450 percent and predicted purchasing power would drop by at least 40 points compared with last year. The latest official inflation figures from December last year reported a 180.9 percent increase in prices. The study surveyed 800 people in eight major cities of varying socioeconomic status. The margin of error was 3.46 percent.
EGYPT
Black-box hunters hired
The government on Friday hired a private firm to help in the hunt for the black boxes from the EgyptAir plane that crashed on May 19 en route from Paris to Cairo, authorities said. Civil aviation officials said in a statement that they had signed an agreement with Deep Ocean Search (DOS) to carry out the search and retrieval process of the two data recorders. EgyptAir Flight MS804 crashed in the Mediterranean Sea south of the Greek island of Crete with 66 people onboard, including 30 Egyptians and 15 French nationals. DOS says it can operate in depths of up to 6,000m and has a robot that is capable of mapping the seabed.
BULGARIA
Blast hits weapons maker
A blast at the nation’s biggest weapons maker, Arsenal, in the center of the Balkan country killed one person on Friday night, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. A ministry’s spokeswoman told reporters that the accident, which killed a 52-year-old man, occurred at 10:20pm at Arsenal’s production unit in the town of Muglizh, 250km east of the capital, Sofia. “There are no other injured people,” she said. Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the incident, which is normal procedure in an incident when someone is killed or seriously hurt.
SRI LANKA
Buried people assumed dead
About 100 people still missing following landslides last week are believed dead, authorities said yesterday after failing to find signs of life under tonnes of mud. The Disaster Management Center said that 67 bodies had been recovered from the worst-hit central district of Kegalle, where 99 people were still listed as missing following the rain-triggered disaster on May 17. “The military is keeping up a search, but there is no hope of finding anyone alive now,” center spokesman Pradeep Kodippili told reporters.
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
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
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