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.
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