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.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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