MALAYSIA
Helicopter debris found
Search crews yesterday found suspected debris from a helicopter that disappeared with six people on board, including a deputy minister and a member of parliament, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said. Search teams recovered a rotor blade, a floatation device, part of a wall panel, a door and a seat early yesterday on the Borneo island of Sarawak, near where the helicopter is believed to have crashed, Razak said. “We are using all our assets to find the six passengers,” he said. Najib added that rescuers were searching for the main body of the helicopter and said the debris was found close to Batang Lupar, one of the widest rivers on Borneo. The Eurocopter AS350 was ferrying Deputy Minister Noriah Kasnon, her husband Asmuni Abdullah and parliament member Wan Mohammad Khair-il Anuar Wan Ahmad from the state’s interior to the state capital Kuching when it went missing on Thursday.
JAPAN
Anti-LGBT rhetoric cited
The country’s schools are filled with “hateful” comments about gay and transgender people, including from teachers, which aggravates bullying and drives some students into depression, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released yesterday. “Hateful anti-LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender} rhetoric is nearly ubiquitous in Japanese schools, driving LGBT students into silence, self-loathing, and in some cases, self-harm,” the group said. The study was based on interviews with students from the LGBT community, and also teachers, who HRW said were often a key part of the problem. “The information vacuum combined with pervasive hateful comments from students and teachers alike means sexual and gender minority children in Japan sometimes first struggle with their identities with shame and disgust,” it said.
PHILIPPINES
Controversies brushed off
Presidential favorite Rodrigo Duterte has brushed off controversies over an alleged secret fortune and a rape joke to keep a huge lead going into the final days of the election campaign, a pollster said yesterday. Duterte has faced a barrage of last-minute attacks ahead of Monday’s election over allegations he hid millions of dollars in undisclosed bank accounts, while his critics have repeatedly warned he is a dictator in the making. A self-confessed serial adulterer, the 71-year-old also generated outrage last month when he joked at a campaign rally that he had wanted to rape a “beautiful” Australian missionary who was sexually assaulted and murdered in a 1989 Philippine prison riot. As with other controversies — which included calling the pope a “son of a whore” — none appears to have impacted his popularity, according to a Social Weather Stations survey released yesterday.
UNITED STATES
Yearbook exposure dropped
Authorities in Arizona have dropped 70 charges against a high school student who exposed himself in a football team photograph published in the school’s yearbook, police said on Thursday. “At this time, all parties involved no longer desire prosecution and the case will be closed,” said detective Steve Berry, a spokesman for the Mesa police department. Hunter Osborn, 19, a student at Red Mountain High School in the Phoenix-area town of Mesa, was arrested at the weekend and charged with 69 counts of indecent exposure and one felony charge of furnishing harmful items to minors. The number of counts corresponded to the number of people present when the picture was taken. Osborn, who was 18 at the time, told police that he exposed his penis as a prank after being dared by a fellow football player on the team. School officials alerted police last week after discovering the offending picture, which made it into 3,400 copies of the yearbook, as well as the football program.
MEXICO
Pollution alert discontinued
Mexico City has discontinued a pollution alert after three days of persistently high smog levels and was to allow more cars on the streets yesterday. Smog remained at almost 1.3 times acceptable limits on Thursday, but authorities said winds were expected to pick up and help clean the air. During the three-day alert, 40 percent of cars were ordered off the street each day. Under a rule in effect through June, one-fifth of the city’s vehicles normally must stay at home on a weekday, with the day determined by license plate numbers.
UNITED NATIONS
Pusic requests meeting
Former Croation minister of foreign affairs Vesna Pusic, who is campaigning to be the next secretary-general of the UN, said she has asked to meet members of the UN Security Council who will make the final decision. Pusic said she requested the meeting to hear the “concerns and questions” of council members and have its 15 members evaluate her candidacy. She spoke late on Wednesday by telephone from Jordan, where she was attending an international conference of women lawmakers. Another candidate, Moldovan Minister of Foreign Affairs Natalia Gherman, also asked to meet the council, said a council diplomat on condition of anonymity because the council has not yet announced the requests. The diplomat said the council is likely to meet privately with the candidates for an hour.
UNITED STATES
Trump, Stones feud
It seems Donald Trump believes you can always get what you want. The US Republican presumptive presidential nominee appears to have dismissed a demand by the The Rolling Stones that he stop using the band’s songs during his campaign events. “You know, we use so many songs,” Trump told CNBC. “We have the rights to use them. I always buy the rights.” Trump has frequently used hits by The Rolling Stones to fire up supporters at campaign events, but the band have joined a growing number of musicians who have expressed anger at his use of their music. “The Rolling Stones have never given permission to the Trump campaign to use their songs and have requested that they cease all use immediately,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday. However, Trump doubled down on The Rolling Stones’ music as he wrapped up a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, on Thursday, playing Start Me Up and You Can’t Always Get What You Want.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
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