■MALAYSIA
Bangladeshi man murdered
A Bangladeshi man was brutally slashed to death while another was seriously injured in an attack at a workers’ hostel in Johor, news reports said yesterday. The victim, a 35-year old factory worker, was resting at his quarters on Friday afternoon with a friend when a group of men, believed to be Vietnamese, attacked them, the Star daily reported. A police spokesman said several of the victims’ housemates, who were alerted by the sounds of a heated quarrel, found the victim lying face down in a pool of blood with slash wounds on his chest. The victim’s friend was found slashed on the shoulders and chest and rushed to a nearby hospital. Police said the attackers had been identified and the case was being investigated as murder.
■AUSTRALIA
Orangutan attempts escape
Adelaide Zoo was evacuated yesterday after an “ingenious” 62kg orangutan short-circuited an electric fence and hopped a wall surrounding her enclosure. The ape, a 27-year-old female named Karta, jammed a stick into wires connected to the fence and then piled up debris to climb a concrete and glass wall at the zoo. Zoo curator Peter Whitehead told reporters Karta sat on top of the fence for about 30 minutes before apparently changing her mind about the escape and climbing back into the enclosure. “I think when she actually got out and realized where she was ... [she] realized she shouldn’t be there [and] actually hung onto the wall and dropped back into the exhibit,” Whitehead said. The zoo was cleared as a precaution and veterinarians stood by with tranquilizer guns. “You’re talking about an animal that’s highly intelligent,” Whitehead said. “We’ve had issues with her before in normal day-to-day operations where she tries to outsmart the keepers. She’s an ingenious animal.”
■IRAN
Court hears Saberi appeal
Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, the lawyer for Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi said a court began yesterday to hear Saberi’s appeal against her eight-year prison sentence for espionage. Saberi, a 32-year-old freelance reporter, was detained in late January and sentenced on April 18 on charges of spying for the US.
■TURKEY
Bomb kills five
Five people were killed, including two members of a state-sponsored rural militia, in the mainly Kurdish southeast on Saturday after a roadside bomb exploded, security sources said. The incident took place near the city of Sirnak. Three of the dead were civilians, the sources said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Soldier finishes marathon
A British soldier who was injured by a rocket attack in Iraq finished the London Marathon on Saturday, two weeks after the race began. Major Phil Packer was told he would never walk again after he lost the use of his legs during the attack in the southern Iraqi city of Basra in February last year. But the 36-year-old completed the course by walking 3.2km a day on crutches since the marathon started on April 26, and was greeted by hundreds of well-wishers who lined the final mile. Packer raised £630,000 (US$950,000) for the Help For Heroes soldiers’ charity, and is hoping to raise £1 million. “I’ve walked 52,400 steps and somebody has walked with me every step of the way, be it a dinner lady, a London taxi driver or a Metropolitan Police officer,” Packer said upon completing the marathon. “I’ve had time to talk to people and have conversations, people have really opened up about their feelings about the [armed] services and it has been humbling.”
■IRAN
Poll to have 475 candidates
A total of 475 Iranians have registered as prospective candidates for next month’s presidential election, less than half the number who signed up in 2005, a top election official said yesterday. “Of the 475 who signed up as candidates, 433 are men and 42 are women,” Kamran Daneshjoo, the head of the election committee, told reporters. He said the oldest prospective candidate was an 86-year-old man, while the youngest was a 19-year-old man. Candidates had until midnight on Saturday to register for the June 12 election. The four main candidates are President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, ex-parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi and the former head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezai. The total number of candidates this year compares with the 1,014 who registered in the 2005 vote.
■GUINEA
Security fires on rioters
Security forces fired on rioters in the capital Conakry on Saturday, wounding at least two people, in the first major public disorder since a military junta seized power in December, a police source said. A police station and several police vehicles were attacked in the riot that was sparked when thieves dressed in military uniform robbed a local shop, a senior police official who declined to be identified said. Captain Moussa Dadis Camara came to power in a bloodless December coup following the death of former president Lansana Conte. He is battling to maintain stability in the world’s top bauxite exporter. Popular anger at his junta has risen after reports of human rights abuses by soldiers. Analysts say stability could hinge on Camara keeping his promise to hold elections in December.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened