MALAYSIA
Immigrants escape detention
More than 100 Rohingya immigrants on Thursday escaped from a detention center in Perak State after a protest, with one confirmed killed in a road accident, officials said yesterday. Immigration Department Director-General Ruslin Jusoh said in a statement that 131 detainees escaped from the center. Nearly 400 personnel were deployed to hunt them down, he said, without giving details on what sparked the breakout. District police chief Mohamad Naim Asnawi was quoted by national Bernama news agency as saying that the immigrants escaped from the men’s block after a riot broke out at the center.
GREECE
Police, students clash
Police and student protesters on Thursday clashed in the center of Athens after a demonstration against government plans to allow private universities. Demonstrators attacked police cordons, set fire to trash dumpsters and threw stones at riot police near parliament and later during clashes along the capital’s narrow streets. Police responded with tear gas and made several arrests. The government wants to legalize privately run universities in a bill that is due to go before parliament this month, arguing that the reform would prevent skilled people from leaving the country and make higher education more relevant to the labor market. But the plan has sparked several protests, including an ongoing campaign to occupy university buildings in protest, which has disrupted classes and forced some academic authorities to reschedule upcoming exams. In Thessaloniki, police joined by officers from a special-forces unit evicted protesters from the principal’s office of the city’s public university, which they had occupied.
HAITI
Killings increase, UN says
More than 2,300 people were killed, injured or kidnapped in the Caribbean nation from October to December last year, a nearly 10 percent increase compared with the previous quarter, the UN said in a report released on Thursday. The number of killings alone spiked to more than 1,600 during the period, with officials blaming the vacuum created by the death of a gang leader known as Andrice Isca for unleashing territorial fights in the Cite Soleil slum of Port-au-Prince that killed and injured nearly 270 people over about two weeks in late November. Isca has also been identified as Iskar Andrice and Iscar Andris. Authorities said fights occurred within a gang federation known as G-9 Family and Allies, which also targeted an opposition gang coalition called G-Pep. “In addition to the loss of human life, the humanitarian toll of the clashes was disastrous: Over 1,000 people were forced to abandon their homes and take refuge in nearby areas,” the report said.
UNITED STATES
Alaska sets cold record
Much of Alaska has plunged into a deep freeze, with Anchorage having some of its coldest temperatures in years. In the state capital, Juneau, snow blanketed streets and rooftops as part of a two-day storm that helped set a new January snowfall record of 2m for the city. Anchorage surpassed 2.5m of snow this week, the earliest date that the state’s largest city has ever hit that mark. For much of the last week, temperatures were minus-40°C or colder in Fairbanks, an inland city of about 32,000 that is a popular destination for seeing the northern lights. “That’s a pretty solid streak,” National Weather Service meteorologist Dustin Saltzman said, adding that it was the coldest outbreak in at least several years.
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
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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
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