CANADA
Former prisoner barred
A former Guantanamo prisoner, who was released without being charged in 2005, was denied boarding on an Air Canada plane from London to Toronto for allegedly posing a security risk, his lawyer said on Saturday. Moazzam Begg, a British human rights activist, was scheduled to speak at a conference on Islamophobia in a Toronto suburb at the invitation of his attorney Dennis Edney, who also currently provides legal counsel to Omar Khadr, a Canadian held at the US naval base of Guantanamo, Cuba. Shortly before embarking on the flight on Friday, airline authorities told Begg that the Canadian High Commission in London refused to allow him to fly because “the plane could be rerouted to the United States.”
CANADA
Potholed cyclist awarded
A cyclist who was seriously injured after falling into a pothole in 2003 will receive almost a US$205,000 check from the city of Montreal, La Presse newspaper reported on Saturday. The woman, Marnie Scanlan, fractured her left shoulder during the fall. Part of her left arm remains incapacitated. Scanlan, a personal trainer for more than three decades, had to change her profession to become a Pilates instructor. On the day of her fall, Scanland said she was biking to a client’s home down a street on a 10-degree slope without pedaling, hands on the breaks, at about 15kph.
UNITED STATES
Moon rock thief arrested
Authorities in southern California have detained a woman accused of trying to sell a moon rock for US$1.7 million. The Riverside County sheriff’s department says the woman was detained on Thursday during an undercover meeting at a Lake Elsinore restaurant where she showed the rock for an undercover NASA investigator. A call to NASA’s Office of Inspector-General was not immediately returned on Friday. Washington considers moon rocks national treasures that cannot be sold. Authorities say NASA had been investigating the case for several months. Authorities haven’t released the identity of the woman or details on how she obtained the rock.
GUATEMALA
Zetas gangsters arrested
Three alleged members of the Zetas drug gang were arrested on Saturday on suspicion of involvement in the killing of 27 farm workers a week ago near the northern border with Mexico. The arrests were made in the city of Quetzaltenango, about 200km west of the capital, police said, with the alleged members identified as 32-year-old Jose Arturo Godoy Artola, Cristofer Jose Cardona Chen, 20, and an unnamed minor. As part of the probe into the brutal killings — 26 of them by beheading — police earlier this week said they had already arrested two suspects in Peten department and detained another suspected Zetas leader in nearby Alta Verapaz.
MEXICO
Ciudad Juarez awarded title
Lawmakers in Chihuahua State on Saturday awarded the drug cartel-plagued border city the title of “Heroic” Ciudad Juarez to honor its role in the 1910 Mexican Revolution. President Felipe Calderon attended a commemoration ceremony at a cultural center and used the occasion to highlight a decrease in crime in the city, which has been one of the world’s most violent cities in recent years. Homicides have fallen 60 percent, to about four daily last month from 11 daily last October.
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