BANGLADESH
Bodies recovered from crash
Rescue teams including navy divers have recovered 24 bodies from a bus that plunged into a river at a ferry crossing, officials said yesterday. The bus on Wednesday sank into the deep waters of the Padma River in Goalanda. It had about 50 passengers on board, many of whom escaped. A fire service report said that 24 bodies, including those of five children, had been recovered by midday yesterday. Some were pulled out by fire service officers, others by locals who came to help, as well as by navy divers. “The bus was waiting to board a ferry, when it fell into the river,” said Noor Jahan Begum, 35, who saw the accident. “Some passengers got out of the bus, but their family members died, trapped inside.”
Photo: Reuters
RUSSIA
Protesters to be arrested
The government yesterday said it would arrest anybody who protests mass Internet blackouts, as Moscow deals with bubbling public discontent against widespread switch-offs. The capital on Wednesday officially lifted three weeks of restrictions on mobile Internet access in Moscow — a measure the Kremlin had called “necessary” for security — but connection remains poor across many parts of the city. Regions have been switching off mobile Internet services for months in what they say is a measure to thwart Ukrainian counterattacks with drones that connect to local data providers. The Ministry of Internal Affairs yesterday issued a warning against taking part in “unauthorized public events,” citing an “increase” in calls for rallies. “All attempts to hold such events will be immediately suppressed, and their organizers and participants will be detained,” it said in a statement.
CAMBODIA
Journalists’ sentence upheld
A court yesterday upheld 14-year prison sentences for two journalists convicted of treason for posting a photograph taken in a military-restricted area after a round of border clashes with Thailand, a rights group said. Journalists Pheap Phara and Phorn Sopheap were arrested in late July last year after posting a photo on Facebook that appeared to show them with Cambodian soldiers at the centuries-old Ta Krabei temple on the disputed frontier with Thailand, local rights group LICADHO said. Thai media outlets later republished the image, alleging it showed unplaced landmines in the background, the group said in a statement. The two journalists were convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison in December for “supplying a foreign state with information prejudicial to national defense.”
UNITED STATES
Colbert to write movie
Stephen Colbert is heading to Middle-earth. The comedian announced in a video posted on Tuesday that following the end of his 11-year run as host of CBS’ The Late Show in May, he would cowrite and develop a new film in the Lord of the Rings franchise. It marks a new chapter for Colbert, a noted devotee of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional world of Middle-earth. Colbert appears in the video alongside Peter Jackson, the New Zealand-born filmmaker who directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy that was a critical and commercial smash. The film’s current working title is Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, according to a statement. A director has not been announced. “I’m pretty happy about it,” Colbert says to Jackson in the clip. “You know what the books mean to me and what your films mean to me.”
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
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