UNITED KINGDOM
Wildfires follow dry spell
A fire was raging on Ogden moor, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, for a fifth day yesterday. It was one of many heathland fires raging across parts of the Scottish Highlands, Ireland, northern England, and Berkshire after the record-breaking dry spell of last month, with flames fanned by high winds over the holiday weekend. Six people and a dog were airlifted by helicopter in the Torridon mountains on Tuesday. The Environment Agency fears the continuing dry weather could have an adverse impact on wildlife, including fish and plants in and around rivers and lakes where water levels are low.
UNITED KINGDOM
Vendor was killed: inquest
Newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, who died on the fringes of a G20 protest in London in April 2009, was illegally killed, an inquest jury ruled on Tuesday, potentially reopening a case which has crystallized concerns over how police manage violent demonstrations. Tomlinson was shoved to the ground by Police Constable Simon Harwood as he tried to find his way out of the cordon thrown up to contain protests. He collapsed and died moments afterward, and, even though he wasn’t a protester, his case became a cause celebre for those who alleged that police brutalized demonstrators. Officials initially ruled out pursuing a case against Harwood, saying that the conflicting accounts of how Tomlinson died meant that a successful prosecution was unlikely. The Crown Prosecution Service said it would now review the case.
INDIA
US teen guilty in murder
A teenage boy from Pennsylvania has been convicted of murdering his mother by slitting her throat during a holiday in Rajasthan in August last year. The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced on Monday to three years in an Indian juvenile detention center for killing Cynthia Iannarelli, 51. He attacked her with a knife, wrapped her body in a sheet and left it on a sand dune before being arrested when trying to board a flight back to the US, a court in the city of Jodhpur heard. Reports from the Reggies Camel Camp resort in Osian said the boy had been demanding that his mother, a business consultant, get back together with his father, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. The teen’s lawyers said he would challenge the verdict.
NORTH KOREA
Japanese held over drugs
Pyongyang said yesterday it was holding two Japanese on charges related to drug trafficking and the use of counterfeit currency in its free-trade zone, and had expelled a third. The three were detained in March and had admitted their criminal actions, the official Korean Central News Agency said without explaining why one was deported. The three had entered the free-trade zone to work for Japanese firms, the agency said. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported last month the trio were detained on charges that they hid drugs in canned goods to be exported to China.
SAMOA
Government mulls time shift
The government is reportedly considering switching timezones so the island nation falls to the west of the international dateline. Samoa sits to the east of the international dateline — which runs through the middle of the Pacific — meaning that it is 11 hours behind GMT and is one of the last places on Earth to see out the day. The time difference puts it 21 hours behind eastern Australia and 23 behind New Zealand, its two major trading partners.
MEXICO
Mine blast kills three
Rescue workers dug three bodies out of a coal mine in the northern part of the country and scrambled early yesterday to reach 11 other miners still missing after a suspected gas explosion caused a cave-in. A teenager who was working outside the mine, but was caught in the blast, had to have both his arms amputated, investigators said. Labor Minister Javier Lozano said the death toll from the accident could rise, in a message on the micro-blogging website Twitter late on Tuesday in which he confirmed the three deaths. “The prognosis is not encouraging,” he said. Rescuers had been racing against the clock to dig out the miners after an explosion at 8am on Tuesday left them trapped about 50m underground on the site in the state of Coahuila, near the US border.
AUSTRIA
Court rules against abductee
A lawyer said authorities have rejected a compensation claim from a woman who was held captive for eight-and-a-half-years by a man who tormented her both physically and verbally and locked her in a dungeon. Natascha Kampusch was snatched off a Vienna street when she was 10 and held prisoner until she fled in August 2006. Her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide within hours of her escape. Kampusch and others claim authorities didn’t properly handle the probe into her disappearance. In an account of her captivity published last year, Kampusch said she was repeatedly beaten, starved and forced to do housework half-naked at the mercy of a paranoid man, who admired Hitler and wanted her to call him “maestro” and “my lord.”
PARAGUAY
Six escape in jailbreak
A group of heavily armed men broke into a maximum security prison and liberated six prisoners, all alleged members of a major Brazilian drug cartel, police said on Tuesday. Two prison guards and four women, who were visiting inmates at the time of the breakout, all believed to be accomplices, were detained for questioning, police said. The breakout took place on Tuesday morning at the Pedro Juan Caballero prison, located 550km north-east of Asuncion, on the border with Brazil. The region is considered the main pathway for marijuana and cocaine heading to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s most populous cities.
UNITED STATES
Retailer sued for spying
A couple has filed a class action lawsuit against retailer Aaron’s, alleging it spied on them through a Web cam installed on a rent-to-own laptop in violation of privacy laws. Brian and Crystal Byrd of Wyoming said the computer was mistakenly listed in default in December last year, two months after they claim to have paid it off, when an Aaron’s representative came to their home. The couple alleges that while trying to reclaim the computer, the representative showed them a Web cam image of Brian Byrd using the laptop, according to a statement by their lawyers on Monday.
UNITED STATES
Police tase nude runner
A marathon runner who stripped during a race stunned authorities, who returned the favor, giving him a jolt with a Taser, local media reported on Tuesday. Brett Henderson, 35, was arrested for “public indecency” during the Flying Pig Marathon on Sunday, the Cincinnati Inquirer wrote. When police saw that Henderson was missing his shorts, they ordered him into their car, but he kept running, leading them to break out the Taser and subdue him, the report said.
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