MALAWI
VP’s plane likely ‘crashed’
An airplane carrying Vice President Saulos Klaus Chilima might have crashed in dense forest, but it has not yet been found, the military said yesterday. Search-and-rescue operations had been hampered by foggy weather around the Chikangawa Forest, which was affecting visibility. Chilima, 51, was aboard a military aircraft with nine others that left Lilongwe, the capital, at 9:17am on Monday. The plane had been scheduled to land at Mzuzu airport at 10:02am, but was unable to land due to poor visibility and was ordered to return to the capital, President Lazarus Chakwera said in a televised address to the nation on Monday. Aviation authorities had failed to make contact with the plane since it went off the radar.
THAILAND
Rare elephant twins born
An elephant has delivered a rare set of twins in a dramatic birth that left a carer injured after he tried to rescue one of the newborns. The 36-year-old Asian elephant named Jamjuree gave birth to an 80kg male at the Ayutthaya Elephant Palace and Royal Kraal north of Bangkok on Friday night. However, when a second, 60kg female calf emerged 18 minutes later, the mother went into a frenzy and attacked her new arrival. “We heard somebody shout: ‘There is another baby being born,’” veterinarian Lardthongtare Meepan said. An elephant keeper, also known as a mahout, moved in to prevent the mother from attacking her newborn, and took a blow to his ankle in return. “The mother attacked the baby, because she had never had twins before — it’s very rare,” said Michelle Reedy, director of the Elephant Stay organization, which allows visiting tourists to ride, feed and bathe elephants at the Royal Kraal center. Jamjuree has now accepted her calves, who are so small that a special platform has been built to help them reach up to suckle.
THAILAND
Caged animals die in fire
Hundreds of caged animals died yesterday after a fire struck Chatuchak Weekend Market, one of the most famous markets in Bangkok. The fire was reported early in the morning and quickly swept across more than 100 shops in the market’s pet section, the Bangkok government said. Officials said it took them about an hour to bring the fire under control. There were no reports of human casualties, but local media reports said the fire killed several hundred animals, including puppies, fish, snakes, birds and rabbits, kept in cages and locked inside the shops. The cause of the fire is being investigated, said Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt, who visited the scene after the fire.
INDONESIA
Comedian gets 7 months
A court in the Muslim-majority nation has handed a comedian a seven-month prison sentence for blasphemy after he made a joke about the name Mohammed, a local legal official said yesterday. Aulia Rakhman, a comedian from Lampung Province on Sumatra Island, was found guilty of spreading hatred through stand-up jokes at an event in December, Lampung prosecutor’s office spokesperson Ricky Ramadhan said. He reportedly made a joke at a cafe in the provincial capital, Bandar Lampung, about how names like Mohammed — inspired by Islam’s founding prophet — had lost their positive connotations due to the sheer number of badly behaved Indonesians who share them. Aulia was found guilty last week, but the verdict only came to light yesterday. “The defendant admitted and regretted his actions, behaved politely at the trial, and the defendant has never been convicted,” Ramadhan said.
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
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
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
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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