MYANMAR
Hottest April recorded
Myanmar recorded its hottest-ever April temperature of 48.2oC, the weather office said yesterday, as the nation bakes in a heatwave. The mercury hit 48.2oC in the town of Chauk in central region of Magway on Sunday, the highest temperature in April since records began 56 years ago, the agency said in a statement. The same day temperatures hit 40oC in commercial hub Yangon and 44oC in Mandalay, it said.
KENYA
Forty die after dam collapse
Police said at least 40 people have died after a dam collapsed in the nation’s west yesterday morning. The floodwaters swept through houses and cut off a major road, police official Stephen Kirui said. The incident happened after the Old Kijabe Dam in the Mai Mahiu area of the Great Rift Valley region that is prone to flash floods, collapsed and water spilled downstream. Ongoing rains have caused flooding that has killed nearly 100 people and caused the opening of schools to be postponed. Heavy rains have been pounding the country since the middle of last month and the Meteorology Department has warned of more rainfall.
THAILAND
Activist gets more jail time
The Criminal Court in Bangkok yesterday sentenced a leading democracy activist to another two years and 20 days in prison on royal insult charges. It is the latest charge leveled against prominent human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa, who now faces more than 10 years in prison. He is currently in jail after being sentenced in January to four years in prison over three messages posted on Facebook in 2021, adding to the four years he was already serving for a prior lese-majeste conviction. Critics say the government has used the strict legislation to silence dissent, prosecuting scores under a tough law that protects King Maha Vajiralongkorn and his family. The Criminal Court sentenced Arnon over his calls at a Harry Potter-themed rally in 2021 to amend the nation’s royal defamation laws. He was found guilty of four charges including violation of lese-majeste, defying the emergency decree and using a loudspeaker without permission, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said.
FRANCE
Boy stabbed to death
A 15-year-old has been stabbed to death in the latest case of teenage violence, and the alleged attacker and his mother have been arrested, prosecutors said on Sunday. The latest victim was killed in a brawl in the central town of Chateauroux late on Saturday and died in hospital the same evening, regional prosecutor Agnes Auboin said. The suspect, also 15, was arrested about two hours after the fight and taken into custody, Auboin said. There was evidence suggesting that the 37-year-old mother of the suspect might have been involved, she said. The victim, an apprentice chef and son of a restaurant owner, was accompanied by a friend, also an apprentice, at the time of the incident, a source close to the case said. Authorities have launched an investigation into voluntary manslaughter. The suspect “has never been convicted of a criminal offense and has no criminal record,” the prosecutor said. However, he had been placed under judicial supervision earlier this month following other offenses. A witness interviewed by Agence France-Presse said the boy was among a group of assailants who had attacked a 22-year-old man in a local park a week earlier. The witness said he had “run over and... filmed the scene” to put an end to the attack.
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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