THAILAND
Zoo cleared of panda’s death
Chiang Mai Zoo has been exonerated in a panda diplomacy row after autopsy results revealed that a celebrity panda on loan from China, died of heart failure and not from neglect or foul play. The sudden death last month of Chuang Chuang sparked outrage in China, where social media users blamed the zoo for his death, suggesting it was caused by neglect or careless feeding. Chuang Chuang was 19 when he died. In the wild pandas generally live to up to 20 years, but can survive up to another decade in captivity. The panda, who had been on loan since 2003 was known for being obese and was famously put on a diet in 2007. The Chinese-assisted autopsy ended speculation the Chiang Mai Zoo was at fault, but the zoo confirmed it would pay an unspecified amount of compensation to Beijing as outlined in the loan agreement.
CHINA
Solomons PM signs deals
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare yesterday met Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) in Beijing and signed several agreements in the first official visit since the two countries established diplomatic relations last month. “I am pleased to recognize the ‘one China’ policy... We are pleased to be on the right side of history and normalize relations with the People’s Republic of China,” Sogavare said ahead of a meeting with Li and other officials. One of the agreements is to work together on President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) flagship foreign policy initiative, the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as others on economic and education strategies.
ECUADOR
Protesters rush Congress
Protesters on Tuesday broke into Congress as demonstrations over a fuel price hike introduced by President Lenin Moreno’s government intensified. Demonstrators, many of them armed with sticks and whips, surged through a security cordon. They rushed into the meeting room and occupied the podium, but were soon evicted by security forces. Moreno subsequently ordered an overnight curfew to protect public buildings. Clashes between security forces and protesters outside Congress erupted earlier this week as thousands of demonstrators began converging on the capital, Quito, to protest soaring fuel prices at a mass demonstration planned for yesterday.
UNITED STATES
Child charged with murder
A nine-year-old child accused of causing a mobile home fire that killed three children and two adults in central Illinois has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder. The juvenile was also charged with two counts of arson and one count of aggravated arson, the Peoria Journal Star reported. The April 6 fire killed a one-year-old, two two-year-olds, a 34-year-old man and a 69-year-old woman at the Timberline Mobile Home Park near the village of Goodfield, about 240km southwest of Chicago. Woodford County State’s Attorney Greg Minger would not reveal other details about the suspect. No child as young as this one has been accused in a mass killing since at least 2006, according to the AP/USATODAY/Northeastern University mass murder database. “It’s a tragedy, but at the end of the day, it’s charging a very young person with one of the most serious crimes we have, but I just think it needs to be done at this point, for finality,” Minger said.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the