MALAYSIA
Rescuers search for missing
Malaysian and Thai authorities yesterday resumed their search for dozens of people missing at sea, days after a boat carrying members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority sank near the border between the two countries, killing at least 21. Thirteen survivors have been rescued in Malaysian waters since Saturday, while 12 were found dead, including two children, the Malaysia Coast Guard told reporters on Monday. Coast guard regional director Romli Mustafa said his counterparts in Thailand had found nine bodies, although a Thai police official in the country’s Satun Province said that just six had been recovered.
Photo: Reuters
JAPAN
Actor Tatsuya Nakadai dies
Stage and movie actor Tatsuya Nakadai, who starred in a string of Akira Kurosawa films, including the lead in Ran, has died aged 92, his acting school said yesterday. Nakadai first rose to fame in Japan and internationally under director Masaki Kobayashi, who cast him in his epic anti-war trilogy The Human Condition of the late 1950s and early 1960s. His acting school, Mumeijuku, did not say when Nakadai died or give any other details. Nakadai had a walk-on part in Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai, but later effectively replaced Toshiro Mifune as the famed director’s go-to leading man after Mifune went his own way.
CHINA
Gay dating apps removed
Officials ordered the removal of two popular gay dating apps from mobile stores in China, Apple confirmed yesterday. Over the weekend, social media users pointed out that the full versions of apps Blued and Finka, which share a Hong Kong-based owner, had disappeared from the Apple and Android stores. Lawyer Zhao Hu, who has long campaigned for LGBTQ rights, said that the government’s decision was “unexpected,” and questioned its legality. “Blued and Finka, both having been on the market for nearly a decade, were taken down without explanation,” he said. If the apps were removed without the company’s consent, this could be seen as an infringement of its interests, which would make it an unlawful act, Zhao added.
RUSSIA
Jet theft plot thwarted: FSB
The Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had foiled a plot by Ukrainian and British spies to tempt Russian pilots to steal a MiG-31 jet armed with a Kinzhal hypersonic missile for US$3 million, state media reported yesterday. The RIA news agency cited the FSB as saying that the hijacked jet was to be flown toward a NATO air base in the Romanian city of Constanta, where it could have been shot down by air defenses, the agency reported. Ukraine and the UK had planned a large-scale “provocation” using the hijacked aircraft, and that Ukrainian military intelligence had sought to recruit Russian pilots for US$3 million to steal the fighter, the FSB said.
AUSTRALIA
Devilish bee discovered
A “lucifer” bee with devil-like horns — dubbed Megachile (Hackeriapis) Lucifer — was found in Western Australia, Curtin University announced yesterday. Kit Prendergast at the university’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences discovered the bee while surveying a critically endangered wildflower in 2019 and was immediately drawn to the insect’s unique appearance. “The female had these incredible little horns on her face,” she said. A fan of the Netflix TV show Lucifer, she said the name was the perfect fit for the bee’s distinctively devilish appearance.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
RSS