PHILIPPINES
Elephant Mali dies
An elderly elephant at Manila Zoo has died, an official said yesterday, after a failed campaign to relocate her to an animal sanctuary. Mali, about 43 years old, had been a popular attraction at the zoo, where animal rights advocates say she was kept for decades in “solitary confinement” in a concrete enclosure. Before her death on Tuesday, she had won global support to transfer her on the grounds she had been mistreated. An autopsy found that Mali had pancreatic cancer, zoo veterinarian Heinrich Domingo told reporters, rejecting accusations she had been neglected. “No more small enclosure for you. Run free Mali,” Lemuel Bueno posted on Facebook. Another user wrote that “they killed her long before her physical death.”
MEXICO
Four journalists shot
Four journalists were shot and wounded in the south on Tuesday, officials said. Attackers on a motorcycle opened fire on three of the journalists around noon in Chilpancingo, the Guerrero state capital, where they were covering a murder, the local prosecutors’ office said. The journalists — identified as Jesus Antonio de la Cruz, Oscar Guerrero and Victor Mateo Francisco — sustained injuries to the back, arm and neck, prosecutors said. A fourth journalist was wounded by gunfire in Apatzingan in the neighboring state of Michoacan, local police said.
KENYA
Flood death toll rises
The death toll from floods that have devastated many parts of the country has almost doubled to 120, a government official said on Tuesday. More than 89,000 households have also been displaced and are being sheltered in more than 112 camps, Ministry of the Interior and National Administration official Raymond Omollo said in a statement. Horn of Africa countries are battling flash floods caused by torrential rains linked to El Nino weather pattern, just as the region emerges from the worst drought in four decades.
ITALY
Suspect gives up Taiwan
A former drug trafficker turned mafia informant has handed over Taiwan, an artificial island he owns off the coast of Dubai, to authorities in the hope of receiving a reduced sentence. The announcement was made during a trial in Naples on Monday, which involved about 20 defendants, including Raffaele Imperiale, nicknamed “the Van Gogh boss,” a notorious international drug trafficker for the Camorra. Investigators said Imperiale bought Taiwan during his time in hiding. The island, valued at 60 million to 80 million euros (US$65.85 million to US$87.8 million) is part of an artificial archipelago off the coast of the United Arab Emirates called “The World” and shaped as a map of the globe.
UNITED STATES
Customer sues over finger
A customer has filed a lawsuit against a fast casual chain over a salad that she says contained a piece of the manager’s finger. The lawsuit filed on Monday by Allison Cozzi of Greenwich, Connecticut, alleges that she bought a salad at a Chopt in Mount Kisco, New York, on April 7, and realized while eating that “she was chewing on a portion of a human finger that had been mixed in to, and made a part of, the salad.” A manager at the restaurant accidentally severed a piece of her left pointer finger while chopping arugula, the suit said. The manager went to the hospital, but the contaminated arugula was served to customers including Cozzi, the lawsuit says.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
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