■CHINA
7th Foxconn worker dies
A worker was killed after falling from a Foxconn dormitory, the seventh to die this year after falling from buildings at the world’s top contract maker of cellphones, state media reported yesterday. Foxconn, whose clients include Apple and Sony Ericsson, has faced criticism over the welfare of its employees after the spate of apparent suicides. Police were investigating whether the latest death was suicide, Xinhua news agency said. A total of nine Foxconn workers have plunged from buildings this year, it said, adding that two of them did not die. The Taiwanese firm has a sprawling factory base in the southern city of Shenzhen where an estimated 300,000 workers churn out products for the world’s leading computer and phone companies in round-the-clock shifts.
■PAKISTAN
Bombing suspects nabbed
A senior US military official says Pakistan now has at least two men in custody on suspicion of helping to finance the Times Square bombing attempt. The investigation into the May 1 attempt in New York has widened as authorities in the US and Pakistan follow the money trail. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to reporters to discuss the sensitive issue of Pakistani cooperation in the probe. It is not clear whether the two are members of the Pakistani Taliban, which US authorities say was behind the plot.
■UNITED STATES
Congress iffy on commandos
A group of lawmakers are questioning President Barack Obama administration’s efforts to establish ties with an Indonesian commando unit accused of human rights abuses. The 13 lawmakers sent a letter Thursday to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. They are worried about whether Indonesia will punish senior officers for past abuse. The US lifted an overall ban against training the Indonesian military in 2005, but it kept restrictions against the special forces group Kopassus. Rights groups say Kopassus was linked to disappearances in 1997 and 1998.
■AUSTRALIA
Obama to visit next month
US President Barack Obama’s postponed visit to Australia will be rescheduled to June 18, it was reported yesterday, with an address to parliament ahead of a family weekend in Sydney. The White House is yet to make an announcement on the visit, which was cancelled in March as Obama fought to secure health reforms, but newspapers said preparations were underway for the rescheduled date. Obama, who bills himself as the US’ first Pacific president, was to address lawmakers in Canberra on the 18th before spending the weekend in Sydney with his family, the reports said, citing government sources. The visit is expected to “stick to much the same schedule as had been planned for March,” the reports added.
■CHINA
School stabber gets death
A man who stabbed 29 school children and three teachers has been sentenced to death after a half-day trial, state media reported yesterday. Xu Yuyuan (徐玉元), 47, an unemployed local, was found guilty of attacking a kindergarten in Taixing city in Jiangsu Province last month. A string of attacks at schools has killed a total of 27 people and injured more than 80 since March, prompting calls for better protection of students and worries about the social malaise that some see underneath China’s rapid economic growth. Xu told the court that his motive was to “vent his rage against society,” Xinhua reported.
■UNITED STATES
Murder charges for mother
Prosecutors in Farmington, Utah, said on Friday they may file murder charges against the mother of a four-year-old boy whose body was found in a canyon earlier this week. Searchers dug up Ethan Stacy’s badly beaten and disfigured body on Tuesday, about 10 days after he arrived in Utah for a summer visit with his mother, Stephanie Sloop, 27. Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings said both Sloop and her husband, Nathanael Sloop, 31, will likely be charged with aggravated murder in the boy’s death. Before Friday, the possibility of murder charges had only been discussed for Nathanael Sloop. Police said Stephanie Sloop initially told officers her son had wandered away from his Layton apartment building.
■VENEZUELA
Sunken rig had problems
An offshore natural gas platform that sank off in the Caribbean encountered problems last year before being hired by the Venezuelan government, an official in nearby Trinidad and Tobago said on Friday. Lieutenant Kirk Jean-Baptiste, spokesman for the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard, confirmed that authorities received a distress call from the rig Aban Pearl platform on Aug. 14 because it was tilting after one of its floating devices was damaged. He said that by the time the Coast Guard arrived, those aboard the rig had been able to correct the problem. The platform sank on Thursday after all 95 workers aboard safely evacuated.
■UNITED STATES
Mother tries to drown baby
An unhappy mother hurled her toddler daughter into the chilly Hudson River in New York and then jumped in herself in an apparent murder-suicide attempt intended to spite her husband, prosecutors said on Friday. Dispirited after a few years of moving around because of her husband’s job, Devi Silvia told relatives she wanted to go back to her native India with her 19-month-old daughter shortly before the river plunge on Tuesday, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Robert Hettleman said. Later, “she told us that she was sad and lonely and angry at her husband, and that she did this horrific act on purpose,” he said as she was arraigned on attempted murder and other charges.
■CUBA
Blogger released from jail
An appeals court wiped out a 20-month jail sentence against a blogger with ties to the Ladies in White dissident group who had been convicted of mistreating her grown daughter, ordering the woman on Friday to pay a fine of about US$14 instead. Dania Garcia had already been released last week from the high-security Manto Negro jail, on the southwestern outskirts of Havana, where she had been ordered to serve her sentence. A judge ruled at the time that she could await the verdict from home, a strong sign the sentence would be thrown out.
■UNITED STATES
Man arrested for stun gun
Federal authorities arrested a Japanese man in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Friday after he allegedly tried to board a flight to Tokyo with a stun gun in his carry-on bag. Prosecutors charged Hiroki Suzuki with one count of carrying a dangerous concealed weapon while attempting to board All Nippon Airways Flight 1051. An affidavit filed in US District Court in Honolulu said Suzuki hid the Muscle Man stun gun in a small black canvas pouch in his carry-on bag. A Transportation Security Administration official found the device during an X-ray scan. Suzuki allegedly told FBI agents he bought the stun gun in Japan about a year ago for protection.
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