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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
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