■ FIJI
Aussie publisher deported
The military regime yesterday defied a court order not to deport the Australian publisher of a local newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, officials said. Evan Hannah, publisher of the Fiji Times, was the second newspaper publisher to be deported from Fiji this year by the government of coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama. Fiji TV quoted the country’s interim Defense Minister Ratu Epeli Ganilau as saying he approved the deportation because the newspaper had been printing stories threatening national security. Hannah was put on a Korean Air flight bound for Seoul, said a Fiji Times executive who did not want to be named, and a spokesman for the Australian High Commission confirmed his departure yesterday morning.
■ CHINA
Nanjing Bible press opening
China will become one of the biggest Bible producing countries in the world when a new printing press opens this month. Nanjing is home to a 48,000m² factory in an industrial park which will employ 600 non-Christian locals producing 23 Bibles a minute. Most will be distributed in China in 10 languages and braille. The plant is expected to supply a quarter of the world’s Bibles by next year. The Amity Printing Co, a joint venture with the British Bible Society, printed its 50 millionth Bible last December and its new press, opening on May 19, will double annual production to 12 million. At least 7 percent of the population are estimated to be believers.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Three teens arrested for sex
Police yesterday arrested three teenage males on suspicion of sexually molesting primary school students in a series of assault cases that a civic group and local media said involved more than 50 victims. Older students forced boys and girls at the primary school in the southeastern city of Daegu to mimic sexual acts they had seen on pornographic Web sites and TV, a civic group made up of parents from the area, teachers and human rights advocates said. A police official in Daegu said the three middle school boys were arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing eight elementary school girls.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Police probe murder
Police said yesterday they had launched a joint probe with Philippine police into the murder of a 67-year-old South Korean millionaire. The woman, identified only by her family name Park, was found dead on April 3 in Batangas province, about 100km south of Manila. She had been shot twice in the head. Philippine police identifed the body because a paper bag containing a boarding pass and 51,700 pesos (US$1,220) in cash was found at the scene. Police in Seoul said they are investigating whether her death was linked to disputes over the inheritance of her wealth. Park had a fortune of more than 20 billion won, local media reports said.
■ INDIA
Power cuts set off riots
Rioters, some wearing just underwear, clashed with police in northern India early yesterday in anger over massive power cuts that left wide swaths of the region without electricity as summer temperatures soared, police said. Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowds who attacked police vehicles, blocked roads and rail lines, set an electricity transformer on fire and attacked electricity workers in Uttar Pradesh state, police spokesman Surendra Srivastava said. More than 250 people had been detained and charged with rioting, Srivastava said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
McCanns launch hotline
The parents of missing Madeleine McCann appealed to her kidnappers to return their daughter on the one-year anniversary of her disappearance. Kate and Gerry McCann launched a telephone hotline they hope will produce information about her whereabouts. “If you have Madeleine, you can call this number. All we are interested in is getting Madeleine back,” Gerry McCann said in a TV interview. The couple are staging a new media offensive to mark the year since Madeleine disappeared from a hotel room during a family vacation in Portugal’s Algarve region on May 3 last year. The couple were eating at a nearby restaurant at the time.
■ GERMANY
Police battle rioters
Leftist radicals fought on Thursday in two cities with riot police who were thwarting attempts to disrupt May Day parades by the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD). In Hamburg, five cars were set on fire and stones shattered many windows. Police used water jets mounted on trucks to open a route for an estimated 1,100 far-rightists. Leftist leaders said they mustered 10,000 protesters. The anti-immigrant NPD staged Labor Day parades through a working-class district of Hamburg and through Nuremberg, the city adopted by dictator Adolf Hitler as the home of his Nazi Party.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Elephant-killing ban lifted
A 13-year ban on killing elephants was lifted on Thursday — a move conservationists warn could encourage poachers and threaten dwindling populations elsewhere on the continent. Elephants are flourishing in the country, with the population growing more than 5 percent annually in recent years as a result of a well-managed national parks industry. Authorities want to cap their burgeoning numbers and protect the elephants’ viability. Killing elephants, which have no predators and can turn woodlands to grass and stubs in a matter of years, is the best way to control the population, officials say.
■ ITALY
Tax returns made public
Those dying to know how much their neighbor, boss or favorite soccer player gets paid saw their dreams come true on Wednesday when a government Web site briefly published the income of every taxpayer. The posting of 38 million tax returns from 2005 was no bureaucratic bungle or the result of a hacking attack but a deliberate last push for fiscal transparency by the outgoing government of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. But a stampede by curious Italians to the site caused it to crash, before a privacy watchdog demanded it be shut down a few hours later after howls of protests from celebrities and politicians.
■ POLAND
Marchers mark Holocaust
Around 10,000 Jews, Poles and World War II survivors took part in the March of the Living on Thursday, an annual event at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau that honors the memory of some 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. This year’s march, the 17th, started with the blowing of the shofar, or ram’s horn, at the iron gate that leads into the former camp of Auschwitz. The Israeli army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, led the long column of marchers. “Each and every one of us should do our utmost to ensure: Never again,” Ashkenazi said. Marchers walked in silence for 3km from the brick houses of Auschwitz to Birkenau, another area of the camp that is the site of wooden barracks and ruins of the gas chambers.
■ CUBA
Farm sector shaken up
Cuba announced a major shake-up of its troubled farm sector on May Day, shifting control of the nation’s farms from officials at the Agriculture Ministry to more than 150 local councils. The move is part of an effort to increase food production and reduce Cuba’s dependence on imports. It came as hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched on Thursday in a May Day parade that was shorter than usual, reflecting the businesslike style of new President Raul Castro. The Communist Party newspaper Granma said 169 new agricultural coordinating councils — made up of local officials — would take over control of the farm sector and the government is considering slashing 104 state-run agricultural departments.
■ UNITED NATIONS
Canada panned over vote
Canada, until recently seen as a champion of Aboriginal rights, came under fire at the UN on Thursday for blocking implementation of a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. The General Assembly passed the non-binding declaration last September despite opposition from several developed states that said it provided excessive property and legal powers. Canada was one of four countries that voted against it. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which met at the UN over the past 10 days, said Canada was now trying to block the use of the UN declaration as the basis of negotiation for an agreement at the Organization of American States (OAS).
■ ARGENTINA
Farmers to end truce
Thousands of farmers plan to mark the end of a 30-day “truce” with the government over export tax hikes by taking to the streets again this weekend — but without blocking roads or causing the food shortages that crippled the country during a farm strike in March. Argentine farms groups said on Thursday that no progress was made during a month of negotiations on their central demand to roll back export taxes, especially on soybeans, which rose by as much as 45 percent under a decree issued by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez on March 11. The increases sparked the 21-day strike that cut food shipments to major cities and emptied supermarkets.
■ ARGENTINA
Rights activist freed
A human rights activist whose disappearance prompted an intense manhunt said on Thursday that captors beat him and warned him against publicizing killings by a past dictatorship, telling him: “Your life is in our hands.” Juan Evaristo Puthod was freed shortly before midnight on Wednesday after Argentine President Christina Fernandez sent hundreds of police to search for him. Puthod has helped in a national wave of prosecutions against former security officials accused of torturing and killing thousands of political dissidents during Argentina’s 1976 to 1983 military dictatorship. Puthod said the two gunmen who seized him on Tuesday tied him up and beat him after covering his head to conceal their identities.
■ UNITED STATES
Sergeant acquitted of murder
A military jury in Fort Hood, Texas, on Thursday acquitted an Army sergeant of premeditated murder in the death of an unarmed Iraqi insurgent who was killed in a village overrun by al-Qaeda operatives. The family of Sergeant Leonardo Trevino gasped, clapped and sobbed after the verdict was read. Trevino’s attorneys said he followed the rules of engagement because he thought the insurgent was reaching for a gun.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not