World News
Thailand: mourning after the killing in a crib, the king expected on site
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Sylvie Claire / October 7, 2022
Incomprehensible”: inconsolable, the families mourned Friday their disappeared, the day after the massacre which left 37 dead, mainly children of a nursery, in a rural province of northern Thailand where King Maha Vajiralongkorn goes in the evening.
King Rama X, considered a quasi-divinity in the country, is expected to visit a hospital in Nong Bua Lamphu to help the injured, shortly after Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha.
Silence enveloped the area around the crèche where one of the worst killings in the kingdom took place, interrupted at times by the sobbing of families and the waving of officials in white suits and black armbands.
A red carpet was rolled out in the morning to allow them to mourn and lay flowers. It was then withdrawn, not without having provoked angry reactions from Internet users in Thailand, in front of this inappropriate ceremony on a crime scene.
Near the entrance, where white roses remind us of the tragedy, a grieving mother clutches the blanket of her missing child, and holds in her hand her half-filled bottle of milk.
Some of the children were only 2 years old, like little Kamram, whose mother Panita, 19, is inconsolable. “It’s incomprehensible” she breathes, her 11-month-old daughter in her arms.
“I was very shocked and scared. I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t think it would be my two grandsons,” says Buarai Tanontong, clinging to her daughter’s shoulder.
I still can’t accept what happened. Assailant, what is your heart made of?” wrote Seksan Srirach, the husband of a teacher, pregnant with their child, killed at the crèche, in a Facebook post.
Police officers were also interviewing the bereaved family and witnesses near the crèche.
A former policeman armed with a 9mm pistol and a long knife killed 37 people on Thursday, including 24 children — 21 boys and three girls — according to a new police count, in a deadly rampage that began at a day care center in Na Klang district around 12:30 p.m.
He then drove off, and tried to run down passers-by, until he reached his home, “not far” from the nursery, according to the police.
He then killed his wife and their son, before killing himself, in the early afternoon, before 3:00 pm, about two hours after the beginning of the killing.
During the night, the small white and purple coffins were transported to the morgue of a hospital in Udon Thani, in the neighboring province.
After this “horrible” massacre, Prayut Chan-O-Cha ordered an investigation and asked the police chief “to speed up the investigations ».
Initial evidence paints a picture of an assailant, 34, plagued by drug addiction problems that cost him his job with the police last June.
“He was expected to go on trial Friday over his drug problem,” Damrongsak Kittiprapat, the national police chief, said Thursday.
Everyone knew the shooter. He was a nice guy but later we all knew he was on meth,” said Kamjad Pra-intr, a resident who came to support the families.
This is not the first time Thailand has been plagued by a mass shooting of this magnitude. In February 2020, a shooting perpetrated by an army officer killed 29 people, including in a shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima (east).
The gunman, a 31-year-old chief warrant officer, was shot dead by the police after his 17-hour killing spree. He had acted after an argument with a superior.
The Na Klang tragedy is a reminder of the extent of the kingdom’s drug problems, where wholesale and retail prices have fallen to historically low levels due to abundant supply, according to data released in 2021 by the UN.
The rural province of Nong Bua Lamphu is located near the “golden triangle” on the borders of Burma and Laos, which has been considered the focal point of drug production in the region for decades.
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Eva Deschamps / October 31, 2023
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, 63 employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) have already lost their lives in the Gaza Strip. Ten aid workers have been killed in the last 72 hours, according to this new toll released by the agency on its website on Monday.
At least 22 UNRWA staff were also injured. Since October 7, 44 UNRWA facilities have also been destroyed. Of its 22 health centers, only nine are still operational, the UN agency said, warning that the provision of health care is made even more difficult by the very low fuel supply.
The UN agency had previously reported that several of its warehouses had been looted. “Due to the very limited aid available and overcrowded shelters, growing tensions are being reported within the displaced communities,” it stressed. Some 672,000 refugees are living in 149 UNRWA facilities across the Gaza Strip, “in increasingly difficult conditions”. “The ability to provide vital assistance was further hampered by the 36-hour communications blackout between October 27 and 29”, UNRWA added.
In all, an estimated 1.4 million people have been displaced in the Gaza Strip. Over 120,000 of them have taken refuge in public buildings such as hospitals and schools.
“The aid currently available is insufficient to meet the most basic needs of displaced people and the communities hosting them”, warns the UN agency.
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Sylvie Claire / October 31, 2023
This research into mammal reproduction in space could prove crucial for future solar system exploration missions.
Mouse embryos were grown on board the International Space Station (ISS) and developed normally, according to a Japanese study published in the scientific journal “iScience” on Saturday, October 28.
This is “the very first study to show that mammals might be able to thrive in space”, claim Yamanashi University and the Riken National Research Institute.
The researchers, including Teruhiko Wakayama, a professor at Yamanashi University’s Center for Advanced Biotechnology, and a team from the Japanese space agency Jaxa, sent frozen mouse embryos aboard a rocket to the ISS in August 2021. The astronauts thawed the embryos at an early stage, using a specially designed device, and cultured them on board the station for four days.
The experiment “clearly demonstrated that gravity had no significant effect”, noted the researchers. After analyzing the blastocysts (cells that develop into fetuses and placentas) that were returned to their laboratories on Earth, they observed no particular changes in the state of DNA and genes.
“In the future, it will be necessary to transplant blastocysts grown in microgravity on the ISS into mice to see if the mice can give birth,” in order to confirm that the blastocysts are normal, say Yamanashi University and the Riken Institute.
This research could prove crucial for future space exploration and colonization missions. As part of its Artemis program, NASA plans to send humans back to the Moon to learn how to live there in the long term, and to prepare for a trip to Mars in the late 2030s.
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Steph Deschamps / October 25, 2023
The world’s oldest dog died last weekend in Portugal. Bobi, a purebred Rafeiro de l’Alentejo, was 31 years and 165 days old, reports the British public broadcaster BBC on Monday.
Last February, Bobi entered the Guinness Book of Records as not only the oldest living dog, but also the oldest dog of all time.
The old record had been held for almost 100 years by Bluey from Australia. He died in 1939 at the age of 29 years and five months.
Bobi has spent his entire life with the Costa family in the village of Conqueiros, near the west coast of Portugal.
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