■PAKISTAN
Suicide bomber kills 11
A suicide bomber on a bicycle killed 11 people yesterday when he attacked a police patrol in the northwest town of Dera Ismail Khan, police said. The attack, which killed three police officers and eight civilians, occurred as the patrol vehicle traveled through the town, said Gul Afzal Khan, the police chief in the area. The victims included a senior police officer, his guard and driver, Khan said. The civilians who were killed included two schoolchildren, he said. Fifteen people were wounded.
■SOUTH KOREA
Grannies held over scam
A group of grannies has been booked on suspicion of swindling fellow senior citizens for fake arthritis cures, police said yesterday. They said four were arrested and detained, while three were booked without detention for allegedly defrauding 200 senior citizens of a total of 300 million won (US$264,000) since March last year. They are said to have sold Chinese herbs worth only 1,500 won for 2 million won a time by persuading victims the herbs could cure arthritis.
■INDIA
Three get life for rape
Three men were sentenced to life in prison for raping a Japanese tourist at a renowned Buddhist pilgrimage site in the eastern state of Bihar, a prosecutor said yesterday. The three were arrested by police after the 25-year-old victim identified them following the rape last month, state prosecutor Vimal Kishor Prasad said. The court announced the sentences on Monday. Police said they had seized the property of two other men alleged to have been involved.
■SOUTH KOREA
Man to donate full jackpot
A businessman who scooped the biggest casino jackpot in the nation’s history has donated the entire sum — 767 million won — to a university, the casino said yesterday. Ahn Seung-pil won the jackpot on Saturday from Kangwon Land, the only casino legally open to Koreans. Ahn, 60, who runs a small Seoul textile factory, was quoted in a casino statement and newspapers as saying he had decided to donate the lot to the prestigious Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. “Because I’m not highly educated, I dreamed of being able to contribute to the development of education,” the Korea Herald quoted him as saying. Ahn said his business ran up to 4 billion won in debts during the Asian financial crisis and he still has debts outstanding. “At first I thought to pay off my debts with the money. But such lucky money is more meaningful when it is used for the nation,” he said.
■RUSSIA
European court criticized
The foreign ministry blasted Europe’s top rights court on Monday for backing Latvia’s decision to charge a Russian partisan from World War II with war crimes and said the decision could split Europe. The European Court of Human Rights ruled earlier on Monday that Latvia had not broken international law by charging Vasiliy Kononov, 87, with war crimes over attacks in Nazi-occupied Latvia in 1944. The ruling by the court’s Grand Chamber overturned an earlier decision by the regular court in 2008 that Latvia’s decision to try Kononov in 2004 on war crimes charges was illegal.
■FRANCE
‘Freezer babies’ woman out
A woman who killed three of her babies, burning one corpse and hiding the others in the family freezer, has been freed after spending four years behind bars, officials said on Friday. Veronique Courjault was sentenced in June last year to eight years in jail after she admitted to smothering two baby boys born in secret at her home in South Korea in 2002 and 2003, and a third child born in France in 1999. Now aged 42, and with two sons aged 13 and 15, Courjault was released on Friday, having served half her sentence after the time she spent in remand since her arrest in October 2006 was taken into consideration. “It’s a relief ... We can finally start again and the future is ahead of us,” her husband Jean-Louis Coujault, who proclaimed his support for his wife throughout the case, told RTL radio.
■IRAQ
Suspected militant arrested
Security forces have detained an al-Qaeda militant suspected of planning an attack targeting the World Cup in South Africa next month, said Major General Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Baghdad security services. Al-Moussawi told a news conference that Abdullah Azam Saleh al-Qahtani was an officer in the Saudi army and is suspected of planning a “terrorist act” in South Africa during the World Cup beginning on June 11. He said al-Qahtani entered Iraq in 2004 and is suspected in several attacks in the capital and elsewhere in the country. In South Africa, a police spokesman said Iraq has not notified them of the arrest.
■GREECE
Deputy minister resigns
The deputy tourism minister has resigned after tax officials said her husband, a popular singer and former film star, owes millions of euros in unpaid taxes, a major embarrassment for the cash-strapped government, which is waging a war on tax evasion. A government statement on Monday said Angela Gerekou — a 51-year-old former actress who once posed topless for a men’s magazine — stepped down hours after the scandal broke in a daily newspaper. It said Gerekou claimed she had no involvement in the tax affairs of her husband, Tolis Voskopoulos.
■UNITED STATES
Pianist Jones dies at 91
Hank Jones, a jazz master pianist who played with many of the greats, died in New York, aged 91. His agent Jean-Pierre Leduc confirmed his death on Sunday after an illness that started in March. Jones was born in 1918 in Mississippi in a jazz family that included Elvin Jones, the legendary drummer for John Coltrane, and trumpeter-composer Thad Jones. Inducted to the US National Endowment for the Arts as a jazz master and to the International Jazz Hall of Fame, Jones played often in the background until later in life. He was one of the survivors of jazz’s golden era during which he played with Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie “Bird” Parker and Benny Goodman.
■MEXICO
Blood matches missing man
Prosecutors said on Monday that blood found in the car of a missing former presidential candidate matched his blood type. Although authorities have not called Diego Fernandez de Cevallos’ disappearance a kidnapping, the 69-year-old’s family called on his supposed abductors to the negotiating table in a message read out on various broadcast media. Security forces meanwhile continued search efforts around his ranch in the central state of Queretaro. The case has provoked fears that drug violence is reaching new political heights. President Felipe Calderon has ordered a massive manhunt for his “personal friend.”
■HAITI
Missionary leader freed
The leader of a group of US missionaries arrested trying to leave the country illegally with 33 children following January’s massive earthquake was freed on Monday. Laura Silsby’s three-and-a-half months behind bars was deemed punishment enough for the “irregular travel” charges against her, her lawyer Shiller Roy said. Silsby was the leader of a group of 10 US Baptists stopped at the border with the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29 with the children who were purported to be orphans. Authorities later determined that all the children had parents, with whom they were eventually reunited.
■UNITED STATES
Bail denied on terror charge
A federal magistrate judge in Manhattan refused on Monday to grant bail to a former Brooklyn resident charged with conspiring to provide al-Qaeda with computer advice and other assistance, finding that the man was dangerous and might flee. The ruling came after prosecutors said Sabirhan Hasanoff, a dual citizen of the US and Australia, had sworn an oath of allegiance to al-Qaeda and conspired to provide the group with money and software for encrypted communications over the Internet. Hasanoff pleaded not guilty; if convicted, he could face a sentence of 15 years.
■UNITED STATES
Harvard faker charged
A Delaware man has been charged with faking his way into Harvard and duping the school out of US$45,000 in financial aid, grants and scholarships. Adam Wheeler, 23, was admitted to Harvard and became a student in 2007 after he falsely claimed he had earned a perfect academic record at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and had studied for a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, prosecutors said on Monday. Harvard started to look into Wheeler’s background after he sought the school’s endorsement for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships. A professor reviewing his application noticed similarities between Wheeler’s writing and that of a colleague, prosecutors said. Wheeler was indicted on 20 offenses, including larceny, identity fraud and pretending to hold a degree.
■UNITED STATES
Doomsday bunker for sale
A salesman with a doomsday plan is taking money for what he promises will one day be a comfortable, nuke-proof bunker in California’s Mojave Desert. Robert Vicino, who runs a company called Vivos, is already taking reservations for the bunker in Barstow. He says the underground structure will include an atrium, gym and jail. Experts say the demand for bunkers is growing because of strong earthquakes, terrorism and predictions that the world will end in 2012 when the ancient Mayan calendar ends. About US$50,000 will get you a spot in Vicino’s facility. He says half of the 132 spaces have been reserved.
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
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
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