■CHINA
Aftershock shakes Jiegu
State media reported a moderate aftershock struck the site of a deadly earthquake last month. Officials say there have been no reports of casualties. The Xinhua news agency said the aftershock registered magnitude 5.7 and shook Jiegu town in Qinghai. The US Geological Survey measured the quake at 5.4 and said it struck at a depth of 50.7km. The remote and mountainous town was the area hardest hit by an earthquake on April 14 that killed more than 2,000 people.
■THAILAND
Officials lift curfew
Authorities lifted a curfew imposed 10 days earlier in Bangkok and 23 provinces after deadly anti-government protests, the prime minister said yesterday. “The curfew will be lifted but the state of emergency will remain in place,” Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters. He said security officials had proposed ending the measure “as the situation is under control.” The curfew was imposed on May 19 after protesters went on the rampage following an army crackdown..
■SRI LANKA
Reconciliation begins
Top US and Sri Lankan diplomats on Friday brushed off calls for an independent international investigation into atrocities committed during the civil war. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US instead supports a new reconciliation commission meant to soothe anger over the war that ended last year in a government victory. She told reporters after meeting with Foreign Minister Gamini Peiris at the State Department that the commission should investigate allegations of violations, make public its recommendations and protect witnesses called in to testify. Peiris said his country might talk with UN officials “along the road, if we feel that there is a need for support,” but he urged countries to support the local commission. “Our plea is that we be given the space to allow the commission to begin its work without impediment,” he said.
■VIETNAM
Policeman detained
A policeman has been detained after a boy died during a protest over “unfair” prices for land at the site of a planned oil refinery in the north, state-run media said yesterday. “Police are considering criminal charges following a demonstration at the construction site of the Nghi Son refinery that resulted in the death of a 12-year-old boy,” the Vietnam News English language daily said. Referring to a police report, Vietnam News said that when trouble broke out “In an attempt to disperse the crowd, Nguyen Manh Thu, a policeman ... shot his pistol into the air ... Thu said that his pistol was then snatched, causing it to go off, wounding three, including Le Xuan Dung, 12, who later died in the district hospital,” it said.
■AUSTRALIA
Hendra victims treated
A 12-year-old girl and her mother are the first people to try an experimental treatment for a deadly virus after the girl’s horse died from the infection, researchers said on Friday. The Hendra virus emerged in Australia in the 1990s and kills up to 75 percent of people infected. Christopher Broder of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues sent the treatment, an engineered version of a human immune system protein, to the girl after hearing about the viral outbreak. The girl and her mother took the treatment on Thursday.
■NIGERIA
First lady wins motorbike
It appears as though President Goodluck Jonathan’s luck might have rubbed off on his wife. A spokesman for Union Bank says first lady Patience Jonathan has won a motorcycle in a drawing the bank held for its customers. Officials have informed the first lady that she won and invited her to claim the motorcycle, known throughout the nation as an okada. Chance has played a large part in putting Jonathan into the presidency of the oil-rich nation. Jonathan formally assumed office after the May 5 death of the elected president.
■GAZA
Israel ‘the obstacle’: Hamas
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said on Friday his Palestinian group had no problem with the US, but called Israel “the obstacle” to peace in the Middle East. “We don’t have a problem whatsoever with the United States or with American interests,” Khaled Meshaal told PBS television in an interview. “America is a great state, a superpower, but its interest should not be at the expense of the interests of others and the peoples in the region.” Israel was “the obstacle on the face of peace in the region,” he said, urging the administration of Barack Obama to “deal with this reality” rather than pressuring the Palestinians. US support for Israel “complicates matters,” the Hamas leader added. “If America wants democracy and human rights, it has to give the same rights to the people in the region,” he said.
■IRAQ
Bank heist nets US$5.6m
Robbers broke into a branch of state-owned Rafidain bank with the help of a guard and stole US$5.6 million near the holy Shiite city of Najaf, a local official said on Friday. The theft is the second major heist in the nation this week, coming just two days after masked gunmen swooped on jewelers in Baghdad in a brazen rampage that left eight dead, including a policeman. “A gang robbed the bank late on Thursday night and took 6.5 billion Iraqi dinars [US$5.6 million],” said Luay Yassiri, the head of Najaf provincial council’s security committee. “The first indications of the investigation confirm that one of the guards put sleep-inducing drugs into the other guards’ tea and let the gang in.” The bank was apparently holding a large amount of cash to pay salaries at the end of the month.
■IRAN
Pipeline deal finalized
Pakistan and Iran have finalized a deal for the construction of a much-delayed pipeline to pump Iranian natural gas to the energy-starved South Asian country, the Pakistan petroleum ministry said. The US$7.6 billion project is crucial for Pakistan to avert a growing energy crisis already causing severe electricity shortages in the country of about 170 million. Pakistan said the first gas is scheduled to flow by the end of 2014 and expects its total cost on the project to be US$1.65 billion, funded through private and state capital.
■RUSSIA
Three killed in Dagestan
Security forces in Dagestan, bordering Chechnya, killed three rebels in a gunfight following a vehicle check, police said, the Interfax agency reported yesterday. The incident happened on Friday evening near the village of Bata-Yurt, a local police chief told the news agency. The rebels opened fire after police stopped their vehicle to check their papers, Interfax reported. Authorities in the volatile North Caucasus region, which includes Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya, are battling an Islamist insurgency.
■UNITED STATES
Fizz-powered car launched
The guys from Maine who became online celebrities by creating geysers from Mentos candies and Diet Coke say they have now harnessed that power to create a “rocket car.” The contraption created by Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz of Buckfield features a utility trailer on the back and a modified girl’s bike at the front. They offer a teaser of the invention on their Web site. The full video directed by Rob Cohen of The Fast and the Furious will debut online on Tuesday. Grobe told the Sun Journal newspaper that their latest invention uses Coke Zero and has been dubbed “The Fizzy and the Furious.” The two, dressed in lab coats and goggles, became Internet celebrities four years ago with their “experiments” that created geysers by dropping Mentos candies into bottles of Diet Coke.
■CANADA
Bilateral debt canceled
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced plans to cancel all of the Republic of Congo’s remaining bilateral debt, a sum of nearly US$24 million, on Friday. The decision is part of an ongoing debt forgiveness program, which has so far cancelled almost US$1 billion in loans borrowed by some of the poorest and most indebted countries in the world. “Canada’s debt relief program continues to support nations that have demonstrated a commitment to invest in the current needs of their citizens, even as they struggle with the debt burdens of their past,” Flaherty said. “Today’s debt relief announcement will free up more resources that can be better invested in the health and education of the Republic of Congo’s citizens.” He also announced on Friday that debt repayments would no longer be collected from the Ivory Coast, in recognition of the nation’s economic reform efforts, a first step towards outright debt cancellation.
■BRAZIL
Lotto fight turns deadly
The winner of a US$16 million lottery jackpot in Brazil escaped his own father’s plot to kill him after police caught two contract killers supposedly hired to carry out his murder, local media reported on Friday. Police informed Fabio de Barros of the plan by his father, Francisco, to have him killed in order to keep the winnings the two had fought over since Fabio won the prize in 2006, O Globo TV and Agencia Estado reported. A legal battle began after Francisco, 60, refused to hand over the winnings Fabio deposited in his account. They had not spoken for about three years, Fabio’s lawyer said. Francisco was arrested in Cuiaba on Wednesday. Agencia Estado said police learned of the murder plot while monitoring the phone conversations of the two men accused of working as guns-for-hire.
■CANADA
ATM robbers squirt feces
Toronto police warned that a gang of robbers are squirting people with feces at cash machines to distract them before stealing their money. Constable Tony Vella said on Friday that the robbers are using plastic bottles to squirt the victims as they make cash withdrawals. The offenders then help them clean the feces off their clothing and in the process steal their money. Vella says there have been four such robberies in downtown Toronto in the last week. He says groups of at least four suspects are usually involved. One person squirts the victim’s clothing, another points out the offending spot, a third tries to remove it and the fourth person grabs the cash.
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