AFGHANISTAN
Gunmen kill tourists
Police say militants have killed a German tourist and an Afghan civilian in a relatively stable area in the center of the country. Deputy provincial police chief Abdul Rashid Bashir said the German man was riding in a vehicle with three Afghans when they were ambushed late on Saturday afternoon by two armed gunmen on a motorbike in Dawlat Yar District of Ghor Province. After a small argument, the gunmen fatally shot the German and an Afghan man. The two other civilians were wounded in the attack. Bashir says the group had traveled from Herat Province in the west and was heading to Bamiyan Province.
CHINA
Land sales probe promised
Officials promised an investigation into land sales to defuse days of large, sometimes violent protests by villagers in the south who say they are being pushed off farmland for property development, state media and villagers said yesterday. Government officials struck a compromise with leaders from Wukan village on Saturday, promising a full investigation of all land sales if locals would halt the protests, according to a report in the official Southern Daily posted late on Saturday on the Web site of Shanwei city, which oversees Wukan. The strategy appeared to work. While villagers gathered to protest for a fourth day on Saturday as negotiations took place, no one congregated to do so as of midday yesterday, villagers contacted by telephone said. However, locals said they remain angry and expect the government investigation to expose what they say is an unfair transfer of farmland to build factories. “We want our land returned to us,” said a woman who took part in the protests and would only give her surname, Yang.
UNITED STATES
Head of gang chapter killed
Police say the head of a California chapter of the Hells Angels was killed in a gun battle between two rival motorcycle gangs at a Nevada hotel-casino. Sparks deputy police chief Brian Allen said Jeffrey Pettigrew died late on Friday in the shootout with members of the Vagos club at John Ascuaga’s Nugget. Two Vagos members were hospitalized and were in a stable condition. Pettigrew was in charge of the Hells Angels’ chapter in San Jose. The town of Sparks is on edge amid fears of retaliation. Sparks Mayor Geno Martini says a drive-by shooting just hours after the fatal gunfight was apparently such an attack. Martini has declared a state of emergency to help speed up state assistance if backup law enforcement is needed.
CUBA
‘Ladies in White’ heckled
About 300 activists backing the nation’s communist government shouted down 35 relatives of political prisoners, some of whom were roughed up, a journalist witnessed on Saturday. A crowd of university students and members of the Union of Communist Youth massed outside the Havana home of “Ladies in White” leader Laura Pollan and blocked group members from marching to attend mass nearby. The Ladies in White, mainly the wives and mothers of political prisoners, won the European Parliament’s Sakharov prize in 2005. The women were targeted for more than three hours with shouts and insults. “These are the same people as ever,” Pollan told reporters. “They are not the ‘enraged Cuban people’ [as the government calls the pro-regime activists] — they are not spontaneous. They are brought in here.”
MEXICO
Journalist found decapitated
The decapitated body of a female journalist was found on Saturday in the northeast of the country near the US border, along with a message attributed to an organized crime gang, state prosecutors said. The victim found in the city of Nuevo Laredo was identified as Maria Elizabeth Macias, the 39-year-old chief editor of the newspaper Primera Hora, prosecutors in Tamaulipas state said in a statement. Next to the body was a note “attributed to a criminal group,” the statement said, without offering further details. Two weeks ago, the half-naked bloodstained bodies of a man and a woman were found hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, along with messages threatening those who report drug violence on social networks.
EGYPT
Banned journalist deported
The country deported a French journalist on Saturday who had been placed on a banned list for allegedly insulting the country, security sources said. They identified the journalist as Marie Edmee Josette Duboc and said she was held at Cairo’s airport terminal after flying in from Paris on Friday evening when officials found her name on a list of people banned from entering the country. “The journalist had deliberately tried to discredit Egypt,” one security source said without giving any further details. “Thus, she had been put on the list of those banned from entry.”
PERU
Rifle assembly plant opens
The army has opened a plant to assemble Galil assault rifles for export, particularly in Latin America, the Defense Ministry said on Saturday. “The weapons and munitions factory will be able to assemble 2,000 Galil ACE [assault rifles] a month for the international defense market,” a statement 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