THAILAND
People flee clashes
About 1,300 people have fled from eastern Myanmar into Thailand, officials said yesterday, as fresh fighting erupted at a border town that has recently been captured by ethnic guerillas. Fighters from the Karen ethnic minority last week captured the last of the Burmese army’s outposts in and around Myawaddy, which is connected to Thailand by two bridges across the Moei River. The latest clashes were triggered in the morning when the Karen guerillas launched an attack against Burmese troops who were hiding near the Second Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge, a major crossing point for trade with Thailand, said Pittayakorn Phetcharat, police chief of Thailand’s Mae Sot District. He estimated about 1,300 people fled into Thailand.
MEXICO
Two mayor candidates killed
Two mayoral candidates were on Friday reported killed, one in the northeast and another in the south, authorities said — part of a wave of political violence ahead of June elections. In Tamaulipas, a state plagued by organized crime, a search was launched for the person who stabbed candidate Noe Ramos, Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios said. Local media reported the candidate, who was seeking re-election as head of Mante, was walking through the streets to meet with residents when he was attacked by a man with a knife on Friday. In the southern state of Oaxaca, Alberto Antonio Garcia was found dead on Friday after going missing this week, the state prosecutor’s office said.
UKRAINE
Civilians killed in strikes
The military earlier yesterday launched a wave of drones at Russia, setting a fuel depot ablaze, officials said. The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said cross-border attacks left at least three people dead, while a Russian strike killed two in Ukraine’s northeast. A source in the defense sector said that Kyiv targeted eight Russian regions in the “large-scale” attack aimed at “energy infrastructure that feeds Russia’s military-industrial complex.” The Russian Ministry of Defense said it had intercepted 50 drones overnight, some of them hundreds of kilometers from the border, including near the capital, Moscow.
ECUADOR
Another mayor killed
The mayor of a mining town was shot dead on Friday, the second such killing in days ahead of a weekend referendum on tougher measures against organized crime, police said. Portovelo Mayor Jorge Maldonado “fell victim to gunshots that resulted in his death,” police wrote on X. He was gunned down by two attackers on a motorcycle. The killing came amid an energy debacle due to a severe drought, which has emptied reservoirs to alarming levels and left the nation grappling with blackouts of up to 13 hours. Maldonado was the fifth mayor assassinated in a year, and the third in less than a month.
CHINA
Apple removes Meta apps
Apple said it had removed Meta’s WhatsApp messaging app and its Threads social media app from the App Store in China to comply with orders from the Cyberspace Administration. The apps were removed from the store on Friday after officials cited unspecified national security concerns. Their removal comes amid elevated tensions with the US over trade, technology and national security, and as Washington has threatened to ban TikTok over national security concerns. Other Meta apps, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger remained available for download.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other