CAMBODIA
Crocodiles attack man
About 40 crocodiles on Friday killed a Cambodian man after he fell into their enclosure on his family’s reptile farm, police said. Luan Nam, 72, was trying to move a crocodile out of a cage where it had laid eggs when it grabbed the stick he was using as a goad and pulled him in. The main group of reptiles then set about him, tearing his body to pieces and leaving the concrete enclosure at the farm in Siem Reap awash with blood. “While he was chasing a crocodile out of an egg-laying cage, the crocodile attacked the stick, causing him to fall into the enclosure,” said Mey Savry, police chief of a Siem Reap commune.
INDONESIA
Rebels threaten pilot’s death
Rebels in Indonesia’s Papua region threatened to shoot a New Zealand pilot they took hostage in February if countries do not comply with their demand to start independence talks within two months, a new video released by the group on Friday showed. Guerrilla fighters in Papua’s central highlands, who want to free Papua from Indonesia, kidnapped Phillip Mehrtens after he landed a commercial plane in the mountainous area of Nduga. In the video, Mehrtens is seen talking to the camera, saying the separatists want countries other than Indonesia to engage in dialogue on Papuan independence. “If it does not happen within two months then they say they will shoot me,” he says in the video, which was verified.
UNITED STATES
Bear nabs 60 cupcakes
A hungry black bear barged into the garage of a Connecticut bakery, scared several employees and helped itself to 60 cupcakes before ambling away. Workers at Taste by Spellbound in the town of Avon were loading cakes into a van for delivery on Wednesday when the bear showed up. Bakery owner Miriam Stephens wrote on Instagram that she heard employee Maureen Williams “screaming bloody murder” and yelling that there was a bear in the garage. Williams told TV station WTNH that she shouted to scare the bear off, but it retreated and came back three times. Surveillance footage shows the bear dragging a container of cupcakes from the garage into the parking lot. A baker finally got the bear to leave by honking a car horn, Williams said.
UNITED STATES
Paxton faces impeachment
The Republican-led Texas House of Representatives was yesterday set to hold historic impeachment proceedings against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as the scandal-plagued Republican called on supporters “to peacefully come let their voices be heard at the Capitol tomorrow” to protest a vote that could lead to his ouster. The House scheduled an afternoon start for debate on whether to impeach and suspend Paxton from office over allegations of bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust — just some of the accusations that have trailed Texas’ top lawyer for most of his three terms. Paxton, 60, has called the impeachment proceedings “political theater” based on “hearsay and gossip, parroting long-disproven claims.”
STANDING HEAD
Debt talks over soon: Biden
President Joe Biden on Friday said that Democratic and Republican negotiators were on the verge of resolving a debt ceiling standoff, as the deadline for a potentially catastrophic US default was pushed back to June 5. “It’s very close and I’m optimistic,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “I’m hopeful we’ll know by tonight whether we’re going to be able to have a deal.”
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
EXTRADITION FEARS: The legislative changes come five years after a treaty was suspended in response to the territory’s crackdown on democracy advocates Exiled Hong Kong dissidents said they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the territory could put them in greater danger, adding that Hong Kong authorities would use any pretext to pursue them. An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to a government crackdown on the democracy movement and its imposition of a National Security Law. The British Home Office said that the suspension of the treaty made all extraditions with Hong Kong impossible “even if
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
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