News in Brief-(2024-04-04)

Top Thai court accepts case seeking

to dissolve reformist party

BANGKOK, Apr 03: Thailand's Constitutional Court agreed Wednesday to hear a case seeking the dissolution of the reformist Move Forward Party over their campaign pledge to reform the kingdom's tough royal defamation laws. The party upended the kingdom's political order in last year's May election, scoring the most votes after a campaign promising reform of the military, business monopolies and to amend the lese-majeste laws. But their audacious bid shocked the Thai establishment and ended with them locked out of a coalition government following months of political and legal wrangling. Last month, the Election Commission (EC) agreed "unanimously" to petition the Constitutional Court to dissolve MFP over the party's campaign pledge to reform the kingdom's tough royal insult laws. — AFP

Truck kills 6 students in Iraq

BASRA, Apr 03: At least six students were killed and 14 injured Tuesday when a truck ploughed into them on their way out of school in Iraq's southern province of Basra, authorities said. "Police in Basra arrested the truck driver who ran over six students, killing them and injuring 14" others in the Al-Hartha region, interior ministry spokesperson Miqdad Miri said. According to initial information, the driver "lost control of the truck when the brakes failed," he added in a statement. — AFP

Video shows California police shooting teen

they were supposed to rescue

LOS ANGELES, Apr: Newly released video shows US police shooting dead a kidnapped teenage girl they had been tasked with rescuing, in a chaotic incident on a busy California highway. Savannah Graziano, 15, was gunned down as one deputy called her away from her gun-toting father, who had killed her mother a day earlier and abducted his daughter. The episode unfolded in September 2022 when officers in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, began chasing the vehicle Anthony Graziano was driving with Savannah in the passenger seat. — AFP