■INDIA
Maoist blast kills eight
Maoist rebels blew up an army truck on Saturday, killing eight paramilitary soldiers and wounding two others in a densely forested area in the central area of the country, a top police official said. The rebels planted and triggered an explosive device that blew up an armored truck traveling in the densely forested Bijapur district of Chattisgarh state, said Vishwa Ranjan, the state’s director general of police. “The soldiers were on their way home on vacation when the vehicle in which they were traveling was blown up. At least two other people were injured,” Ranjan said on Saturday.
■MALAYSIA
Sorry thieves abandon car
Police have recovered a car stolen from a top officer with a note from the thieves inside saying, “Sorry police, wrong target.” Police officer Arjunaidi Mohamed says the car belonging to the police chief of the state of Selangor was found on Saturday in a parking space on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. On its dashboard was the handwritten note. Arjunaidi said yesterday that only the door lock on the Proton Perdana was damaged. The car, which did not have a police logo, was stolen on Thursday near a restaurant where the police chief’s driver had stopped to have breakfast.
■CHINA
Murder spree kills eight
Xinhua news agency says a man on a stabbing rampage has killed eight people in Jiangxi Province, including his mother, wife and daughter. Xinhua said yesterday that the man also killed four neighbors and a migrant worker. Xinhua cited police as saying the stabbings occurred on Saturday night. Suspect Zhou Yezhong was caught within two hours of the stabbings, the agency said.
■IRAN
Kurdish activists hanged
Five Kurdish activists convicted of membership of armed opposition groups and involvement in bombings were hanged yesterday, IRNA reported. The news agency said the five, who include one woman, were hanged at dawn at Evin prison. They were sentenced to death in 2008 after they were found guilty of moharebeh, a term Iran uses to describe a major crime against Islam and the state. The agency said the five were members of the Kurdish separatist group PEJAK, which is the Iranian wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party that is fighting for autonomy in southeast Turkey.
■GREECE
Immigrants allowed to vote
Immigrants holding a residence permit will be allowed to vote for the first time in local elections set for Nov. 14, the interior ministry said in a statement on Friday. The regional and municipal polls in November will be the first political test the government faces since a controversial austerity plan in exchange for IMF and EU aid. In March, legal changes made it possible to grant nationality to second-generation immigrants, and gave the right to vote in local elections for those with a residency permit.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Krstic assaulted in jail
Bosnian Serb war criminal Radislav Krstic was assaulted by fellow inmates on Friday at high-security Wakefield prison in northern England, officials said. Krstic was hospitalized after the attack, but an official at the nearby Pinderfields General Hospital said he was later released. Krstic was convicted of aiding and abetting the murder of up to 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in 2001. His son-in-law told Serbia’s Tanjug news agency that Krstic sustained head and neck injuries after an attack “by Islamists” in the prison.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Cup officials bemoan visit
The World Cup’s toughest security headache may be a surprise visit by US President Barack Obama, national police chief Bheki Cele told parliament on Friday, joking that he secretly hoped the US side would bow out early. “One challenge ... is the American president who is coming, not coming, coming, not coming,” Cele said during a briefing on security for the month-long tournament, which begins on June 11. “Our famous prayer is that they don’t make the second round,” he said. “They get eliminated and they go home because we are told that if they go to the second or third stage, the American president might come.”
■ITALY
Portrait may be Raphael
A finely painted portrait of a demurely looking woman nestled in an exceptionally ornate frame that was kept in a ducal palace storeroom appears to be a Raphael original and not a copy as long thought, art official Mario Scalini said on Friday. Scalini, state superintendent for art in Modena and nearby towns, said he was doing an inventory of about 20,000 paintings in storerooms when he was struck by an unusually fancy, gilded 17th century frame in the palace in Sassuolo. He found centuries-old inventory notations indicating the collection contained a woman’s portrait by Raphael. The 30cm-by-40cm work was sent to a laboratory in Florence, where researcher Anna Pelagotti said infrared testing revealed three layers underneath, including a preparatory design. “It was a beautiful sensation, our mouths dropped open,” Pelagotti said. However, art historians will have to closely study the work before any conclusions can be made.
■UNITED STATES
Celebrity gator gets mate
Reggie the celebrity alligator is getting some female companionship at the Los Angeles Zoo. The 2.3m gator, who became famous after his owner dumped him in a lake several years ago, is now sharing a space with Cajun Kate. Before arriving at the zoo, Reggie was illegally raised as a pet, then was dumped in Harbor City’s Machado Lake several years ago when he got too big. He drew large crowds and found himself in songs and on T-shirts. Los Angeles County spent thousands of dollars staffing the lake to warn people. He eluded trappers for two years before wranglers caught him in 2007 and brought him to the zoo.
■CANADA
Beavers build biggest dam
An ecologist said on Friday that he has located the world’s largest beaver dam in the northwest of the country. Ecologist Jean Thie located the 850m dam using Google Earth and NASA technology while researching the rate of melting permafrost in the country’s far north. Situated in northern Alberta’s Wood Buffalo National Park, the dam stretches more than eight football fields long, Thie said. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw it — it’s a vast, vast area. There may be longer dams out there, but this, by far, is the largest I have seen so far,” he said. Thie discovered the dam in 2007, but he said it only recently caught media attention after someone at a British paper spotted his findings on a blog and ran a story reiterating Thie’s claim that the dam is visible from space. Using past images and park aerial photography, Thie concluded that the eager beavers began their work in the 1970s and that generations of the rodents have worked on it since.
■UNITED STATES
Bailout anger costs senator
Deep US voter anger at Washington claimed its first major election-year casualty on Saturday, as Republican Senator Bob Bennett of Utah lost a primary challenge that bumped him from the November ballot. Bennett’s generally strong conservative record did not save him from Republican insurgents angered by his support for the 2008 Wall Street bailout. The senator came in third in Utah’s Republican primary, which was won by businessman Tim Bridgewater and lawyer Mike Lee, who however will have to square off in a new poll next month since both fell short of the 60 percent of votes needed for an outright win. Bennett’s loss highlighted a Republican schism between establishment candidates and “Tea Party” activists who have rallied around anger at soaring deficits and expanding government. Lee and Bridgewater have aligned themselves with the “Tea Party.”
■CANADA
Seeking national bird
The country is in search of a bird to name as a national symbol to rival the US’ bald eagle, the Bahamas’ flamingo and New Zealand’s kiwi, CBC said on Friday. The initiative was launched by the Canadian Raptor Conservancy, which specializes in birds of prey rehabilitation, captive breeding and research. The organization launched an online petition to choose a bird for Canada, and is being supported by public broadcaster CBC. The winner is to be presented to parliament to be ratified. The country’s 13 provinces and territories have each claimed a bird to represent their respective region, including the snowy owl, blue jay, raven, puffin, chickadee and grouse. The loon, which appears on the C$1 dollar coin, and the Canada Goose are each believed by many to be the national bird already — wrongly it turns out — and appear to be the frontrunners in the contest so far.
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