HONG KONG
Dead babies found in bottles
A cleaning person found two dead baby boys in glass bottles in the living room of a vacated apartment, police said yesterday. A 24-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman, believed to be the parents, have been detained on suspicion of illegal disposal of bodies. The bottles were 30cm tall and the bodies had no obvious signs of injury, New Territories North Chief Inspector Au Yeung Tak (歐陽德) told reporters. He said an autopsy would be conducted to try to determine the age of the babies and whether they were dead at birth. The landlord sent the cleaning person to the apartment on Friday after the tenants moved out. Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK reported that the bodies were “soaked in liquid and kept in bottles.”
IRAN
Women arrested for dancing
Two young women were arrested in Tehran after the publication of a video in which they danced to celebrate the coming of the Persian New Year, local media reported yesterday. The clip of the two women near Tajrish square, a popular gathering spot for young people in the north of the capital, went viral on social media. “The Tehran prosecutor ordered the arrest of two women who broke social norms by dancing in Tajrish,” the Tasnim News Agency reported. The women were dressed up as Hadji Farouz, a red-clad folklore character whose dancing and songs announce the coming of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which is to begin on March 20.
UNITED STATES
Three die in helicopter crash
Two soldiers and a border agent died in a helicopter crash on Friday near the US-Mexico border, the military said. “A UH-72 Lakota helicopter assigned to the federal Southwest border support mission crashed ... while conducting aviation operations near Rio Grande City, Texas,” Joint Task Force North said in a statement. “Two soldiers and one US Border Patrol agent were killed,” it said, adding that a third soldier was injured. “The cause of the accident is under investigation.”
JAPAN
Boat delays space launch
The planned launch of what would have been the country’s first private spacecraft to take off from a commercial launchpad was called off yesterday due to a ship that entered a hazard area downrange. Space One Co, a start-up backed by Canon Inc, plans to try hold the launch on Wednesday or later, board of directors member Kozo Abe told a news conference near the coastal launch site in Wakayama Prefecture. Abe did not offer details on the ship. “It is very reassuring to me that the postponement was not due to a rocket malfunction,” Wakayama Governor Shuhei Kishimoto told reporters.
UNITED STATES
No proof of aliens: Pentagon
A Pentagon study released on Friday that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the past century found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence, a conclusion consistent with past government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades. The study from the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more popularly known as UFOs. It found no evidence that any of them involved signs of alien life, or that the government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and had conspired to hide it from the public.
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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