THAILAND
Elephant ride goes bad
An elephant went berserk yesterday, killing its mahout before running off into the jungle with three Chinese tourists still on his back, police said. “The mahout who was killed was Karen and he was not familiar with the elephant. They [the tourists] are safe now,” said Colonel Thawatchai Thepboon, police commander of Mae Wang District in Chiang Mai Province. The Karen are an ethnic minority common in the north of the kingdom. Police said the incident took place at 9:30am as a couple and their young child were riding on a male elephant. Channel 3 television broadcast footage of the three frightened tourists being led back to camp, still on the elephant’s back, once it had been calmed down by other mahouts and their rides.
THAILAND
Ivory stockpile destroyed
The government yesterday destroyed more than 2 tonnes of ivory in a ceremony that saw raw tusks and carved trinkets fed into an industrial rock crusher before being incinerated. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha presided over the event. It is the first time the kingdom has taken steps to destroy part of its stockpile confiscated as part of criminal investigations.
INDIA
Australia to join exercise
New Dehli and Australia are to hold their first-ever joint naval drills next month, as the two countries seek to deepen defense ties and counter China’s growing sway in the Indian Ocean. The maritime exercises, to be held in the Bay of Bengal, include anti-submarine warfare and coordinated anti-submarine drills, the Australian High Commission in Delhi said in a statement. Canberra said it would send a frigate, tanker, submarine and a Lockheed AP-3C maritime surveillance aircraft for the exercises.
PHILIPPINES
Marcos Jr eyes presidency
The son and namesake of former president Ferdinand Marcos yesterday said that he might run for president in next year’s elections. Ferdinand Marcos Jr, popularly known as “Bongbong,” said he would not seek a second term as senator and was aiming for higher office. “The discussions I have been having with different groups, with other individuals have really centered on higher office,” the 57-year-old said on ABS-CBN television. Asked directly if he would run for president or vice president, he said that it was “extremely difficult to make a decision at this point.”
AFGHANISTAN
Attackers kill NATO soldiers
Two men wearing national security force uniforms yesterday opened fire inside a military base in Helmand Province, killing two NATO service members before being shot dead themselves, the international force said. NATO said the attackers opened fire on a vehicle with international troops inside it. Both shooters were killed when NATO forces returned fire, it said.
NORTH KOREA
Rain, floods kill 40
Forty people were killed as heavy rain brough flash floods and caused “massive” damage on the weekend, the International Federation of the Red Cross and locals said yesterday. More than 11,000 people were forced from their homes or otherwise affected by the floods, which hit Rajin, near the border with Russia and China, on Saturday and Sunday, said Hler Gudjonsson, a spokesman for the Red Cross in Beijing. State media said there had been 40 “casualties” and “massive” damage after 250mm of rain fell.
GERMANY
Refugee shelters attacked
Two refugee shelters in the east of the country have been attacked, police said yesterday, hours before Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to visit a center for asylum-seekers that was hit by violent far-right protests. A man was seen flinging a Molotov cocktail into a refugee home in Leipzig which was due to house 56 asylum-seekers from yesterday, police said in a statement. Only a mattress was burned as a witness was able to raise the alarm swiftly. Meanwhile in the town of Parchim, police arrested two men who had charged into a refugee shelter wielding a knife. Several residents, who were outside when the incident took place, alerted the police after noticing that one of the two suspects was holding a 20.5cm knife. Both were shouting anti-migrant comments. Police ran blood tests on them for alcohol levels.
BRAZIL
Graft investigation widens
A federal judge overseeing a sweeping corruption investigation on Tuesday said there were signs that President Dilma Rousseff’s former chief of staff had received bribes. Judge Sergio Moro asked the Supreme Court to authorize an investigation into whether a graft case involving the planning ministry might have benefited former chief of staff Gleisi Hoffmann, now a senator and still personally close to the president. Hoffmann has not been formally charged with any wrongdoing.
UNITED KINGDOM
Big Ben behind the times
The bongs of London’s Big Ben have been running fast over the past two weeks, clocksmiths said on Tuesday. The great clock that towers over the British parliament can be out by up to six seconds. However, in the past two weeks, the early bongs have messed up BBC domestic and world radio transmissions that broadcast the hour chimes live. “The error started building up and went slightly unnoticed over a weekend,” clocksmith Ian Westworth told BBC radio. “We don’t know why it happened. You’re talking about a 156-year-old clock; it does have a little fit every now and then.” Clocksmiths regulate the mechanism by stacking heavy old one penny coins on the pendulum, or removing them.
UNITED STATES
White House attacker killed
A knife-wielding intruder, who scaled a wall on the White House perimeter in March, was shot dead by a sheriff at a Pennsylvania county court house on Tuesday, an official said. The incident took place in the lobby of the county justice center in West Chester, the local district attorney said. The assailant, Curtis Smith from Coatesville, “pulled out a knife and attacked a deputy sheriff, slashing him,” district attorney Tom Hogan told reporters. “Another deputy sheriff immediately pulled his firearm and shot Smith.”
UNITED STATES
Lonely rhino sent to Sumatra
The only Sumatran rhinoceros in the nation is to be sent to Indonesia so it can have a chance to mate, an Ohio zoo famous for breeding the endangered species said on Tuesday. Eight-year-old Harapan, one of three Sumatran rhinos born at the Cincinnati Zoo, is to move to the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary later this year, said Terri Roth, director of the zoo’s Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife. “For many years we were hopeful we would receive a female,” Roth said. “Indonesia has been clear recently that they never plan to send another Sumatran rhino out of the country again.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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