FRANCE
Mayotte braces for storm
Residents of Mayotte yesterday braced for a storm expected to bring strong winds and flash floods less than a month after the Indian Ocean archipelago was devastated by a deadly cyclone. The territory was placed on red alert on Saturday in anticipation of the passage of Dikeledi, a storm forecast to skirt about 100km south of Mayotte. It hit the northern coast of Madagascar as a cyclone on Saturday evening and weakened into a severe tropical storm, but is expected to regain intensity as it moves toward Mayotte. It could be reclassified as a cyclone by this morning, Meteo-France said.
THAILAND
Killed for gratitude: suspect
A man accused of killing a former Cambodian opposition lawmaker in Bangkok said he committed the crime to repay someone who helped him during a tough period in his life, police said yesterday. Ekkalak Paenoi on Saturday confessed to the crime in a livestream video after being charged with premeditated murder and unauthorized gun ownership. Lim Kimya, a former lawmaker for the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party, was gunned down on Tuesday last week by a motorcyclist as he arrived in Bangkok by bus from Cambodia with his French wife. Ekkalak — who Thai media have said was a former marine — was arrested in Cambodia on Wednesday, before being extradited to Thailand on Saturday. “The shooter said he took this job to pay a debt of gratitude to someone who had helped him during a tough period after he was sacked from the navy,” said Attaporn Wongsiripreeda, a senior police official in Bangkok. Some Thai media reports said he was paid 60,000 baht (US$1,727), but Attaporn told a local broadcaster that Ekkalak claimed he did not receive payment.
FRANCE
Dozens injured in tram crash
Two trams on Saturday collided in a tunnel in a rare accident in the eastern city of Strasbourg, injuring dozens of people, authorities said. The collision occurred near Strasbourg’s main train station, one of the busiest in France outside Paris. Minister of Transport Philippe Tabarot said that “probably around 36” people were injured in the accident, while authorities later put that figure at 68. A video posted by a witness on social media showed a chaotic scene with the two trams significantly damaged in a tunnel near the station. One of the trams appeared to have derailed as a result of the impact, the cause of which has yet to be established.
SCOTLAND
Captured lynx dies
One of four lynx thought to have been released illegally in the Highlands died within hours after it was captured, wildlife authorities said on Saturday. The medium-sized wildcats extinct in Scotland for hundreds of years were spotted in the snowy Cairngorms National Park last week, raising concerns that a private breeder had illegally released the predators into the wild. The lynx that died was one of a pair captured on Friday. “This unfortunate development just serves to further demonstrate the folly of abandoning these amazing animals in the wild, with no preparation or real concern for their welfare,” Royal Zoological Society of Scotland head of conservation and science programs Helen Senn said. Wildlife experts have speculated that the cats were released by someone who took matters into their own hands because they were frustrated by the slow process of securing government approval or an opponent who wanted to create problems that would block the reintroduction effort.
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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