SINGAPORE
Australian sentenced
A court yesterday sentenced an Australian man to five-and-a-half years in prison for killing an elderly Singaporean man and injuring his wife with a thrown wine bottle, in what the judge called an act of religious hostility toward Muslims. Andrew Gosling was convicted of “causing death and grievous hurt by a rash act” for throwing a wine bottle at a group of people two stories below him, striking a 73-year-old man and killing him in 2019. The bottle ricocheted and injured the shoulder of the man’s wife. “Such offences could seriously undermine Singapore’s racial and religious harmony and must not be tolerated and must be firmly dealt with,” State Courts District Judge Victor Yeo said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Pink Floyd record war song
Pink Floyd was yesterday to release a new song to raise money for humanitarian relief in Ukraine, featuring the vocals of a Ukrainian singer who quit an international tour to fight for his country and was wounded. The single Hey Hey, Rise Up — Pink Floyd’s first original new music in almost 30 years — was recorded last week and highlights singing by Andriy Khlyvnyuk from Ukrainian band Boombox, which was taken from a social media post. Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour said he learned that Khlyvnyuk — with whom he had previously performed — left a US tour to return to Ukraine to join the Territorial Defense Forces. “Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war,” Gilmour wrote on Pink Floyd’s Web site. “It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music.”
AUSTRALIA
National election expected
The government is expected to trigger a national election in the coming days, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison seeking to clear thorny political issues as his three-year term nears its end. “It won’t be very long from now,” Morrison told radio station 3AW yesterday, adding that an election was due in the middle of next month. On Thursday, Morrison’s conservative government changed position and agreed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on aid for flood victims in Queensland, where the Labor Party must gain seats to win a general election. The latest polls show Morrison’s Liberal Party lagging behind Labor. Refugees detained for two years in a hotel in Melbourne under Australia’s tough border policies were also suddenly released into the community on Thursday.
COLOMBIA
Flooding kills 12
Torrential rains and flooding have killed at least 12 people at a mining camp in mountainous northwest Colombia, with another two reported missing and more damage expected, authorities said on Thursday. The flooding at Abriaqui in the Antioquia Department surprised a group of miners as they were eating dinner on Wednesday evening, Mayor Hector Urrego told local television. “The guys were at dinner, some were preparing to rest, others were leaving work when the flood arrived” at the El Porvenir gold mine, he said. “We have twelve lifeless bodies ... and there are still two missing,” he added. The flooding destroyed one level of the mining camp as well as part of a plant, according to the Antioquia government. The effort to recover the missing was delayed until yesterday morning due to inclement weather, rescue officials said.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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