THAILAND
Zoo cleared of panda’s death
Chiang Mai Zoo has been exonerated in a panda diplomacy row after autopsy results revealed that a celebrity panda on loan from China, died of heart failure and not from neglect or foul play. The sudden death last month of Chuang Chuang sparked outrage in China, where social media users blamed the zoo for his death, suggesting it was caused by neglect or careless feeding. Chuang Chuang was 19 when he died. In the wild pandas generally live to up to 20 years, but can survive up to another decade in captivity. The panda, who had been on loan since 2003 was known for being obese and was famously put on a diet in 2007. The Chinese-assisted autopsy ended speculation the Chiang Mai Zoo was at fault, but the zoo confirmed it would pay an unspecified amount of compensation to Beijing as outlined in the loan agreement.
CHINA
Solomons PM signs deals
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare yesterday met Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) in Beijing and signed several agreements in the first official visit since the two countries established diplomatic relations last month. “I am pleased to recognize the ‘one China’ policy... We are pleased to be on the right side of history and normalize relations with the People’s Republic of China,” Sogavare said ahead of a meeting with Li and other officials. One of the agreements is to work together on President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) flagship foreign policy initiative, the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as others on economic and education strategies.
ECUADOR
Protesters rush Congress
Protesters on Tuesday broke into Congress as demonstrations over a fuel price hike introduced by President Lenin Moreno’s government intensified. Demonstrators, many of them armed with sticks and whips, surged through a security cordon. They rushed into the meeting room and occupied the podium, but were soon evicted by security forces. Moreno subsequently ordered an overnight curfew to protect public buildings. Clashes between security forces and protesters outside Congress erupted earlier this week as thousands of demonstrators began converging on the capital, Quito, to protest soaring fuel prices at a mass demonstration planned for yesterday.
UNITED STATES
Child charged with murder
A nine-year-old child accused of causing a mobile home fire that killed three children and two adults in central Illinois has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder. The juvenile was also charged with two counts of arson and one count of aggravated arson, the Peoria Journal Star reported. The April 6 fire killed a one-year-old, two two-year-olds, a 34-year-old man and a 69-year-old woman at the Timberline Mobile Home Park near the village of Goodfield, about 240km southwest of Chicago. Woodford County State’s Attorney Greg Minger would not reveal other details about the suspect. No child as young as this one has been accused in a mass killing since at least 2006, according to the AP/USATODAY/Northeastern University mass murder database. “It’s a tragedy, but at the end of the day, it’s charging a very young person with one of the most serious crimes we have, but I just think it needs to be done at this point, for finality,” Minger said.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS