INDONESIA
Flood death toll reaches 21
The death toll from flash flooding and landslides on Sumatra has risen to 21, an official said yesterday, with six people still missing. Torrential rains on Thursday triggered the disaster in Pesisir Selatan Regency in West Sumatra province, with more than 75,000 people forced to evacuate. “As of Sunday, 21 people were found dead and six people remained missing,” said Fajar Sukma, an official from West Sumatra disaster mitigation agency. A village on a hillside in the Sutera subdistrict was struck hard, with about 200 families in the area left isolated after a landslide followed by flash flooding, Fajar said.
NIGERIA
More kids kidnapped
Gunmen on Saturday kidnapped 15 students from their Islamic seminary in northwestern Sokoto State, local sources said, days after the mass abduction of more than 280 schoolchildren in nearby Kaduna State. Seminary staff said the gunmen stormed Gidan Bakuso village in Gada District at about 1am on Saturday, rounding up the pupils as they slept outdoors. “The gunmen were passing by the school with a woman they kidnapped from another part of town and the pupils were awoken by her cries,” said Liman Abubakar, the head of the seminary. “The bandits seized 15 of the pupils, aged between eight and 14, and took them away along with the woman,” he added.
PAKISTAN
Zardari elected president
Lawmakers on Saturday elected Asif Ali Zardari as the country’s president for the second time. He is the widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the father of former minister of foreign affairs Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari. Zardari secured 411 votes from national and provincial lawmakers. His opponent, Mehmood Khan Achakzai, who is backed by the party of imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan, received 181 votes. The presidency is a largely ceremonial role that Zardari previously held from 2008 to 2013.
TANZANIA
Nine die from turtle meat
Eight children and an adult died after eating sea turtle meat on Pemba Island in the Zanzibar Archipelago, while 78 other people were hospitalized, authorities said on Saturday. Sea turtle meat is considered a delicacy in Zanzibar, even though it periodically results in deaths from chelonitoxism, a type of food poisoning. The adult who died late on Friday was the mother of one of the children who succumbed earlier, Mkoani District Medical Officer Haji Bakari said. The turtle meat was consumed on Tuesday, he said. Laboratory tests had confirmed that all the victims had eaten sea turtle meat, he said.
INDONESIA
Pilots probed for napping
The Ministry of Transportation on Saturday said it would investigate local airline Batik Air after two of its pilots were found to have fallen asleep during a recent flight. A pilot and copilot were simultaneously asleep for approximately 28 minutes during a flight from South East Sulawesi to the capital, Jakarta, on Jan. 25, a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Committee said. The incident resulted in a series of navigation errors, but the Airbus A320’s 153 passengers and four flight attendants were unharmed during the two-hour-and-35-minute flight. A committee report said that the captain, who obtained permission to rest, awoke 28 minutes later to find that the copilot was asleep and the plane was not on the correct path.
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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