VIETNAM
Over 1.2m pigs culled
More than 1.2 million pigs infected with African swine fever has been culled, the government said yesterday, as the virus continues to spread rapidly. The virus was first detected in February and has spread to 29 provinces, including Dong Nai, which supplies about 40 percent of the pork consumed in Ho Chi Minh City. “The risk of the virus spreading further is very high and the evolution of the outbreak is complicated,” the government said in a statement, adding that many provinces had failed to detect outbreaks and cull infected pigs properly due to a lack of funds and the space needed to bury them.
SRI LANKA
Social media ban after riots
The government yesterday blocked access to Facebook and WhatsApp after a posting sparked anti-Muslim riots across several towns in the latest fallout from the Easter Sunday suicide attacks. Christian groups attacked Muslim-owned shops in the northwestern town of Chilaw on Sunday in anger at a Facebook post by a shopkeeper, police said. Security forces fired in the air to disperse mobs, but the violence spread to nearby towns, where Muslim businesses were also attacked. Police said a night curfew in Chilaw and nearby areas was relaxed yesterday, but the social media ban was brought in to prevent incitement to violence.
UNITED STATES
Another man dies in jail
A man has died while in police custody, the third person to die in a western Alaska community jail in the past two weeks, authorities said. Robert Nick, 54, died in a jail in the village of Akiachak, the Anchorage Daily News reported on Sunday. Nick was on Friday taken into protective custody “due to the level of his intoxication” by a tribal officer in the village of about 600 people on the Kuskokwim River, northeast of Bethel, police said. Alaska state troopers were notified of Nick’s death at about 9pm on Friday and boated to Akiachak to investigate. State police did not say what Nick is believed to have died from or how long he had been dead when he was found by tribal jail guards. His remains were sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Anchorage, authorities said.
POLAND
Israeli group’s visit canceled
The government has canceled a visit by an Israeli delegation, saying the Israeli government made last-minute changes that suggested it would focus on the issue of the restitution of former Jewish property. The delegation, headed by Avi Cohen-Scali, director-general of the Israeli Ministry for Social Equality, was scheduled to visit yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday, as it announced the cancelation. It said without elaborating that “the Israeli side made last-minute changes in the composition of the delegation suggesting that the talks would primarily focus on the issues related to property restitution.”
GERMANY
Nazi victims’ remains buried
The remains of victims of the Nazis that were used for medical experiments were to be buried in Berlin yesterday. About 300 microscopic tissue samples belonging to resistance fighters, mostly women, who were executed at Berlin’s Ploetzensee prison during the Third Reich and then used for experiments were to be laid to rest at a cemetery in the capital. More than 2,800 people were killed at Ploetzensee and most victims’ bodies were dissected afterward at a Berlin university’s anatomy institute in 2016.
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