MALAYSIA
Record pangolin haul seized
A wildlife monitoring group says authorities have seized a record 27 tonnes of pangolin and pangolin products in eastern Sabah State, the biggest such bust in the country. The monitoring network Traffic says Sabah police this month uncovered two major pangolin processing facilities. Police over the weekend said they seized three refrigerated containers containing 1,800 boxes filled with frozen pangolins, another 572 frozen pangolins in separate freezers, 61 live pangolins and 361kg of pangolin scales.
INDIA
New Delhi hotel fire kills 17
Seventeen people died in a fire early yesterday at a hotel in western New Delhi that left at least four others injured, police said. The fire at the Arpit Palace Hotel has been extinguished, but authorities are still investigating what sparked it, Deputy Police Commissioner Mandeep Singh Randhawa said. Twenty-five fire engines responded to the blaze, Fire Officer Vijay Paul said.
TURKEY
More with cleric ties arrested
Authorities ordered the arrest of 1,112 people over suspected links to the network of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of orchestrating an attempted coup in 2016, broadcaster CNN Turk reported yesterday. The operation is among the biggest that has been launched against alleged supporters of Gulen since the failed putsch. CNN Turk said the operation was centered on Ankara, but was spread across 76 provinces.
GERMANY
Chinese film pulled at festival
The Berlin film festival on Monday said that a new movie by acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou (張藝謀) had been pulled from the competition days before its scheduled world premiere. The highly unusual move, which comes amid a Beijing crackdown on the domestic entertainment industry, was announced in a festival statement citing “technical difficulties encountered during post-production.” Zhang’s One Second (一秒鐘) portrays a prisoner who escaped from a labor camp during the Cultural Revolution and is on a trek to see a key newsreel in a rural village cinema.
FRANCE
Armored van flees with cash
The driver of an armored cash delivery van disappeared outside of Paris early on Monday along with an estimated 1 million euros (US$1.13 million), police sources said. The 28-year-old man had stopped in front of a Western Union office at about 6am in a northern suburb of the capital and stayed behind the wheel as two of his colleagues went inside. “When they came back out, the van and the driver were gone,” one of the sources said. The van was found a few blocks away, but the driver and the bags of cash were gone.
BRAZIL
TV anchor dies in crash
An award-winning television news anchor died on Monday when a helicopter carrying him crashed on one of Sao Paulo’s main highways. TV Band said that Ricardo Boechat was returning from the city of Campinas when the helicopter crashed onto a truck. Police confirmed that the pilot also died. The 66-year-old Boechat anchored TV Band’s nightly news, as well as hosting a radio program and writing a column for IstoE magazine. He was a frequent mediator of presidential debates for his network. “The helicopter tried to land in an access road close to a toll station. But then the truck came and they crashed. The fire occurred because of the collision,” Police Captain Augusto Paiva said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
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