INDIA
Mudslides kill 16
Rescuers found two more bodies as they resumed clearing operations after an overnight halt looking for nearly 70 missing people after a mudslide triggered by weeks of heavy downpours killed at least 16 people at a railroad construction site in the northeast, officials said yesterday. More than 200 disaster response workers and police were using earth-clearing equipment to rescue those buried under the debris in Noney in Manipur state. The terrain was making it difficult to move heavy equipment, Noney Deputy Commissioner Haulianlal Guite said, adding that he has asked for reinforcements. Seven of the confirmed dead were members of the Territorial Army, Manipur Chief Minister Nongthombam Biren Singh said. Five Indian Railway officials were among those feared missing, he added.
THAILAND
Myanmar apologizes for jets
Neighboring Myanmar has apologized after one of its fighter jets crossed into Thai airspace on a bombing run along the border, forcing authorities to evacuate hundreds of schoolchildren and scramble air force jets to the area, the government said yesterday. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said that although the incident on Thursday over Phop Phra district might have appeared serious, it was “not a big deal,” and a Burmese defense attache had apologized. “What is most important is we have enough capacity to defend our sovereignty,” Prayuth told reporters. Teachers at Wale School led more than 200 elementary and middle-school students from their classrooms to fortified buildings. Video obtained by The Associated Press shows what appears to be a MiG-29 making several circles into Thai airspace over villages and schools before firing on the Burmese side.
UNITED STATES
Park visitor gored by bison
For the second time in three days, a visitor to Yellowstone National Park was gored by a bison, park officials said on Thursday. A 71-year-old woman and her daughter inadvertently approached the bison on Wednesday as they were returning to their vehicle at a Yellowstone Lake trailhead. The woman’s injuries were not life-threatening, park officials said. She was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Cody, Wyoming. The incident remains under investigation, park officials said. On Monday, a 34-year-old man who had gotten too close to a bison near Giant Geyser was thrown, as he grabbed a child who was running away from the beast. They both got up and ran away. On May 30, a woman got within 3m of a bison before it gored and tossed her, causing a puncture wound and other injuries.
UNITED STATES
‘Tiger King’ star indicted
A federal grand jury in South Carolina has indicted five people on charges of wildlife trafficking and money laundering, including Doc Antle, who starred in the Netflix series Tiger King, the US Department of Justice said on Thursday. The indictment alleges that Antle and others illegally trafficked wildlife, and made false records regarding the animals, which included lemurs, cheetahs and a chimpanzee, the department said. It also alleged that Antle and Andrew Sawyer laundered more than US$500,000 in cash believed to be the proceeds of an operation to smuggle immigrants across the Mexican border into the US. Antle had allegedly used bulk cash receipts to purchase animals for which he could not use checks, and planned to conceal it by inflating tourist numbers at a wildlife preserve he owned, the indictment said.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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