UKRAINE
Missile hits Reuters staff
A member of the Reuters team covering the war in Ukraine was missing and two others were hospitalized after a strike on a hotel in the eastern city of Kramatorsk on Saturday. In a statement, the news agency said that the Hotel Sapphire, where a six-person Reuters crew was staying, was hit “by an apparent missile strike.” Three other staff members have been accounted for, it said. “We are urgently seeking more information, working with the authorities in Kramatorsk, and supporting our colleagues and their families. We will give an update when we have more information,” it added. The General Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement on Telegram that it had opened a “pre-trial investigation” into the strike.
PAKISTAN
Bus crashes kill 34
At least 34 people were yesterday killed in two separate bus accidents, including 12 pilgrims who had been trying to reach Iran, rescue officials said. At least 22 people, including a child, were killed when the bus they were travelling in plunged into a ravine near the town of Azad Pattan on the border between Punjab province and Kashmir, said Farooq Ahmed, a spokesman for Rescue 1122 emergency services in Punjab. In a separate incident, 12 men died when their bus crashed into a ravine on the Makran Coastal Highway in Balochistan, after being prevented from crossing into Iran. On Saturday, the bodies of 28 pilgrims who died in a bus crash in Iran were returned to Pakistan.
FRANCE
Arson suspect arrested
Police on Saturday arrested a man suspected of setting fires and causing an explosion at a synagogue in what officials suspect was a terror attack, Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin said. “The suspected perpetrator of the criminal fires at the synagogue has been detained,” Darmanin wrote on X, adding that officers who made the arrest came under fire. Police earlier said they were hunting for a man who, draped in a Palestinian flag, was believed to have set fires at a synagogue and triggered an explosion that injured an officer in the seaside resort of La Grande Motte. Interim Prime Minister Gabriel Attal earlier visited the site of the attack along with Darmanin. “We narrowly avoided an absolute tragedy,” he said, adding that “if the synagogue had been filled with worshippers ... there probably would have been human victims.”
THAILAND
Authorities raid bitcoin mine
Authorities raided an illegal bitcoin mine west of Bangkok after residents complained of frequent blackouts in the area for more than a month, local authorities said yesterday. Police and officials from the Provincial Electricity Authorities raided the house in Ratchaburi town on Friday. “We found bitcoin mining rigs, pointing to people using this house to operate a mine and using power they didn’t fully pay for,” chief district security officer Jamnong Chanwong said. Records showed that electricity consumption in the house was large, but they had paid for very little of it, he said. Jamnong said his team tried to enter the house on Thursday, but a guard denied them entry. They then returned with a search warrant and found most of the equipment had been moved. The house had been rented by a company for about four months, but the power outages began last month when the mine likely became fully operational, he 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
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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