02/06/2026

TUESDAY | JUNE 2, 2026

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Malaysian Paper

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Five dead in South Korea aerospace plant blast

Fans seek divine help to secure concert seats TAIPEI: Taiwanese fans of K-pop boy band BTS are turning to Yue Lao, the Taoist god of love and marriage, in the hope that divine matchmaking will connect them with seats for their upcoming shows in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. “It’s really hard to get tickets for BTS concerts, so everyone says praying to the God of Love is the most efficient. After all, it’s another kind of matchmaking,” said fan Jessie Chuang, 26. Over the weekend, a group of K-pop fans, mostly BTS fans, laid out snacks in purple packaging – the official BTS group colour – along with group merchandise, concert seat maps and wish lists on an altar table at Taipei’s Bangka Longshan Temple. The trend started on social media a couple of years ago. Taiwanese K-pop fans believe Yue Lao will use his red thread of fate to connect those destined to meet – in this case, connecting fans with a concert seat. “If you truly believe in it, your wish will come true,” said university student Ye Yu-ting, 22. The last time BTS performed with all their members in Taiwan was in 2018. The group announced their long awaited world tour in early 2026 and will perform three shows in Kaohsiung on Nov 19, 21 and 22. – Reuters One Nation gains ground SYDNEY: Australia’s far-right populist party One Nation overtook the ruling Labor party in a national opinion poll for the first time, buoyed by voter discontent over the centre-left government’s recent budget measures. Primary support for One Nation rose four percentage points to 31% from a month earlier, according to a closely watched poll by Redbridge Group and Accent Research. The ruling centre-left Labor party polled at 28%, down three points. Support for the conservative coalition opposition fell two points to 20%. The polling comes after the government’s May 12 budget introduced the biggest changes to property taxes in decades, to tackle intergenerational inequity. The results suggest the proposed measures failed to win over voters, and were especially unpopular with the Gen X and Baby Boomer cohorts. But it also appeared unpopular among younger Australians it aims to benefit. Just 26% of Millennials and 13% of Gen-Z voters believed the budget would be good for them, it showed. Labor was still ahead of One Nation 51% to 49% on a two-party-preferred basis, when respondents distribute preferences under Australia’s ranked choice voting system. The poll of 1,005 voters, with an error margin of 3.4%, was held between May 25 and May 28. Since its 1997 launch, One Nation, led by Pauline Hanson, has had only a peripheral presence in Australia’s parliament. – Reuters

o Hanwha CEO Son Jae-il apologises

SEOUL: Five people have died and two others were injured yesterday after an explosion and fire on a South Korean production line for rocket propellant at a factory operated by Hanwha Aerospace in the city of Daejeon. The two survivors, including one who was badly burned, had managed to escape from the facility, a fire official told a briefing. “Authorities have yet to identify the victims because their bodies were severely burnt,” a health official told the same briefing. A fire official said that an explosion had triggered the blaze, though the cause of the blast was still being investigated. Shares in Hanwha Aerospace fell 2.8% in afternoon trade, while the holding company Hanwha Corp saw its shares drop 3.4%. The blast appeared to have occurred while water was being used to clean explosive material from tools making rocket propellant, a Hanwha official told a company briefing. “We bow our heads in apology to the victims and their bereaved The missing fruit, which was taped to a wall to form the provocative work by Cattelan called Comedian , was noticed by a guard on Saturday to have gone missing. The Pompidou-Metz museum, which is a branch of the famous Pompidou Centre in Paris, said in a statement it had lodged a criminal complaint for theft. It also said it had replaced the banana. It is not the first time damage has been dealt to the conceptual artwork, whose perishable banana centrepiece is replaced every three days to keep it contemporary. In July last year, a visitor to the museum ate the fruit. But guards quickly intervened and stuck up a replacement banana. Cattelan said at the time he was

A Korea Electric Power Corporation vehicle entering the factory yesterday. – YONHAP/AFPPIC

laws, an official said at an earlier briefing. President Lee Jae Myung called for the mobilisation of all available resources to respond to the accident and for an investigation, his office said in a text message to reporters. – Reuters

Hanwha is a defence and aerospace company. Its factory in Daejeon produces large propulsion engines and handles rocket propellants. Authorities were unable to obtain the factory’s layout since it is protected under national security

families,” said Chief Executive Officer Son Jae-il, pledging to cooperate fully with authorities to determine the cause of the accident. The five dead included two temporary workers in their 20s. All were employed by Hanwha, the company said.

French museum reports arty banana theft STRASBOURG: A museum in eastern France on Sunday reported to police the theft of a banana that forms a core part of a multimillion-dollar artwork by Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan.

aims to question the notion of art and its value, has sparked controversy ever since its debut at the 2019 Art Basel show in Miami Beach with an asking price of US$120,000 (RM475,801). A performance artiste, David Datuna, ate Comedian at that 2019 show, saying he felt “hungry”. But the work’s value has only risen. Crypto founder Justin Sun in 2024 forked out US$5.2 million for one iteration of the work, then days later ate it in front of cameras in Hong Kong. Cattelan is also known for producing an 18-carat gold toilet called America . A British court in March found two men guilty of stealing it during an exhibition in 2020 in the United Kingdom, from an 18th-century stately home that was the birthplace of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill. It was split up into parts and none of the gold was ever recovered. – AFP

A visitor viewing Comedian by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan at Pompidou-Metz Museum on May 7 last year. – AFPPIC

therefore “there is no possibility of dialogue”. It also said that “this is the second time this has happened” and it felt it was an issue of respect for the artwork. Cattelan’s edible creation, which

disappointed the hungry visitor had consumed only the banana and not the tape as well. The museum did not take legal action in that instance. This time, though, it decided to make its criminal complaint because the perpetrator was unidentified, and

53 rescuers free one trapped Italian caver MILAN: A caver whose leg had been trapped under a boulder at a depth of about 120m has been rescued from a cave in northwest Italy, emergency services said yesterday, adding that the effort involved 53 people in total. The overnight rescue operation took place in the Grotta dei Cinghiali Volanti (Cave of the Flying Wild Boars), one of Italy’s main caving areas, in the province of Cuneo about 120km south of Turin. The caver was first assisted at a

enough not to require an evacuation via stretcher, the service said, adding that the rescuers came from various parts of Italy. He was described as an Italian national. Media reports said he was 20. – Reuters

makeshift medical post set up inside the cave and was then taken outside to be transported to hospital by ambulance, the Alpine and Speleological Rescue Service said in a statement. Medical staff judged him fit