27/07/2026

MONDAY | JULY 27, 2026

/thesuntelegram FOLLOW / Malaysian Paper

ON TELEGRAM m RAM

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Strong winds and rain lash China

India names new education minister

BEIJING: Typhoon Noul made landfall in China early yesterday lashing a stretch of the southern coast with strong winds and rain in the fiercest storm to hit the country this year. Severe weather forecasts for Noul had spurred authorities to evacuate more than 340,000 people and suspend work and rail services, with major flight disruptions continuing. The centre of the typhoon crossed over land at around 3.50am (3.50am in Malaysia) near the town of Pinghai, Guangdong Province, about 80km northeast of Hong Kong, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Maximum sustained winds near the eye of the storm at the time of landfall were 162 kph, the report said. That made Noul the strongest typhoon to strike the country so far this year. Battering winds and heavy rains were seen in footage published by CCTV yesterday, with roads strewn with debris and some small structures including a basketball net toppled by the gusts. At least 350 passenger flights departing and arriving from Hong Kong had been cancelled yesterday, the airport’s website showed. “ Noul is moving into Guangdong and weakening but gales are still affecting many places over Hong Kong,” the Hong Kong Observatory said. – AFP 23 lost at sea after Vietnamese ship sinks BEIJING: Rescuers are searching for 23 missing people after a Vietnamese ship carrying 62 crew members sank in the South China Sea, Chinese state media reported yesterday. The cargo vessel Khoi Nguyen 18 encountered trouble near Yongshu Reef, also known as Fiery Cross Reef, state broadcaster CCTV reported, adding that 39 people had been rescued. A Chinese rescue vessel first spotted what was believed to be a distress signal from the endangered ship shortly before 6.30pm on Saturday (6.30pm in Malaysia), Xinhua news agency reported. Six Chinese vessels and a rescue helicopter as well as one Vietnamese vessel were conducting search and rescue operations in the area. Hainan authorities said the Khoi Nguyen 18 is a Vietnamese-registered ship measuring just under 70m in length. Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment. – AFP JAKARTA: Eleven foreign tourists and an Indonesian crew member who were reported missing after their speedboat lost contact while travelling to Gorontalo Province in eastern Indonesia have been found safe, while authorities continue searching for the vessel’s captain. Palu Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) Head of Operations Rusmadi said the survivors were evacuated to a resort in Tojo Una-Una Regency, Central Sulawesi, while efforts to locate the captain, identified as Ferdiansyah, were ongoing. “The victims are in Tojo Una-Una, but whether they will be evacuated to Ampana or Wakai is being coordinated with the resort management,” he said. The speedboat departed from Sanctum Una Una Dive Resort in Tojo Una-Una on Friday for Marisa Port in neighbouring Gorontalo Province with 11 foreign tourists and two Indonesian crew members on board before losing contact. Rusmadi said Basarnas Palu had deployed a rescue vessel, KN SAR Bhisma , to assist the search for the missing captain. – Bernama Missing tourists, sailor found safe

o Praise for reforms under predecessor

Piyush Goyal, also praised Pradhan’s performance and record as education minister in social media posts. Pradhan, who served as petroleum minister before becoming education minister in July 2021, resigned after 36 days of protests over examination leaks by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-centric movement in central Delhi. There have been several exam leaks in India in recent years, but the latest protests were triggered by the fiasco surrounding the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, a graduate medical entrance examination, held in May that affected more than two million students. Pradhan’s resignation was one of the main demands of the protesters, who also called for reforms to India’s education system. The CJP described Pradhan’s exit as a victory and called off its protest on Saturday, saying the government had accepted all its demands. – Bernama

He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from K.S. Arts College in the southern state of Karnataka. According to his website, Joshi began his “political journey through grassroots activism and organisational work with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)”. The RSS is the BJP’s ideological organisation headquartered in Nagpur city in the western state of Maharashtra. In a post on X, Joshi praised Pradhan for implementing the BJP government’s revamp of India’s education structure through the new “National Education Policy (NEP) 2020”. “His tenure witnessed the successful implementation of NEP 2020 along with over 100 big and small reforms in the field of education,” the new education minister said. Many BJP leaders, including Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Commerce Minister

HYDERABAD: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has brought in trusted senior party leader Pralhad Joshi as his new education minister, succeeding Dharmendra Pradhan, who resigned on Saturday after weeks of youth protests over examination paper leaks. President Droupadi Murmu has accepted Pradhan’s resignation from the Council of Ministers with immediate effect and directed that Joshi be assigned charge of the Education Ministry, in addition to his existing portfolio, as advised by the prime minister, the President’s Secretariat said in a statement on Saturday. Joshi, 64, born in Karnataka, has been serving as consumer affairs, food and public distribution minister.

University probes death of girl in gene-editing trial BEIJING: A university in Shanghai is looking into reports that a gene-editing trial caused the death of a six-year-old girl, which was not disclosed in the published research, the school said yesterday. would be taken in accordance with the investigation’s findings. SACRIFICES REMEMBERED ... Koreans visiting the Fatherland Liberation War Martyrs Cemetery to mark the 73rd anniversary of the end of the Korean War in Pyongyang yesterday. – AFPPIC

researcher, went on to publish a paper on related animal studies in the prestigious journal Nature that made no mention of Mei. In response, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine said in a statement that it “attaches great importance to the matter and has set up a special working group to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the incident”. “The School of Medicine has always attached great importance to scientific research integrity and research norms, and firmly opposes conducting medical scientific research in violation of scientific research ethics,” it said. The statement said that “serious action”

Mei’s parents, who paid more than US$800,000 (RM3.3 million) to fund the experiment, were not adequately informed about the risks, the report by Science and Retraction Watch said. Qiu was aiming to offer the world’s first gene-editing therapy directed at the brain, rewriting the mutated gene in her neurons so she could make a vital protein, it said. The previously undisclosed death is a fresh blow to China’s ambitions to rival the United States as a biotech power following the 2018 scandal around He Jiankui, a biophysicist who secretly produced gene-edited babies. – AFP

The girl, given the pseudonym “Mei”, died last year around a week after receiving a spinal infusion of trillions of viruses designed to penetrate the brain for treatment, according to a joint investigation by Science and Retraction Watch. The experimental gene therapy was meant to fix a rare genetic condition that caused a delay in cognitive development, the report said on Thursday. Neuroscientist Zilong Qiu, the lead