ZAMBIA
Trapped miner rescued
Rescue workers have pulled out the first survivor of a landslide on Friday last week that inundated an open-pit copper mine and trapped at least 25 people who were working there without a permit, the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit said yesterday. The rescue team also retrieved one body, which had yet to be identified, it said in a statement posted on Facebook. “A 49-year-old man has been rescued from the collapsed mine slug dump site in Chingola after being trapped with several other miners,” it said, adding that he was being treated in a hospital. President Hakainde Hichilema on Tuesday said that he was still hopeful that the trapped miners were alive, as rescue efforts continued.
THAILAND
Officials fired over wealth
Four officials have been dismissed after authorities found more than 2 billion baht (US$57 million) in their bank accounts, with investigators calling the group “unusually wealthy.” While officials are often accused of accepting small bribes and payoffs, sums of this magnitude are rare. The money was discovered in multiple accounts held by three women and a man who work in the Revenue Department in Samut Prakhan province. The National Anti-Corruption Commission has referred the case to the attorney general’s office and requested that the Criminal Court for Corruption also investigate. The four were “unusually wealthy,” and their listed assets did not match their government incomes, commission assistant secretary-general and deputy spokesman Sornchai Chuwichian said in a statement on Monday. The man, Danai Damrongchaiyothin, had 1.1 billion baht in seven accounts, while one of the women held more than 500 million baht in five accounts.
NEPAL
Russian army scam busted
Police have detained 10 people they say charged unemployed youths huge amounts of money for travel visas, then sent them for illegal recruitment into the Russian army, an official said yesterday. Kathmandu asked Moscow this week not to recruit its citizens into the Russian army, and to send any Nepalese soldier in its armed forces back to the Himalayan nation after six of its citizens serving in Russia’s military were killed. Kathmandu District Police Chief Bhupendra Khatri said that 10 people were in police custody after being detained over the past few days following tip-offs. Khatri said the detainees illegally charged each person up to US$9,000 and sent them to Russia on tourist visas, mainly through the United Arab Emirates. They were then recruited into the Russian army. “It is a case of human smuggling ... organized crime,” he said.
PERU
Fujimori to be released
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday ordered the release of former president Alberto Fujimori, 85, who was serving a 25-year prison sentence for crimes against humanity committed on his watch. A court ruling ordered the “immediate” release under supervision of Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000. The ruling reinstates an earlier pardon. Fujimori has been jailed since 2009 over massacres committed by army death squads in 1991 and 1992 in which 25 people, including a child, were killed in supposed anti-terrorist operations. In February, Fujimori was admitted to a hospital due to an irregular heartbeat. He has recurrent respiratory, neurological and hypertension problems and has had tongue cancer.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant