SOUTH AFRICA
ANC loses majority
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) party yesterday lost its its three-decade-old absolute majority and would have to find allies if it is to remain in power. With more than 98 percent of the votes from Wednesday’s election counted, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC had just more than 40 percent support, a catastrophic slump from the 57.5 it won in 2019. That marks a historic turning point as the party has enjoyed an absolute majority since 1994. Data released earlier in the day from the Independent Electoral Commission showed that the center-right Democratic Alliance held second place with 21.71 percent, while former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe had 12.6 percent, a surprise score for a party founded just months ago as a vehicle for the former ANC chief.
AFGHANISTAN
Twenty die in boat sinking
At least 20 people were yesterday killed when a boat sank while crossing a river, a Taliban official said. Quraishi Badlon, Nangarhar provincial director of the information and culture department, said the boat sank while crossing a river in the province’s Mohmand Dara district, killing 20 people including women and children. The boat was carrying 25 people, according to village residents, of whom five survived. So far five bodies have been retrieved including a man, a woman, two boys and a girl, the Nangarhar Department of Health said in a statement.
GERMANY
Six injured in stabbing
Six people were on Friday wounded in a knife attack at a far-right rally, including a prominent critic of Islam, drawing immediate condemnation from the nation’s leaders. The attack, just days before EU-wide elections, comes amid a spike of politically motivated violence in the country. Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser raised the possibility that the assault could have been Islamist motivated. A man with a knife attacked and wounded several people on the market square in the city of Mannheim in the southwest at about 11:35am, police said in a statement. Five of the wounded were participating in a rally organized by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, police said. A police officer who intervened was also stabbed several times in the back of the head, it said. Another officer fired at the attacker and wounded him. “The extent and severity of the injuries are not yet known,” the police said, adding that the identity of the attacker had not yet been determined.
JAPAN
US$300m lost in ‘leak’
Crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin said it had lost about US$300 million in bitcoin in what it described as “an unauthorized leak” from its digital wallet. “We are still investigating details of the damages,” it said in a statement after detecting the “unauthorized leak” at about 1:26pm on Friday. “We have already taken measures to prevent the unauthorized leak, but we have also implemented restrictions on the use of some services to ensure additional safety,” the exchange said. DMM Bitcoin did not give details on the “leak,” but global cryptocurrency analysis firm Chainalysis said it was one of the biggest crypto hacks. “Today’s hack of Japanese exchange DMM Bitcoin for $305M worth of bitcoin is the biggest hack since Dec 2022 and the 7th largest crypto hack ever,” Chainalysis wrote on X, adding that it had labeled the funds as “stolen.”
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
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
The US government has banned US government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press (AP) has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing US ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential directive. Although some US agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “nonfraternization” policy, as it is known, has
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