BANGKOK: A bus carrying young students with their teachers caught fire in suburban Bangkok on Tuesday with 25 of those on board feared dead, according to officials and rescuers.
The bus was carrying 44 passengers from central Uthai Thani province to Ayutthaya for a school trip when the fire started around noon in Pathum Thani province, a northern suburb of the capital, Transport Minister Suriya Jungrungruengkit told reporters at the scene.
Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said officials could not yet confirm the number of fatalities as they have not finished investigating the scene, but based on the number of survivors, he said 25 people are feared dead. He also said the bus was still too hot for them to get inside safely.
Bodes were still inside the bus hours after the fire.
Videos posted on social media showed the entire bus being engulfed in fire with huge plumes of black smoke pouring out as it was parked on the road.
The age and other details about the students were not yet known.
A rescuer at the scene told Suriya that the fire likely started after one of the tires exploded and the vehicle scraped against a road barrier.
Rescue group Hongsakul Khlong Luang 21 posted on its Facebook page that they found at least 10 bodies on the bus.
School bus catches fire outside Bangkok and 25 on board are feared dead, government officials say
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School bus catches fire outside Bangkok and 25 on board are feared dead, government officials say
French town withdraws pop festival funding over Kneecap appearance
The group have said they are committed to the Palestinian cause
NANTERRE, France: A town that hosts one of France’s biggest pop festivals announced Wednesday that it was withdrawing its subsidy to the event because controversial Irish rappers Kneecap had been booked to play.
British police are investigating Kneecap’s lead singer under a terror offense after he was accused of displaying a Hezbollah flag at a concert last year. The Lebanese militant group is banned in Britain.
Police said they are also investigating videos allegedly showing calls for the death of British lawmakers.
The Paris suburb of Saint Cloud approved a 40,000 euro ($46,500) subsidy this year for the Rock En Seine festival that last year attracted 180,000 people over four days.
The town council said the money had been agreed before the lineup was announced. Kneecap are to appear at the event on August 24. Saint Cloud said its council had now voted to withdraw the subsidy.
A statement said the town “finances, within its means, a cultural and artistic project. On the other hand it does not finance political action, nor demands, and even less calls to violence, such as calls to kill lawmakers, whatever their nationality.”
The town said it respects the festival’s “freedom” to decide its lineup and had not sought “any kind of negotiation with the aim of influencing the program.”
Kneecap have been taken off the bill for festivals in Scotland and Germany this year because of the controversy.
The group have said they are committed to the Palestinian cause but have denied any terrorism connection. Singer Liam O’Hanna, who appears under the name Mo Chara, has condemned the charges against him as political. O’Hanna is to appear in court again four days before the Rock En Seine show.
South Korean teacher, mother arrested for stealing exam
SEOUL: A teacher and a parent of a high school student in South Korea have been arrested for breaking into a school to steal exam papers, police told AFP on Wednesday.
The country is known for placing extreme emphasis on academic achievement — with its annual college entrance exam forcing airplanes to be grounded during English listening tests.
The pair are accused of breaking into a high school in Andong, about 270 kilometers south of the capital Seoul, at around 1:00 a.m. on July 4 to steal exam papers, triggering an alarm and leading to their arrest.
“A 31-year-old teacher and the 48-year-old mother have confessed to the crime,” said a detective at the Andong Police Station, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The teacher was a private tutor for the student while working at the school, where she was employed until February last year, authorities said.
Police suspect the pair may have committed similar thefts in the past, helping the student ace academically, and that money was exchanged between the teacher and the mother.
“They tried to steal exam papers across many subjects, not confined to Korean, which the suspect was teaching,” the detective told AFP.
A school maintenance worker was also arrested for aiding the late-night breach, investigators said.
The student, who had maintained top grades since enrolling in 2023, has been expelled and her grades nullified, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Trump says supporters questioning Jeffrey Epstein case are ‘weaklings’
- Trump says Republicans are not sticking together
- Some supporters want more details on sex offender’s case
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday attacked fellow Republicans critical of his administration’s handling of the case of dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On social media and in the Oval Office, Trump lashed out at allies he said were falling for a “hoax” pushed by Democrats, who “unlike Republicans ... stick together like glue.”
Epstein, a wealthy financier and convicted sex offender, was facing federal charges of sex-trafficking minors when he died by suicide in jail in 2019. He had pleaded not guilty, and the case was dismissed after his death.
Some of Trump’s most loyal followers were enraged when the Trump administration last week reversed course on its pledge to release documents it had suggested contained major revelations about Epstein and his alleged clientele.
“It’s all been a big hoax,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans, and foolish Republicans fall into the net and so they try and do the Democrats’ work.”
On Truth Social earlier in the day, Trump said of Republicans raising concerns about the case: “Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!” The backlash over the Epstein case has laid bare tensions inside Trump’s coalition and is testing one of Trump’s most enduring political strengths: his ability to command loyalty and control the narrative across the right.
A former Trump adviser, Mike Flynn, on Wednesday said on X that the matter was not a hoax. “With my strongest recommendation, please gather your team and figure out a way to move past this,” he said.
The Justice Department last week concluded there was “no incriminating client list” or any evidence that Epstein may have blackmailed prominent people. The review also confirmed prior findings by the FBI that Epstein killed himself in his jail cell while awaiting trial, and that his death was not the result of a criminal act such as murder.
Some House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, have continued to call for the Justice Department to release more Epstein documents. But Republicans have blocked efforts by Democratic lawmakers to push measures that would force the agency to make those documents public.
Trump, who knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and early 2000s, on Wednesday again defended Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the matter and said she could release any credible documents related to the case.
“Whatever’s credible, she can release,” he told reporters. “If a document’s there that’s credible, she can release. I think it’s good.”
But he was also eager to move past the issue.
“I’d rather talk about the success we have with the economy,” he said.
London Southend Airport partially reopens after plane crash that killed four
- Southend Airport reopened “for a small number of flights“
- Normal operations will resume from Thursday
LONDON: London Southend Airport said on Wednesday that it had partially reopened after flights to and from the airport were suspended following a plane crash that killed four foreign nationals.
A US-built Beechcraft B200 Super King Air plane had been bound for the Netherlands on Sunday when it crashed shortly after takeoff.
Southend Airport, which is located about 35 miles east of the capital and used by easyJet to fly to European holiday destinations, reopened “for a small number of flights.”
“Four easyJet flights will land at London Southend Airport this evening Eastern Airways will also operate an empty positioning flight,” the airport said in a statement on X.
Normal operations will resume from Thursday.
Police said in a separate update on Wednesday that searches by the Air Accident Investigation Branch were now complete and the aircraft was being “carefully dismantled to move into the next phase of the investigation.”
Prince Harry retraces Diana’s footsteps by walking through a land mine field in Angola for charity
- Prince Harry walked through a land mine field near a village in Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola
- It’s not the first time he has retraced the steps of his mother Princess Diana
CAPE TOWN: Prince Harry followed in his late mother’s footsteps on Wednesday by wearing a flak jacket and walking down a path in an active land mine field in Angola to raise awareness for a charity’s work clearing explosives from old war zones.
The Duke of Sussex is in the southern African country with the Halo Trust organization, the same group Princess Diana worked with when she went to Angola in January 1997, seven months before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.
Diana’s advocacy and the images of her walking through a minefield helped mobilize support for a land mine ban treaty that was ratified later that year.
Harry walked through a land mine field near a village in Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola, according to Halo Trust. It’s not the first time he has retraced his mother’s steps after traveling to Angola for a similar awareness campaign in 2019.
The land mines across Angola were left behind from its 27-year civil war from 1975 to 2002. The Halo Trust says at least 60,000 people have been killed or injured by land mines since 2008. It says it has located and destroyed over 120,000 land mines and 100,000 other explosive devices in Angola since it started work in the country in 1994, but 1,000 minefields still need to be cleared.
