MALAYSIA
Villagers die in landslide
Police say a landslide triggered by heavy rain has killed seven villagers at an indigenous settlement near the Cameron Highlands hill resort. A police official said hundreds of searchers using tracker dogs found two survivors and recovered seven bodies. The eight-hour rescue mission ended early yesterday at a village for the Orang Asli tribe. He said dozens of families were evacuated after three hillside homes were buried by a mudslide following a downpour. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public statements.
NEW ZEALAND
Airplane engine kills man
A 51-year-old engineer working at an airplane testing facility has been sucked into an engine and killed. Air New Zealand confirmed the man was performing routine maintenance on a Lockheed C-130 Hercules airplane engine just after 8am yesterday at the Woodbourne air field in Blenheim when he was sucked into the engine. An airline spokeswoman said the engine was sitting on a stand, without propellers attached, and was not affixed to a plane at the time of the accident. Tasman Police communications manager Barbara Dunn said emergency services personnel performed CPR, but could not revive the man. The man worked for a Safe Air, a subsidiary of Air New Zealand. He has not been named pending notification of his family.
MALAYSIA
Men drown fleeing police
Police say five men have drowned in the north of the country after leaping into a river to escape a gambling raid. A police spokesman in Kedah state said the men were among 20 suspects who were playing dice games by a river on Saturday when police tried to detain them. He said five men sought to escape by swimming to another village across the river, but a search team found their bodies over the next few hours. Most of them were in their 40s and 50s. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public statements. Betting and gambling in public without a license is punishable by a six-month prison term and a fine.
INDONESIA
Locals run from volcano
A volcano that has been spewing lava and clouds of searing gas high into the air let out a new, powerful burst yesterday, sending panicked villagers streaming down the sides of the mountain. One person was injured, said Ludianto, head of the search and rescue team — a man who fell as he was fleeing, but suffered only cuts and bruises. Mount Karangetang on Siau — part of the Sulawesi island chain — started spitting clouds of gas and lava up to 600m on Friday, volcanologist Surono said. Early yesterday, hot ash tumbled down its slopes triggering fresh panic. Nearly 600 people have been evacuated.
NIGERIA
Convicts climb out of jail
Five militants escaped from a prison in Nigeria’s main oil hub Port Harcourt on Sunday by using their metal beds as ladders to climb over the walls, a spokesman for the prison said. “Seven inmates escaped, but two have been re-arrested. The five escapees are dangerous criminals, notorious militants. We appeal to the public to assist us in re-arresting them,” said a spokesman for Port Harcourt prison. “Breaking was achieved by the use of iron beds as ladders to cross into the waterfronts.” He said 23 other inmates attempted to escape, but did not manage to get out of the prison.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
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
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees