MYANMAR
Golf tournament bombed
Two bombs exploded at a hotel golf course yesterday, wounding two people during a tournament to mark next week’s Armed Forces Day, a government official said. The first blast occurred at around 7am at the Regina Hotel golf course in Tachilek, near the border with northern Thailand, followed an hour a later by a second explosion, said the official, who did not want to be named. Two people were wounded by the second bomb and sent to hospital in Thailand, he said. “The second blast occurred while the security personnel were cleaning the area,” the official said. It was unclear whether the wounded were military personnel. Armed Forces Day on March 27 marks the day in 1945 when the army rose up against occupying Japanese forces.
PAKISTAN
Three soldiers ‘martyred’
At least three soldiers were killed after dozens of Taliban militants stormed a check post in the northwest tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said yesterday. The attack took place at a paramilitary check post in Khadizai area on the outskirts of Kalaya, the main town in the Orakzai district, a senior military officer said. “Three soldiers were martyred when Taliban armed with guns and rockets launched an attack overnight,” he said, adding that several dozen insurgents were involved in the raid. Another official said Pakistani security forces retaliated and killed more than 10 militants, but there was no independent confirmation of the toll. Khadizai is located in Upper Orakzai, most of which is in Taliban hands and is the scene of frequent clashes between security forces and Islamist militants while government troops are in control of its lower reaches.
EGYPT
Boy killed in soccer ban fight
A 13-year-old boy was shot dead when security forces clashed with fans protesting against a ban on the al-Masry soccer club over a deadly stadium riot in Port Said, state media said yesterday. The official al-Ahram newspaper also reported that 16 other fans were hurt, most of them suffering from tear gas inhalation, during the violence overnight. The protest was held after the Egyptian Football Association banned al-Masry from playing for two years and cancel matches at Port Said Stadium for three years, the newspaper reported. Three club officials are among 75 people facing trial over a riot inside the stadium that killed more than 70 fans at the end of a match between al-Masry and al-Ahly SC on Feb. 2.
GUATEMALA
Ex-police chief arrested
Former police chief Marlene Blanco was arrested on Friday for her alleged role in several extrajudicial killings in 2009, the government announced. Blanco and other suspects are accused of having belonged to a group that killed three people as part of a “social cleansing” operation, International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) spokesman Diego Alvarez said. Deputy Minister of the Interior Julio Rivera said Blanco, a former deputy interior minister herself, was arrested at her home on the outskirts of the capital by police and CICIG agents. Other government officials arrested in the case included former National Civil Police commissioner Edwin Nathaniel Chipix Notz and agents Wilder Valdez Lopez and Mardoqueo Lemus Lopez. The suspects allegedly were part of a group within the police and interior ministry who, “under the command of the former deputy minister, dedicated themselves to identifying and eliminating suspects in cases of extortion of businessmen in the transportation industry,” Alvarez said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Ex-banker’s assailant sought
Police said they are hunting a gunman after a former Russian banker was shot and left critically ill in an attempted assassination in east London. Officers said on Friday in a statement that German Gorbuntsov is in a “critical, but stable” condition after he suffered several gunshot wounds on Tuesday night outside an apartment block on the Isle of Dogs. Gorbuntsov’s lawyer Vadim Vedenin was quoted as telling Russia’s Kommersant newspaper that the former banker had recently supplied new information to an inquiry into an attempted 2009 slaying of another Russian banker.
VENEZUELA
Police force to be revamped
President Hugo Chavez’s government has announced plans to revamp a police force whose officers shot and killed the daughter of a Chilean diplomat. Minister of Interior and Justice Tarek El Aissami said the judicial police would be radically restructured, although he has not released details of the plan. He said the force’s officers committed serious errors that he called “unjustifiable.” In making the announcement on Friday, El Aissami did not refer directly to the shooting death of 19-year-old Karen Berendique on Friday last week by police at an unmarked police checkpoint in Maracaibo.
UNITED STATES
Clinton approves Egypt aid
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave the green light on Friday to resume US$1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt despite fears it is slipping in its avowed transition to democracy. The move also clears the way for US$250 million in economic aid this year.
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