MALAYSIA
Airport shooting not terrorism
A man attempting to shoot his wife at Kuala Lumpur International Airport yesterday instead left her personal bodyguard in a critical condition, Malaysian authorities said. Police were investigating the rare shooting in connection to a domestic dispute and said it was not related to terrorism. The shooter, who was thought to be targeting his wife in the arrivals hall, hit her bodyguard and then fled the scene, police said. “The suspect fired two shots before hitting a local man who was a bodyguard, causing the victim to suffer injuries to the abdomen,” Selangor state police chief Hussein Omar Khan said in a statement. Officers were searching for a 38-year-old Malaysian man who had previously been arrested for threatening his wife. Following the threats, the woman hired bodyguards last year, Criminal Investigation Department Director Shuhaily Zain said. The woman, who runs a travel agency, was at the airport to receive Muslim pilgrims returning from Mecca, police said.
CHINA
Boat capsizes, killing 12
Two people have been detained following the capsizing of a tourist boat on a river in northeastern China that led to the deaths of 12 people, state media reported yesterday. The incident occurred on Saturday afternoon outside the city of Qinhuangdao near the coast of Hebei Province. Thirty-one people were thrown into the water. The boat was made by local villagers and was not equipped with life jackets or other safety equipment, Xinhua News Agency reported. The boat’s owner and operator were being held while an investigation was under way. The country has powerful rivers and such deadly accidents used to be common before major safety improvements over the past few years.
UNITED STATES
O.J. lawyer to fight payout
The executor of O.J. Simpson’s estate plans to fight to stop families of the late NFL star’s alleged murder victims from receiving funds from a US$33.5 million wrongful death judgement that found him liable for the killings, a report said on Saturday. Simpson, who died on Wednesday at the age of 76, was acquitted in 1995 of murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman in a court case dubbed “The Trial of the Century.” However, a subsequent 1997 civil trial found Simpson liable for the brutal double-slaying and ordered the US football icon-turned-actor to pay US$33.5 million to the victims’ families. The father of Ron Goldman, Fred Goldman, waged a decades-long pursuit of Simpson to force him to make good on the settlement. Simpson is believed to have paid only a fraction of the 1997 figure, with a 2021 report stating that the Goldmans had received just less than US$133,000. Simpson’s long-time lawyer Malcolm LaVergne told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Saturday that he was determined to ensure that the Goldman family not receive anything from Simpson’s estate. “It’s my hope that the Goldmans get zero, nothing,” LaVergne was quoted by the paper as saying. “Them specifically. And I will do everything in my capacity as the executor or personal representative to try and ensure that they get nothing.” LaVergne apparently was angered that the Goldmans at one point had gained control of the manuscript of Simpson’s book If I Did It, and retitled it, If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer. The Review-Journal reported that LaVergne was named as executor of Simpson’s estate in court documents filed on Friday.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
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