THAILAND
People flee clashes
About 1,300 people have fled from eastern Myanmar into Thailand, officials said yesterday, as fresh fighting erupted at a border town that has recently been captured by ethnic guerillas. Fighters from the Karen ethnic minority last week captured the last of the Burmese army’s outposts in and around Myawaddy, which is connected to Thailand by two bridges across the Moei River. The latest clashes were triggered in the morning when the Karen guerillas launched an attack against Burmese troops who were hiding near the Second Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge, a major crossing point for trade with Thailand, said Pittayakorn Phetcharat, police chief of Thailand’s Mae Sot District. He estimated about 1,300 people fled into Thailand.
MEXICO
Two mayor candidates killed
Two mayoral candidates were on Friday reported killed, one in the northeast and another in the south, authorities said — part of a wave of political violence ahead of June elections. In Tamaulipas, a state plagued by organized crime, a search was launched for the person who stabbed candidate Noe Ramos, Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios said. Local media reported the candidate, who was seeking re-election as head of Mante, was walking through the streets to meet with residents when he was attacked by a man with a knife on Friday. In the southern state of Oaxaca, Alberto Antonio Garcia was found dead on Friday after going missing this week, the state prosecutor’s office said.
UKRAINE
Civilians killed in strikes
The military earlier yesterday launched a wave of drones at Russia, setting a fuel depot ablaze, officials said. The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said cross-border attacks left at least three people dead, while a Russian strike killed two in Ukraine’s northeast. A source in the defense sector said that Kyiv targeted eight Russian regions in the “large-scale” attack aimed at “energy infrastructure that feeds Russia’s military-industrial complex.” The Russian Ministry of Defense said it had intercepted 50 drones overnight, some of them hundreds of kilometers from the border, including near the capital, Moscow.
ECUADOR
Another mayor killed
The mayor of a mining town was shot dead on Friday, the second such killing in days ahead of a weekend referendum on tougher measures against organized crime, police said. Portovelo Mayor Jorge Maldonado “fell victim to gunshots that resulted in his death,” police wrote on X. He was gunned down by two attackers on a motorcycle. The killing came amid an energy debacle due to a severe drought, which has emptied reservoirs to alarming levels and left the nation grappling with blackouts of up to 13 hours. Maldonado was the fifth mayor assassinated in a year, and the third in less than a month.
CHINA
Apple removes Meta apps
Apple said it had removed Meta’s WhatsApp messaging app and its Threads social media app from the App Store in China to comply with orders from the Cyberspace Administration. The apps were removed from the store on Friday after officials cited unspecified national security concerns. Their removal comes amid elevated tensions with the US over trade, technology and national security, and as Washington has threatened to ban TikTok over national security concerns. Other Meta apps, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger remained available for download.
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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