VIETNAM
Shipwreck dead found
Seven bodies believed to be from a boat that sank off Cambodia’s coast were found floating off Phu Quoc island, state media said yesterday. The vessel with 41 Chinese on board got into difficulties near the Cambodian casino hub of Sihanoukville last week. It was carrying migrants from China who had been promised work. Thirty people were rescued in Cambodian and Vietnamese waters while three of the migrants were found dead, authorities said earlier. By late Thursday, “seven bodies were recorded drifting to the Bai Truong beach on Phu Quoc island. The bodies were all in the process of decomposition,” the newspaper of the Ministry of Public Security said. The report said two bodies were found with Chinese identity cards and their decomposing state “is also quite consistent with the time when the boat wreck occurred.” The formerly sleepy fishing village of Sihanoukville has over the past few years been transformed into a casino hub following a Chinese investment boom. There have been multiple reports in the past few months of foreign nationals being duped into working in casinos or online scam operations in the city.
AFGHANISTAN
Suicide bombing kills 19
A suicide bombing struck an education center in a Shiite area in Kabul yesterday, killing 19 people and injuring 27, a Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Kabul police chief said. The explosion inside the center in the Dashti Barchi neighborhood took place in the morning hours, police spokesman Khalid Zadran said. The bombing was the latest in a steady stream of violence since the Taliban seized power last year. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the area, which is populated mostly by members of the minority Shiite community. The Islamic State group — the chief rival of the Taliban since their takeover in August last year — has in the past targeted the Hazara community, including in Dashti Barchi.
THAILAND
PM resumes office
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha yesterday resumed office after the constitutional court ruled that he has not exceeded his eight-year term limit. The former army chief, who came to power in a 2014 coup, was last month suspended while the court examined a legal challenge mounted by opposition parties that said he had reached his term limit. Bangkok authorities were on alert for demonstrations, as several groups had earlier said they would take to the streets if Prayuth won the case. “The respondent’s premiership has not reached the eight-year limit,” Judge Punya Udchacon said. “The Cabinet under the premiership of the respondent is counted from April 6, 2017.” The ruling counts Prayuth’s term from when a new army-scripted constitution came into force and means he can stay in office until up to 2025.
CHINA
Fossils shed light on jaws
For human beings and 99.8 percent of all vertebrates, having jaws is an integral part of life. However, like everything else in our bodies, jaws had to start somewhere. Researchers on Wednesday described the earliest known vertebrates that possessed jaws as revealed by fossils of four remarkable fish species unearthed in China, two dating from 436 million years ago and two from 439 million years ago. Until now, only scrappy fossils of vertebrates from that critical time in the evolution of animals with backbones had been known, leaving the earliest ones with jaws as something of a mystery.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion