■SERBIA
Albanians protest arrests
Thousands of Albanians protested on Monday asking for an immediate release of a group of Albanians arrested last month over crimes against Serbs, media reported. Around 3,000 Albanians gathered in Presevo town in the south, near a border with Kosovo, demanding the release of members of the so-called Gnjilanska group suspected of murdering, torturing and raping Kosovo Serbs from 1999 to 2001. “We demand that all members of Gnjilanska group be released because we believe they haven’t committed the crimes they are accused of. If they did, they wouldn’t be living in Presevo with Serb police,” said Nader Sadiku, head of Presevo municipality. Protesters carried banners with signs “Presevo valley is Kosovo” and “Freedom fighters don’t belong in jail.” The protest ended with no incidents.
■SOMALIA
Hardliners seize Baidoa
Hardline Islamists on Monday said they had taken control of Baidoa, the seat of the country’s parliament, after Ethiopian troops pulled out at the weekend. Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, the spokesman of the Shebab, a military youth wing of an Islamist movement ousted by Ethiopian forces forces in early 2007, said the south-central town was now under their control. “The town is completely in our hands. We have taken control of Baidoa today,” Robow told reporters. “There are a few militia who are firing at us in the town, but we are going to crack down on them.”
■JAPAN
Baby bodies found in bags
The decomposed bodies of four infants were found in plastic bags in a Tokyo apartment where an unemployed woman recently killed herself, news reports said on Monday. The 51-year-old woman lived alone, and her sister and brother-in-law found the bodies stuffed in the closet when they visited on Sunday to collect her belongings, television reports said. Police confirmed that the couple found four bags and saw a body inside at least one of them. “As for the content of the other bags, it is under investigation,” a police spokesman said. News reports said the bodies were little more than skeletons and that police were studying DNA samples to see if the children belonged to the deceased woman. She was found hanged on Friday in a park near the apartment, and reportedly left a suicide note saying, “I have suffered from money issues. I can’t pay the rent any more.”
■AUSTRALIA
Serial killer severs finger
Serial backpacker murderer Ivan Milat was rushed to hospital on Monday after severing a finger and giving it to a guard in an envelope addressed to the High Court, officials said. Milat, 64, is serving consecutive life sentences in solitary confinement for the murder of seven backpackers — five of whom were international travelers — in the 1990s. He was taken under high-security escort to hospital on Monday after severing a finger while in his cell, prison officials said. The finger was placed on ice and he was handcuffed, shackled and attached to a monitoring device to be taken for emergency reattachment surgery, a spokeswoman said. Milat seemed calm and did not show any signs of shock, she said. It was unclear whether the digit could be saved. Milat, one of the country’s worst serial killers, was convicted in 1996 of murdering two British backpackers, three Germans and two Australians. The remains of all seven, murdered between 1989 and 1994, were found in the Belanglo State Forest.
■LIBERIA
Anti-caterpillar plea made
The government has set up a command post and called on international experts to help fight an invasion by millions of crop-devouring caterpillars that are eating their way across the country. The tiny caterpillars are clogging wells and waterways with excrement and devouring vital crops including banana, plantain, coffee and cocoa. They swarmed around a clinic in one town, preventing people from accessing it, the Ministry of Agriculture said. “The pests were found to attack practically all crops of economic value. Their droppings pollute the waters, rendering them unwholesome for human use,” the ministry said. The plague has now affected 65 towns.
■UNITED STATES
London couple go on display
Londoners Duncan Malcolm and Katherine Lewis have settled into their Big Apple hotel room — under the eyes of thousands of pedestrians and motorists. The couple are receiving a complimentary five-day stay at Manhattan’s Roger Smith Hotel in exchange for staying in a replica of one of the hotel’s rooms on the ground floor of a nearby building. They must keep the curtains on the room’s large glass windows open between 4:30pm and 7:30pm until Friday, allowing passers-by to watch them.
■GERMANY
Berlin backs sea trial
The government dropped its opposition on Monday to a controversial experiment to dump iron sulphate in the South Atlantic to see if it can absorb greenhouse gases and possibly help to halt global warming. “After a study of expert reports, I am convinced there are no scientific or legal objections against the ... ocean research experiment LOHAFEX,” Research Minister Annette Schavan said in a statement. Scientists aboard the Polarstern will drop 6 tonnes of the dissolved iron over 300km² of ocean. They hope the release of iron will cause an exponential growth in phytoplankton, which will then absorb more carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. But opponents of the plan fear the experiment could cause the sea to become more acidic or trigger algal blooms that would strip swathes of the ocean of oxygen.
■ARGENTINA
Farm emergency declared
President Cristina Fernandez declared an agricultural emergency on Monday in the nation’s breadbasket provinces, responding to a key demand by powerful farm organizations amid the worst drought in decades. She told political and business leaders in a televised press conference that the decree will exempt thousands of farmers from paying various taxes for one year to help them confront what analysts estimate will be US$5 billion in losses this year. In some areas, officials say it is the worst drought since the 1930s. To qualify for the tax exemption, producers must have lost at least 50 percent of their harvest or herd.
■UNITED STATES
Rodenberrys space-bound
The creator of Star Trek and his wife will spend eternity together in space. Celestis, a company that specializes in “memorial spaceflights,” said on Monday that it will ship the remains of Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett Roddenberry into space next year. A rocket-launched spacecraft will carry the capsules, along with digitized tributes from fans. The Roddenberrys’ remains will travel ever deeper into space and will not return to Earth, the company said. After Gene Roddenberry died in 1991, his wife had Celestis launch a part of his remains into space in 1997. She died on Dec. 18 last year.
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