ROMANIA
Eight killed in crashes
Eight military personnel died after their helicopter and fighter jet crashed on Wednesday in bad weather near the Black Sea, marking the worst day of air force accidents in the past few years. An IAR 330-Puma helicopter crashed in the area of Gura Dobrogei, 11km from an airfield, killing all seven aboard, the defense ministry said. It was searching for a MiG 21 LanceR, shortly after the fighter jet, performing air patrol missions, disappeared. The fighter jet was later found, having crashed near Cogealac, an uninhabited area near the Black Sea, the ministry said. The 31-year-old pilot died, it added. “It is premature to discuss possible causes. Certainly, there were unfavorable weather conditions, but we can’t comment now,” spokesman General Constantin Spanu said on local television.
INDIA
No hostages: New Delhi
New Delhi yesterday denied Russian claims that Ukraine was holding Indian students hostage in Kharkiv, instead thanking Ukraine for its help in evacuations from the embattled city. “We note that with the cooperation of the Ukrainian authorities, many students have left Kharkiv yesterday,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Arindam Bagchi said. “We have not received any reports of any hostage situation regarding any student,” he added in a statement. The declaration came after Moscow said that Indian students were being used as a “human shield” by Ukrainian security forces. The Kremlin made the claim following a video call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday.
AUSTRALIA
Tycoon refutes Hitler car buy
Clive Palmer’s team yesterday denied that the billionaire mining tycoon bought a car owned by Adolf Hitler, calling it “fake news.” News Corp last week reported that Palmer, an avid collector of rare cars, had bought the Nazi leader’s bulletproof 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770 from an unnamed Russian billionaire. The report claimed that Palmer planned to include the Mercedes, which has been traded privately since it was seized in France at the end of World War II, in a museum he planned for the Gold Coast. “Clive Palmer hasn’t bought Adolf Hitler’s car,” a spokesperson for Palmer said. New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Darren Bark said that if the reports were true, purchasing the car would trivialize “the pain and suffering endured by millions of innocent lives, including our Australian servicemen and women, who fought to defeat the Nazis.”
UNITED STATES
Transgender probe halted
A court in Texas on Wednesday ordered the suspension of a probe into the parents of a transgender 16-year-old girl under a legal opinion that deemed transitioning procedures as tantamount to child abuse. Texas Governor Greg Abbott last week instructed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate instances of minors receiving “sex change procedures,” which he said “constitute child abuse under existing Texas law.” Shortly after Abbott’s directive, the mother in Wednesday’s court case was suspended by her employer, the department, and visited by a state investigator, court documents said. A district court judge issued a restraining order preventing the state from investigating the parents until at least Friday next week, when the court would hear arguments seeking a larger block of the governor’s order.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other