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.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing