Mexico started off the New Year with a string of shootouts and killings.
In the northern city of Torreon, federal police said on Friday they had captured two alleged hit men after the suspects threw a hand grenade at police and soldiers who cornered them at a house. Eight officers were wounded in the Thursday confrontation.
The Public Safety Department said more grenades, pistols and assault rifles were found inside the home. The two suspects were members of the Gulf drug cartel and were wanted on homicide charges in the US.
Killings in the border city of Tijuana started less than an hour into this year, when Saul Tamayo Hernandez, 26, was shot by gunmen while celebrating the new year outside his house with his family.
Things in Tijuana seemed to get worse with the reported kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy. But police said on Friday the youth staged his own disappearance.
The boy was reported abducted on Wednesday when he ran to his home to pick something up for a New Year’s Eve dinner at his grandparents house a few blocks away.
When the boy didn’t return, his mother went looking for him and found the door of her house forced open. A note said her son had been taken and that she would be killed if she stayed at her home.
Police said in a statement on Friday the boy was found and confessed to ransacking the home and leaving the note to get money to party with his friends.
In the western town of La Huerta, a shootout between rival families at a New Year’s party left four dead, and a clash between soldiers and alleged drug traffickers in Chihuahua state reportedly killed three smugglers.
Federal prosecutors also said they placed three municipal policemen in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez under house arrest on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers.
And in the northern city of Monterrey, prosecutors accused former Nuevo Leon state policeman Aldo Perales, 34, of leading a gang of bank robbers and participating in more than 30 robberies.
Police say he has confessed to at least three bank robberies but denied carrying out others.
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