YANGON: At least 11 people have died — mainly gold miners — and four others remain missing after heavy rains battered townships in eastern Myanmar, police said yesterday.
Relief teams were battling to reach the areas hit by rains near Kalaw in southern Shan State, according to the country’s Red Cross, which earlier put the death toll at 16.
Around 170 buildings including two schools were destroyed by the fierce weather.
Narrow lead for opposition
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s opposition enjoys a very narrow lead over the long ruling National Front for the first time in a key poll issued yesterday, two days before an election in the Southeast Asian country.
The survey carried out by the Merdeka Center also revealed a broad decline in support for Prime Minister Najib Razak. The survey, conducted between April 28 and May 2 among 1,600 voters, showed 42 percent of respondents wanted the opposition Peoples’ Pact of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to govern the country. It credited the prime minister’s National Front with 41 percent.
1,100 miners end strike
Jakarta: Hundreds of workers at Freeport-McMoRan’s Indonesian mine returned to work yesterday after a three-day strike over pay, the US firm said.
Some 1,100 workers, employed by three contractors and not directly by Freeport, downed tools on Tuesday at the Grasberg mine in easternmost Papua province. But the workers But the workers from the contractors Jasti Pravita, Osato Seike and Srikandi Mitra Karya, most of whom are working on an expansion of the mine, returned to work yesterday after reaching a deal on salaries, a spokeswoman for Freeport’s Indonesian unit said.
Thai PM sues over post
BANGKOK: A lawyer for Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has filed a defamation suit against an influential cartoonist alleging he compared the premier to a prostitute in a Facebook post, police said yesterday.
Chai Rachawat, a cartoonist for a daily newspaper, posted pictures of Yingluck on Tuesday accompanied by the words “... a prostitute is not an evil person, the hooker only sells body. But an evil woman sells the nation”. A day earlier, at a democracy forum in Mongolia, the premier had condemned the 2006 overthrow of her brother Thaksin in an army coup.
Indonesia jails drug smugglers
MATARAM: An Indonesian court has sentenced a German man and a South African woman to life in prison for attempting to smuggle drugs into a resort island in two separate cases, a judge said yesterday.
Rolf Oskar Josef Schweikert, 57, was caught trying to smuggle 3.7 kilogrammes of hashish into the island of Lombok, just east of Bali, in October as he arrived on a Silk Air flight from Singapore.
Kathlyn Dunn, 28, was arrested arriving on a Silk Air flight from Singapore two days before the German, attempting to smuggle in 2.6 kilogrammes of crystal methamphetamine.
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