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 Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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