CAMBODIA
Ex-PM returns to spotlight
Officials yesterday voted in a Senate election, setting the stage for former prime minister Hun Sen to officially return to politics after he stepped down last year. Following nearly four decades of rule, Hun Sen handed power to his eldest son, Hun Manet. The 71-year-old lawmaker and chief of the ruling party cast his ballot near his home in Takhmao yesterday morning for a seat in the Senate. He has said that he intends to become president of the Senate, allowing him to act as head of state when the king is overseas.
ARGENTINA
Provinces to withhold oil
The country’s main oil-producing provinces have threatened to cut supplies to the rest of the country over funding reductions ordered by President Javier Milei. “Not a drop of oil will come out on Wednesday if they don’t respect the provinces once and for all and take their foot off our back,” Chubut Governor Ignacio Torres told television channel C5N on Saturday. He and counterparts from five other Patagonian provinces on Friday announced that “if the Economy Ministry does not deliver its [financial] resources to Chubut, then Chubut will not deliver its oil and gas.”
FRANCE
Macron heckled at farm fair
President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday spent the entire day at the annual agricultural fair, as angry farmers heckled him and scuffled with police. Riot police kept the protesters at a safe distance as Macron toured the fair, but as he entered the livestock area in the morning, hundreds of protesters crashed the gates and clashed with police. In the ensuing confusion, the fair was repeatedly closed and then reopened to the public. In a separate incident, farmers poured manure on the stand of dairy giant Lactalis, which they accuse of not paying enough for its milk. Macron finally left at about 9pm — 13 hours after he arrived.
CARIBBEAN
US couple missing
Police are investigating the possible murder of two people believed to be US citizens who owned a catamaran that was hijacked by three fugitives in waters off Grenada. The yacht’s alleged owners, Kathy Brandel and Ralph Hendry, were last seen on Feb. 18, when three men escaped from the custody of Grenadian authorities. Police in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines captured the men on Wednesday. The Royal Grenada Police Force said in a statement on Friday that preliminary information suggests the escaped prisoners had traveled from Grenada to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines on a yacht. Investigators are working on leads “that suggest that the two occupants of the yacht may have been killed in the process,” it said.
UNITED KINGDOM
WWII-era bomb detonated
A World War II-era bomb, the discovery of which prompted one of the largest peacetime evacuations in British history, has been detonated at sea, the Ministry of Defence said on Saturday. The 500kg explosive was discovered on Tuesday in the backyard of a home in Plymouth, England. More than 10,000 residents were evacuated to ensure their safety as a military convoy transported the unexploded bomb through a densely populated residential area to a ferry slipway, from which it was taken out to sea. “I think it is fair to say that the last few days will go down in history for Plymouth,” Plymouth City Council leader Tudor Evans said. The city, home to major naval bases for centuries, was one of the most heavily bombed in the UK during WWII.
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
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
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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