THAILAND
Hospital bomber jailed
A court yesterday jailed a former engineer for 27 years for planting a pipe bomb in an army-run hospital in protest against the junta. At least 21 people were injured — one seriously — when the nail-filled device detonated in the waiting room of King Mongkut hospital in Bangkok on May 22, the third anniversary of a coup that ousted an elected civilian government in 2014. Wattana Phumret, 62, confessed to planting the device in a vase due to his “hatred for governments that come from military coups.” The court said the evidence “proved without doubt” the suspect’s guilt on several charges, but he avoided a life sentence due to his confession.
FRANCE
Rock icon Hallyday dies
Johnny Hallyday, the rocker icon who packed sports stadiums and was the nation’s top rock star for decades, has died at 74. President Emmanuel Macron’s office announced his death in a statement early yesterday, saying “he brought a part of America into our national pantheon.” Hallyday had long suffered from lung cancer and had repeated health scares recently. His glitzy stage aura was clearly fashioned around stars like Elvis Presley and his musical inspiration came from the likes of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly.
UNITED KINGDOM
Woman in spy scandal dies
Christine Keeler, the woman at the center of a 1960s love triangle between a minister and Soviet naval attache that produced the nation’s biggest political sex scandal, has died at the age of 75. Keeler’s committing adultery with then-minister of war John Profumo shocked the socially conservative nation in the early 1960s and created a furor that contributed to the resignation of then-prime minister Harold Macmillan. Revelations that Keeler was also romantically involved with a Soviet naval attache, Yevgeny Ivanov, turned a sex scandal into a political and diplomatic firestorm. Her son, Seymour Platt, said that Keeler died late on Tuesday evening and the scandal had profoundly affected her.
UNITED STATES
Delta makes bathroom stop
A Delta Air Lines flight from New York City to Seattle had to make a stop in Billings, Montana, after the plane’s toilets stopped working and passengers could not hold it any longer. The Billings Gazette reports that the direct flight diverted hundreds of kilometers south on Saturday last week to make the emergency bathroom stop. Delta said that upon landing in Billings, the plane had to taxi to a cargo area because a gate was not available. Delta said ground crews rolled a stairway to the airplane so passengers could “disembark to find relief of built-up pressures.”
AUSTRALIA
Dogs deployed in research
Dogs are being trained to sniff out the droppings of endangered animals in a scheme that offers greater understanding of threatened species through the less-intrusive method of canine tracking. Emma Bennett, a doctoral candidate at Monash University in Melbourne, is working with environmentally conscious dog owners who have volunteered their pets in a rainforest region of Victoria state to track the scats, or droppings, of the endangered tiger quoll, a small marsupial. “Scats contain DNA, so you can identify the individual animal,” Bennett said yesterday. “They also contain information about diet distribution.” Using canines to obtain feces sample is a “non-invasive” alternative to traps, reducing the risk of injury or stress, she said.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
RSS