AFGHANISTAN
Soldier in hearing on suicide
A US soldier charged with abuse that led to the suicide of a 19-year-old fellow soldier faced a preliminary hearing yesterday on a base in the country, the military said. Specialist Ryan Offutt is charged with offenses including maltreatment, involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide in the death of Private Danny Chen, the military statement said. Offutt is one of eight infantrymen charged in connection with Chen’s suicide. Chen shot himself in a guardhouse on Oct. 3 last year after what investigators say were weeks of racial slurs and physical abuse.
PHILIPPINES
Magnitude 5.7 quake strikes
A moderate earthquake roused people from sleep, but caused no injuries or damage in the north early yesterday, officials said. The US Geological Survey (USGS) reported that the magnitude 5.7 earthquake hit the Babuyan Islands region off the country’s mountainous north. Officials in the country placed its magnitude at 5.5. The quake’s center, at a depth of 22.4km, was about 511km north of Manila, the USGS said. Benito Ramos, who heads the government’s Office of Civil Defense, said the quake woke some people up, but did not cause any injuries or damage.
PHILIPPINES
Summit called on disputes
The country has urged ASEAN to hold a summit of China and five other Asian claimants to try to resolve long-simmering territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said yesterday he asked his ASEAN counterparts during an annual meeting in Cambodia last week to back the country’s call for the 10-member bloc to organize such a summit “as soon as possible.” Manila is ready to host the unprecedented meeting, he said.
SOUTH KOREA
North denies punishments
North Korea on Saturday angrily hit back at allegations that citizens who failed to appear sincere in the mourning of the North’s late leader Kim Jong-il were being rounded up and sentenced to hard labor. Some media outlets in the South have claimed North Koreans who did not participate in organized public mourning, failed to cry or did not appear genuine, have been sentenced to at least six months in labor camps. However, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said such “misinformation” touched off “towering resentment” among North Koreans, denouncing those who spread the allegations as “pitiable human scum.”
CAMBODIA
French deaths probed
Police were yesterday investigating how five bodies, thought to be those of a Frenchman and his four children who went missing last year, ended up in a car dumped in a pond behind the French family’s home. Laurent Vallier, 42, and his children aged between two and nine disappeared from their home in Kompong Speu Province near the capital, Phnom Penh, in September and the French embassy said it had alerted authorities in November that they were missing. The embassy said in a statement it had been informed of the discovery of the remains, but that, “because of the state of the corpses, it is impossible to confirm that these are the bodies of Monsieur Vallier and his children.” Police said one skull had been found inside an open suitcase, having apparently floated in there after the car was submerged. Relatives of Vallier’s Cambodian wife, who died during childbirth, held a religious ceremony for the dead yesterday.
MEXICO
Women held for trafficking
Investigators say four women are being held in the city of Guadalajara in connection with an apparent child-trafficking ring that aimed to supply babies to childless Irish couples. The Jalisco State prosecutor’s office said a 21-year-old woman had been arrested after a relative reported that she was “renting out” one of her children. The woman said she had been paid to give the child to a group of three women who needed baby pictures for legitimate advertising purposes. Investigators found the other three women were taking the child and several others to a hotel where Irish couples believed they were going to adopt them.
UNITED STATES
Escaped detainee surrenders
A man who stole a police car after having his hands handcuffed behind his back turned himself in to state troopers in Indiana after two days on the run. William Blankenship, 22, surrendered on Thursday evening after meeting with two state troopers at his family home in Knox, police said. Blankenship was pulled over for speeding on Tuesday, handcuffed and put in the back seat of a police car after an officer reported seeing drug paraphernalia in his car, authorities said. As the officer checked the suspect’s car, Blankenship drove off with the police car, which was found on Wednesday in a pond.
ARGENTINA
Woman hit by cat
An elderly woman was left fighting for her life on Saturday after a cat thrown out of a fourth-floor apartment during a heated argument landed on her head, local media reported. The incident occurred in the Belgrano neighborhood of Buenos Aires when, during the dispute, a man grabbed the family cat and threw it at his wife. She managed to dodge the feline, which then sailed through an open window plunging toward the ground and striking the woman, an 85-year-old neighbor. Police said the victim suffered a fractured skull and was rushed to hospital, where she had to be connected to a ventilator.
UNITED KINGDOM
Kate Bush stalker deported
Police say a man was arrested close to the home of singer Kate Bush, amid media reports that a fan broke into her home and attempted to propose marriage. Devon and Cornwall police confirmed on Saturday that a 32-year-old man was detained on Dec. 26 and later deported, following a report of damaged property at Bush’s home in Devon. The Daily Mail newspaper reported that the man was Frank Tufaro, from New York, who had flown to Britain with a US$4,500 Tiffany engagement ring. The newspaper said the singer was not at home at the time of the incident.
UNITED KINGDOM
ATM heist falls short
Thieves spent six months digging a tunnel to steal money from an automatic teller (ATM) machine — but probably only got away with £6,000, officials said on Saturday. The gang dug the 30m long tunnel under a car park and part of a video shop in Manchester, in order to raid the cash machine inside the building, police said. They installed lighting and roof supports, and were also believed to have drilled tiny holes into the floor of the store through which they poked telescopic cameras to check their progress. “In all my years of service, I have never seen anything quite as elaborate as this,” Detective Ian Shore said. However, a source at the store said there was only just over £6,000 in the machine.
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