INDIA
French woman murdered
A French woman has been found murdered in a New Delhi guesthouse located in a rundown district popular with backpackers in the heart of the capital, police said on Saturday. New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said he could not immediately release the woman’s identity. The woman was aged between 25 and 30, the media reports said. The victim’s body was found in “a highly decomposed state” in the guest house in Paharganj, Bhagat said. It was found in a room that had been booked by a handicraft trader who has since disappeared, Bhagat said. The woman had checked into another hotel in the same district on March 30 and her visa was due to expire on April 10, the Hindu newspaper said.
CHINA
Bus crash kills 14, injures 11
State media say a bus veered off a highway and into a ditch in the northeast, killing 14 of the 25 people on board. Xinhua news agency said in a brief report yesterday that 11 people were hospitalized after the accident on Saturday afternoon in the coastal city of Dalian. Xinhua said the cause of the crash was being investigated.
CHINA
Turkish PM begins visit
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was leaving on Saturday for the first official visit to the country by a Turkish prime minister in 27 years, an aide from his office said. Erdogan will first make a stopover in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, the aide said on Saturday, speaking on condition of anonymity. A predominantly Muslim country, Turkey shares linguistic and religious links with the Uighur community, which has several associations here. Ankara accepts the country’s sovereignty over Xinjiang, but heavily criticized the 2009 violence in the region, denouncing what it described as “atrocities.” The aide said Erdogan would continue his tour with visits to Beijing and Shanghai.
PHILIPPINES
Romanian found dead
A Romanian university student has been found dead three days after he went missing while swimming at a popular waterfall in the north. Regional civil defense chief Olive Luces said the body of George Sfintes was found floating on Saturday in the pool of the Tappiya Falls in Ifugao province’s Banaue Township. The area is popular with tourists who hike on mountain trails with a famous view of rice terraces. Provincial police chief Laurence Mombael said the 22-year-old Sfintes was with 10 other Western and Japanese visitors. He studied at a Japanese university. He said Sfintes could have strayed too close to the base of the falls and may have drowned after he was sucked into the churning water.
PHILIPPINES
Businessman abducted
Police say suspected militants abducted a businessman in the south in the latest kidnapping by the group. Police Chief Inspector Randell Bueno says seven gunmen seized 62-year-old gas station owner Carlos Ty from his residence late on Saturday in Jolo township on Jolo Island, where the militant Abu Sayyaf group operates. He said the gunmen escaped on a vehicle similar to one used by Abu Sayyaf in previous kidnappings. Police are in pursuit of the gunmen in a mountainous area in Indanan township. Abu Sayyaf is notorious for kidnappings, beheadings and bombings and is on the US list of terrorist groups. The group is believed to be holding Australian, Malaysian, Japanese and Indian nationals in their jungle hideouts in the south.
UNITED KINGDOM
Chinese artifacts stolen
Two Chinese artifacts with an estimated combined value of £2 million (US$3.2 million) have been stolen from a museum, authorities said on Saturday. Two men and a woman from the West Midlands area have been arrested in connection with the Thursday night theft at Durham University’s Oriental Museum, but the items had not yet been recovered, police said. The northern England-based university confirmed that two “priceless” artifacts were stolen when thieves broke into a ground-floor gallery at the museum: a large jade bowl with a Chinese poem written inside that dates back to 1769, and a Dehua porcelain sculpture.
UNITED KINGDOM
Anonymous attacks site
The Home Office said on Saturday it was investigating reports that hacking group Anonymous had attacked its Web site over the government’s plans to boost Internet surveillance. Visitors to the ministry’s home page were greeted with a message saying the service was unavailable because of a high volume of traffic, after Twitter accounts purportedly linked to the hacking group called for it to be targeted. A message on the Anonymous Operations account on Twitter read: “TANGO DOWN — http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk For your draconian surveillance proposals! Told you to #ExpectUs!” The claim was repeated on the Anonymous UK account.
RUSSIA
Missing yacht makes contact
A Russian-Ukrainian sailing crew that went missing on a historic expedition around the South Pole is alive and made contact on Saturday as it battled through Antarctic ice with its fuel running low. The ambitious eight-strong team on the Scorpius yacht did not make contact earlier this week as gale-force winds slowed its progress. However, the captain said in an e-mail that the crew was in good health, the expedition’s spokeswoman Anna Subbotina said. “The ice conditions were very severe, and currently they are going toward the mainland because they are running out of fuel and other supplies,” she said. The 29m yacht was cut off from communication for several days after water damaged its satellite antennae during a storm on the way to Deception Island.
UNITED STATES
Seven hurt in ‘mishap’
Seven people were hospitalized with minor injuries after a British Chinook helicopter suffered a “mishap” on Saturday during a landing exercise in the Arizona desert, a military spokeswoman said. The crew was practicing how to land the aircraft 24km northeast of Yuma, Arizona, when “something went wrong,” said Michelle Dee, a spokeswoman for Naval Air Facility El Centro in California. The people aboard the Chinook had non-life-threatening injuries and were sent to the hospital for evaluations as a precaution, Dee said.
UNITED STATES
Newton released from jail
Authorities say Australian actor Matthew Newton has been released from a Miami jail following a weekend arrest. A Miami-Dade County jail official says the 35-year-old Newton was arrested on Friday evening on charges of resisting police and trespassing on property after a warning. He was released on Saturday evening on US$2,000 bond. In 2010, Australian Transformers actress Rachael Taylor took out a restraining order against then-boyfriend Newton, accusing him of violently assaulting her while the couple were in Rome. He was dropped as host of a new Australian talent series.
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