■PHILIPPINES
First flu fatality reported
Manila reproted its first swine flu-related death — a 49-year-old woman who died from congestive heart failure but who also tested positive for the swine flu virus. Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the woman’s chronic heart disease was aggravated by severe pneumonia. She started to have flu-like symptoms such as dry cough, fever, chills and difficulty breathing two days before her death on Friday. A throat swab from the woman revealed she was infected with the A(H1N1) virus.
■AUSTRALIA
‘Utegate’ e-mail fake
Police yesterday said the e-mail at the center of the “Utegate” scandal was a fake, blowing a hole in opposition claims against Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The apparent forgery was revealed after police investigations at the home of Godwin Grech, a senior treasury official whose testimony to a senate inquiry sparked the row. Rudd, Treasurer Wayne Swan and opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull have all heard calls for their resignation over the row since Grech gave evidence last week. Turnbull accuses Rudd of helping a car-dealer friend seek government funds and then lying to parliament about it, basing his case on the e-mail supposedly sent by the prime minister’s adviser.
■AUSTRALIA
Seven injured in turbulence
A Qantas plane hit turbulence and suddenly lost altitude over Malaysia, throwing terrified passengers around the cabin and leaving seven people injured, the airline said yesterday. The Airbus A330 with 219 passengers and crew aboard was flying from Hong Kong to Perth overnight when it struck “severe turbulence” over Borneo, Qantas said in a statement. Passengers later described the panic and confusion in the darkened cabin as passengers not wearing seat belts were hurled from their seats. Government safety officials were investigating the incident.
■SOUTH KOREA
College for retirees planned
Faced with the country’s aging population, Seoul National University is planning to launch courses to help senior citizens get the most out of retirement, officials said yesterday, adding that a pilot program was due as early as this autumn. It will initially be a short-term course but eventually develop into an academic degree program, they said. The university currently runs non-degree courses for the general public but not a program exclusively for retirees.
■PHILIPPINES
Boy accidentally kills dad
A six-year-old boy accidentally shot dead his father and injured his mother in a Father’s Day tragedy, police said yesterday. Police officer Hermogenes Capili said the victim, Apolonio Pacioles, 45, was a soldier who had just come home after fighting Muslim rebels in the south. Capili said Pacioles had asked his son to get his 45-calibre pistol from the upstairs bedroom of their house in Quezon City on Sunday. The son, the youngest of the victim’s three children, got the gun and even removed the magazine as he was taught by his father. The boy then asked if the gun was loaded, but his father ignored him. Thinking he had removed all the bullets, the boy cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger. “But apparently one bullet was left in the chamber,” Capili said, adding that the bullet struck Pacioles in the abdomen, exited his body, hit a door and then grazed the boy’s mother. The mother was released from hospital after treatment. Capili said no criminal charges would be filed against the boy.
■ITALY
Pope says welcome refugees
Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday reminded Western countries of their “duty” to welcome refugees, and urged the unemployed not to be discouraged in the current economic downturn. Addressing thousands of pilgrims at the popular shrine to a Catholic mystic in southern Italy, the pope called for prayers for the “difficult and often dramatic” plight of refugees. “Many are those who seek refuge in other countries, fleeing war, persecution and natural disasters, and while accepting them poses many problems, it is however a duty,” said Benedict, speaking in Puglia at the shrine to Padre Pio, one of Italy’s most popular saints.
■ANGOLA
Group wants end to arrests
Angolan should end the unlawful detention and torture of people suspected of rebel activities in the oil-producing province of Cabinda, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report yesterday. Cabinda is an underdeveloped northern enclave of Angola that produces more than 60 percent of the African nation’s oil and where rebels have waged a separatist campaign for several decades. The Human Rights Watch report claims that between September 2007 and March this year, at least 38 people suspected of belonging to the Liberation Front of the Enclave of Cabinda, the main separatist guerrilla movement, were arbitrarily arrested. Most of those arrested by the Angolan military were subjected to lengthy detentions, torture, and cruel or inhumane treatment and were denied due-process rights, the report says. “The Angolan armed forces are committing serious human rights violations in Cabinda,” Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Protesters board coal ship
Environmental protesters have boarded a ship carrying coal in a bid to stop it from unloading at a power station in England. Campaign group Greenpeace said yesterday morning that nine protesters climbed aboard the ship sometime around midnight as it traveled along the River Medway to the Kingsnorth Power Station in Kent, about 40km southeast of London. Police say the ship has docked and that some of the protesters remain on board while five activists have been taken into police custody. The protesters are opposed to the expansion of the coal-fired power station.
■IRAQ
Bomb kills three in Baghdad
Officials say that at least three people were killed and 13 others wounded in a roadside bombing in a mainly Shiite area in Baghdad. The attack comes just over a week before US troops are to withdraw from urban areas in Iraq. Officials have warned they expect militants to step up attacks around the June 30 deadline. A police officer says the roadside bomb struck a minibus yesterday in the Habibiyah area near the former militia stronghold of Sadr City.
■SUDAN
Japan extends mission
Japan will keep two military technicians in Sudan for another year to assist UN peacekeeping operations, the foreign ministry said yesterday. Japan’s mission to Sudan, its first deployment of troops to the country, will now last through June of next year, the ministry said in a news release. Members of the Japanese defense forces work at the headquarters of the UN Mission in Sudan, located in Khartoum. Japan has kept two troops there since October of last year to help with logistics and database management, the defense ministry said.
■BRAZIL
Jail cellphone plot foiled
Two teenagers were arrested on the weekend for allegedly plotting to smuggle cellphones into a prison using a kite, reports said on Sunday. Police said the two unidentified adolescents were arrested late on Saturday with two kites and mobile phones inside a building in Tremembe, a town outside Sao Paulo, the G1 news Web site reported. Police said the two confessed to planning the operation and said they were to have received US$175 through a former girlfriend of a prisoner in the town’s Tarcizo Leonce Pinheiro Cintra penitentiary.
■VENEZUELA
Alleged Mafia head nabbed
The alleged head of the Sicilian Mafia, Salvatore Miceli, was detained and will be deported to Italy, Interior Minister Tarek el-Aissami said on Sunday. Detained on Saturday night by police, Miceli, 63, has been wanted in Italy on drug trafficking charges since 2001, he said. “He is one of the five most wanted men in Europe for trafficking heroin, morphine and cocaine,” Aissami said. He said Venezuelan authorities have been in communication with Italian authorities to deport Miceli as soon as possible.
■ENVIRONMENT
Oceans choking with waste
The world’s seas are gradually filling with an increasing volume of waste, with plastic making up the single largest part of pollution in the marine environment, a new report by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and the Washington-based advocacy group The Ocean Conservancy said. Plastic most often found in the form of PET bottles and shopping bags can be found floating in seas around the globe. It accounts for up to 80 percent of marine waste pollution in some waters, said the report, which was published in Washington and Nairobi to mark World Oceans Day on June 8. Smoking also plays a major role in marine pollution. The report’s researchers discovered that of the 103 million pieces of marine pollution categorized in the study, 25 million were cigarette filters or individual cigarettes.
■MEXICO
Storm forms off coast
Tropical Storm Andres formed off the coast, the first named cyclone of the eastern Pacific season, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said. The eye of Andres was 325km south of Zihuatanejo on the Mexican coast at 10pm on Sunday and moving west-northwest at 7 kilometers per hour, the NHC said in an advisory. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 65kph. A tropical storm watch, indicating winds of between 63kph and 118kph are expected within 36 hours, was in place for the Mexican coast from Zihuatanejo to Manzanillo. The storm is forecast to strengthen during the next 48 hours, the advisory said.
■HAITI
One killed amid vote
One person was killed on Sunday when supporters of rival candidates clashed as people went to the polls in a Senate election, Haiti national police (PNH) said. The victim, a woman, was killed in the southwestern city of Jeremie when violence erupted between the two groups of supporters, a PNH official there said. Sporadic violence marred the first hours of voting on Sunday, which has seen very few people turning out to the polls to elect one third of the Senate’s 30 seats in this impoverished Caribbean country. Not far from the presidential palace, protesting medical school students who have been demanding for weeks a rise in the minimum wage were met by police who threw tear gas and blocked the road.
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