ISRAEL
Two killed after car attack
Israeli forces yesterday shot and killed two Palestinians who carried out a car-ramming attack in the occupied West Bank, injuring a soldier and a policeman, police and the army said. The army said that forces opened fire at three Palestinian assailants, “neutralizing two of them and lightly injuring a third,” while police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said two of the Palestinians were killed. The policeman injured in the pre-dawn attack had already been released from hospital, Rosenfeld said. The Palestinian health ministry named the two men killed as Amir Mahmoud Darraj and Yussef Anqawi, both 20. Kafr Nama’s mayor said that troops were leaving the village on foot after a raid to arrest a Palestinian suspect there when the incident occurred. The Israeli army said its troops had arrested 11 alleged Hamas operatives in the Ramallah area overnight.
BANGLADESH
Envoy’s killer hanged
A Bangladeshi man was hanged in a jail outside Dhaka over the murder of a Saudi diplomat in 2012, an official said Monday. Khalaf al-Ali, 45, who worked in the consular section of the Saudi Arabian embassy, was shot in the capital’s diplomatic zone in front of his rented apartment. He later died in hospital. Police at that time said 30-year-old Saiful Islam, who was hanged on Sunday, led the gang who tried to rob the diplomat. The Supreme Court in August last year upheld Islam’s death sentence. He was originally sentenced to death in 2013 by a trial court which described him as the main perpetrator of the killing.
AUSTRALIA
Man kills Airbnb guest
A man has admitted in court to choking to death an Airbnb guest over an unpaid A$210 (US$149) bill. Jason Colton yesterday pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in the Victoria Supreme Court, but admitted to manslaughter in Ramis Jonuzi’s death in 2017. Colton would face a potential life sentence if a jury convicts him of murder, or 20 years if the jury accepts Jonuzi’s death was manslaughter. Jonuzi had been renting a room in a Melbourne home where Colton was also a tenant. Jonuzi first rented a room for three nights on Airbnb, but agreed to stay another week for A$210. The trial continues today.
KENYA
Helicopter crash kills five
Four Americans and their Kenyan pilot were killed when their helicopter crashed on a remote island in Lake Turkana in a national park in the northwest, police said yesterday. The aircraft came down in Central Island National Park at about 8pm on Sunday, police said, killing all on board. The cause of the crash had yet to be determined. Police did not identify the victims, saying next of kin had to be notified first.
INDONESIA
Dam to proceed: court
Environmental advocates have lost a court challenge to a Chinese-backed dam that would rip through the habitat of the most critically endangered orangutan species. A court in North Sumatra Province’s capital, Medan, yesterday ruled that construction could continue, despite critics of the 510-megawatt hydro dam providing evidence that its environmental impact assessment was deeply flawed. Experts said the dam would flood and in other ways alter the habitat of an orangutan species numbering only about 800 primates and likely make it impossible to take a crucial step toward ensuring the species survives.
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
NEW YEAR EVENT: If the freed people contravene the law again they would have to serve the remainder of their original sentence in addition to any new ones The head of Myanmar’s military government granted amnesty to about 4,900 prisoners to mark the country’s traditional new year, state-run media reported yesterday, but it was not immediately clear how many were political detainees locked up for opposing army rule. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the ruling military council, pardoned 4,893 prisoners, MRTV reported. Thirteen foreigners would also be released and deported from Myanmar, it said in a separate statement. Other prisoners received reduced sentences, except for those convicted of serious charges such as murder and rape, or those jailed on charges under other security acts. If the freed detainees contravene
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