MALAYSIA
Hundreds arrested in probe
Police on Saturday said they have arrested hundreds of suspects as part of an investigation into child abuse at care homes run by an Islamic conglomerate. In what is believed to be the worst such case to hit the country in decades, police said they had arrested 355 people, including religious studies teachers and caregivers, and rescued more than 400 children. At the heart of the investigation is the Global Ikhwan Service and Business (GISB) group, which has long been controversial for its links to the banned al-Arqam sect. Police said they had arrested GISB leader Nasiruddin Ali along with 30 other members of the group after carrying out raids on scores of premises, including charity homes, businesses and religious schools. Medical screenings show that at least 13 children suffered sexual abuse, Police Inspector-General Razarudin Husain has said.
UNITED STATES
Four killed in shooting
Four people have died and more than 20 were wounded in a shooting in a nightlife area in Birmingham, Alabama, police and news reports said on Saturday. “We believe that multiple shooters fired multiple shots on a group of people” in the Five Points South neighborhood just after 11pm, Birmingham Police officer Truman Fitzgerald told local media. There were “dozens of gunshot victims” and at least four had “life-threatening” injuries, AL.com reported, quoting Fitzgerald. Two men and a woman were pronounced dead at the scene, while a fourth victim died at a local hospital, he said. There were no immediate arrests, police said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Gray seal turns 50
A gray seal named Sheba, the grand dame of the Cornish Seal Sanctuary, was on Saturday celebrated for her 50th birthday, far surpassing the lifespan of a seal in the wild and possibly being the oldest in captivity. “Reaching 50 is a huge milestone, not just for Sheba, but for everyone here who has been part of her journey,” said Tamara Cooper, curator at the facility in southwest England. In September 1974, Ken Jones found Sheba on a Cornwall beach with a head injury and nasty eye infection and took her home where he and his wife rehabilitated seals in a pool. As Sheba grew, so did the rescue operation, moving from Jones’ backyard to the Helford River in Gweek and expanding to rehabilitate more than 70 seal pups a year. Sheba’s condition, including loss of vision, prevented her return to the sea. Seals typically survive 25 to 30 years in the wild, while females in captivity can live to 40 and males to about 30, Cooper said.
GUINEA
Research center ransacked
People living near a chimpanzee research center on Friday attacked the facility after a woman said one of the animals had killed her infant, the center’s managers said. An angry crowd ransacked the building, destroying and setting fire to equipment including drones, computers and more than 200 documents, the managers said. Eyewitnesses said the crowd was reacting to the news that the mutilated body of an infant had been found 3km from the Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve. The child’s mother, Seny Zogba, told Reuters she was working in a cassava field when a chimpanzee came up from behind, bit her and pulled her baby into the forest. Local ecologist Alidjiou Sylla said the dwindling supply of food in the reserve was pushing the animals to leave the protected area more frequently, increasingly the likelihood of attacks.
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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