PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Landslide rescuers arrive
Rescue crews yesterday arrived at the site of a massive landslide in the remote highlands, helping villagers search for hundreds of people feared dead under towering mounds of rubble and mud. The disaster struck an isolated part of Enga Province at about 3am on Friday, wiping out swathes of the hillside settlement as villagers slept. “While verified casualty numbers are still pending, people living in the approximately 60 destroyed homes are unaccounted for,” a UN situation report said. So far, at least four bodies have been recovered, said a UN official based in the capital Port Moresby. A rapid response team of medics, military and police began pouring into the disaster zone yesterday morning after a journey complicated by the rugged terrain and damage to major roads.
INDIA
Heatwave hits election
As people participate in the next-to-last phase of voting in the world’s largest election, temperatures were forecast to surge to 47°C in the capital, New Delhi. More than 111 million people in 58 constituencies across eight states and federal territories are eligible to vote in the general election’s sixth phase, which recorded a turnout of 10.82 percent in the first two hours of the 11-hour poll. The overall turnout in the same phase of the last elections in 2019 was about 63 percent. “There is a concern, but we hope that people will overcome the fear of the heatwave and come and vote,” Delhi Chief Electoral Officer P. Krishnamurthy said. The Election Commission has deployed paramedics with medicines and oral hydration salts at polling stations in Delhi, which have additionally been equipped with mist machines, shaded waiting areas and cold water dispensers for voters. In some parts of the northern state of Haryana, people residing near polling booths also pitched in to help voters beat the heat, handing out cold drinks, dry fruits and milk free of charge.
MEXICO
Hijackers steal avocados
Highway bandits made off with more than 36 tonnes of avocados, federal prosecutors said on Friday. The Attorney General’s Office said the avocados were stolen in two separate robberies in the western state of Michoacan, Mexico’s main producer of the fruit. In both cases, armed men stopped freight trucks carrying about 18 tonnes each, and stole the shipments. Avocado growers have long been targeted by drug cartel extortion demands in Michoacan, but hijackings of entire shipments are rare.
UNITED STATES
Sean Kingston arrested
Rapper and singer Sean Kingston and his mother allegedly committed more than US$1 million in fraud in the past few months, stealing money, jewelry, a Cadillac Escalade and furniture, documents released on Friday said. Kingston, 34, and his 61-year-old mother, Janice Turner, have been charged with conducting an organized scheme to defraud, grand theft, identity theft and related crimes, arrest warrants released by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said. The two were arrested on Thursday after a SWAT team raided Kingston’s rented mansion in suburban Fort Lauderdale. Turner was arrested in the raid, while Kingston was arrested at Fort Irwin, an army training base in California’s Mojave Desert where he was performing. Kingston, who had a No. 1 hit with Beautiful Girls in 2007, is being held at a California jail awaiting his return to Florida. His mother was being held on Friday at the Broward County jail on US$160,000 bond.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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