CHINA
Ai told to shutter webcams
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) said he was pressured by authorities into closing the webcams filming him live at home, the Hong Kong-based newspaper Ming Pao reported on Thursday. Ai told the BBC recently that he set up four live webcams and the Web site “weiweicam.com” on Tuesday for people who are concerned about him after he was released in June last year, the Chinese-language daily said. In response to supporters who left Twitter messages showing concern for Ai, he said he did not close the site of his own volition on Wednesday, but that the webcams would not reopen.
CHINA
Six Uighurs on ‘terror’ list
The Ministry of Public Security has placed six Uighurs on a “terror” list, accusing them of involvement in terrorist training camps and of inciting attacks in Xinjiang. The ministry said the men, whose names identify them as Uighurs, were members of the outlawed East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), blaming one for orchestrating violent attacks in the city of Kashgar in July last year. It said in a statement late on Thursday it had frozen the funds and assets of the six men, whose whereabouts are not known.
NORTH KOREA
Kim visits anti-US unit
Leader Kim Jong-un has visited a naval unit credited with anti-US feats. The visit comes as Pyongyang prepares to launch a long-range rocket later this month despite US warnings. The North’s official media yesterday said that the unit visited by leader Kim sank the USS Baltimore during the 1950s Korean War. Military historians dispute that claim. The official media also credited the unit with capturing the USS Pueblo in 1968. That ship was seized while on a spying mission off the North’s coast. It is still displayed in Pyongyang.
AFGHANISTAN
Tanker blaze kills seven
Seven people were burnt to death yesterday when a fuel tanker supplying a NATO base crashed and set their vehicle on fire, officials said. Panjwayi District security chief Sardar Mohammad and Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq said there was no insurgent activity at the time, and residents later pulled back from claims that the Taliban had attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. “A fuel tanker supplying fuel for ISAF [the International Security Assistance Force] overturned and caught fire, and simultaneously a civilian minivan was passing nearby also set ablaze,” Mohammad said. Seven people were killed and three others who were injured were taken to hospital, he said.
PHILIPPINES
Three wounded in blasts
Two explosions rocked the island of Palawan on Thursday, leaving three residents injured, police said. The authorities said they did not know the motive of the late-afternoon attacks, which occurred during the peak tourist season outside a hotel in El Nido town and near a bus depot in Puerto Princesa. A hotel cook was injured in the El Nido blast, which occurred 10 minutes before the other explosion slightly injured a tricycle driver and a woman in Puerto Princesa, about 175km away, a police report said. “The type of explosives used were not yet determined as of this time,” according to a report by local police sent to the regional police headquarters in Mindoro. The El Nido blast struck a hotel called the Entalula Beach Resort. No tourists were reported hurt.
GUYANA
Suriname pardons president
Suriname’s president defended a new amnesty law that will end his murder trial, saying on Thursday it will let his South American country resolve lingering bitterness over its military dictatorship and civil war. “This is a new beginning,” Surinamese President Desi Bouterse said during a visit to neighboring Guyana. “This amnesty is intended to heal the whole nation, not just one part of it.” The amnesty will end the trial of Bouterse and 24 associates, who were charged with abducting and killing 15 prominent political opponents to his dictatorship in December 1982. The prime minister of the Netherlands, Suriname’s former colonial ruler, denounced the decision to grant amnesty to Bouterse and recalled the country’s ambassador in protest.
UNITED STATES
Vietnamese buys tiny town
The town of Buford, Wyoming — population 1 — was sold for US$900,000 to an unidentified buyer from Vietnam on Thursday after an 11-minute Internet auction that attracted worldwide interest. The tiny Western town garnered online viewers and bidders from 46 countries for the sale of 4 hectares with a convenience store, gas station and modular home located in southeastern Wyoming between Cheyenne and Laramie. The buyer, who wished to remain anonymous, flew to Wyoming from Vietnam for a purchase he likened to “the American dream,” according to a statement released by Williams & Williams, the Oklahoma auction house handling the sale. Don Sammons, long the town’s sole resident, moved with his wife, Terry, from Los Angeles to the Buford area in 1980. In 1992, six years after his wife died, Sammons purchased the town. Sammons decided to auction off the Interstate 80 hamlet, billed as “the nation’s smallest town,” to move to Colorado to be near his son.
UNITED STATES
Marine may be dismissed
A military board says a marine who criticized President Barack Obama on his Facebook page has committed misconduct and should be dismissed. The Marine Corps administrative board made the decision on Thursday after a daylong hearing at Camp Pendleton for Sargent Gary Stein. During the hearing, prosecutor Captain John Torresala said Stein superimposed images of Obama’s face on a poster for the movie Jackass. Torresala argued that Stein’s behavior repeatedly violated Pentagon policy that limits the free speech rights of service members and said he should be dismissed after ignoring warnings from his superiors about his postings. The board’s recommendations go to a general who will either accept or deny them. Stein’s lawyers argued he was expressing his personal views and exercising his First Amendment rights.
ARGENTINA
Official denounces probe
Vice President Amado Boudou on Thursday denounced a judge’s investigation into alleged influence peddling, blaming media “mafias” for the accusations against him. Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas is probing whether Boudou, as economy minister in 2010, used his influence to award a government contract to print money to a printing firm, Ciccone Calcografica, and rescue it from bankruptcy. On Wednesday, the judge ordered a raid on Boudou’s luxury apartment in Buenos Aires’ Puerto Madero neighborhood. Clarin and La Nacion newspapers reported that investigators found an expense report from Ciccone’s president during the raid, showing the two men had a business relationship, which Boudou has vigorously denied.
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