INDIA
Electrocution kills 11
A freak electrocution killed at least 11 people, including two children, when their vehicle snagged overhead transmission lines and burst into flames as they rode in a religious procession, authorities said yesterday. More than a dozen people were also injured in Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur District after the vehicle, a 2.7m-high structure fashioned in the form of a chariot and pulled by worshipers, hit the high-voltage lines. “I hope those injured recover soon,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on Twitter as he offered condolences to the bereaved. Some of those injured were hurt in falls following the electric shock and others, who scrambled to escape the flames, when they jumped from the chariot, which carried statues of Hindu deities in addition to the devotees. The chariot, which had been wending its way back to a nearby temple, was left a charred ruin.
PHILIPPINES
Manila pulls ‘Uncharted’
Manila has pulled the plug on all domestic screenings of a Hollywood film called Uncharted over a scene showing a disputed map of the South China Sea, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The move comes shortly after Vietnam, another claimant in the South China Sea, also banned the Sony Pictures action movie, which stars Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg. It was released in the Philippines on Feb. 23. A two-second frame in the movie contains an image of the so-called “nine-dash line,” which marks China’s claims in the South China Sea. The scene “is contrary to national interest,” the ministry said in a statement. The U-shaped line is a feature used on Chinese maps to illustrate its maritime territory in a region where Taiwan, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines all have competing claims. Sony’s Columbia Pictures Industries Inc was ordered to stop screening the film and has complied, the ministry said.
UNITED STATES
Twitter followings fluctuate
Some Twitter users, former president Barack Obama among them, have shed thousands of followers since Elon Musk’s planned purchase of the social media platform was announced, while numbers have soared for others. Musk on Monday struck a deal to buy Twitter for US$44 billion. The news was greeted with enthusiasm by fans of Musk, who calls himself a free speech absolutist, and horror by proponents of online content moderation. Promises to leave the platform were trending under hashtags such as #LeaveTwitter. Obama, the most popular person on Twitter with more than 131 million followers, lost 300,000 of them nearly overnight, news firm NBC reported. However, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene gained nearly 100,000 to her official congressional Twitter account in just 24 hours. Greene praised the acquisition by Musk. “Prepare for blue check mark full scale meltdown after @elonmusk seals the deal and I should get my personal Twitter account restored,” she wrote, referencing the site’s system for verifying users. “It really is something how conservative accounts are getting massive follower increases today,” Representative Matt Gaetz wrote on Tuesday. Twitter told reporters that while it was monitoring the situation, the fluctuations appeared to be organic and largely due to new accounts being created and existing ones deactivated.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS