PAKISTAN
Gunmen kill eight Shiites
Police said gunmen riding on a motorcycle killed eight Shiite Muslims in a pair of sectarian attacks in the southwest of the country yesterday. Senior police officer Shaukat Ajmad said assailants opened fire on a car, killing six people in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan Province. Minutes later, they shot and killed two people in a rickshaw in the same area. Shiite Muslims are a minority in an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country. In recent years attacks against them have become increasingly common.
UNITED KINGDOM
Hacker gets jail time
A judge on Friday sentenced a computer hacker to two years and eight months in jail for breaking into the Web site of the country’s biggest abortion providers and stealing the personal details of thousands of women. James Jeffery, who claimed to be a member of hacking collective Anonymous, said he targeted the British Pregnancy Advice Service because he opposed the decisions of two women he knew to have abortions. Prosecutors said the 27-year-old defaced the site with the Anonymous logo and stole personal information on about 10,000 women. Jeffrey pleaded guilty to two charges under the Computer Misuse Act.
UNITED STATES
Drone attacks to continue
Officials said the White House had no intention of ending CIA drone strikes against militant targets on Pakistani soil. That could set the two countries up for more diplomatic tensions after Pakistan’s parliament unanimously approved new guidelines for the country’s troubled relationship with Washington. The guidelines allow for the blockade of NATO supplies to be lifted, but also demand a halt to CIA-led missile attacks. Officials said they would work to find common ground with Pakistan over the coming weeks, but if a suspected terrorist target came into the laser sights of a CIA drone’s hellfire missiles, they would take the shot. Pakistan had suggested transferring the drones to its control.
UNITED STATES
Man guilty on terror charges
An Albanian man living in New York has pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge after admitting he tried to go to Pakistan to join a radical jihadist group. Agron Hasbajrami entered the plea on Thursday in federal court. He faces up to 15 years in prison and has agreed to be deported. Authorities said he sent more than US$1,000 to support terrorist activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and communicated with someone in Pakistan who said he was a member of an armed group that had killed US soldiers. Hasbajrami was arrested at Kennedy Airport in September last year.
UNITED STATES
Texas drug gang nabbed
Members of a Texas-based drug-trafficking ring accused of shipping more than 500kg of marijuana to the island of St Croix were arrested on Thursday in the US Virgin Islands, authorities said. Among the 11 people arrested during early morning raids in was a local court officer, St Croix police chief Christopher Howell said. Six other people were arrested in the Dallas area last week. Authorities accused the group of mailing more than 100 parcels weighing anywhere from 2kg to 11kg to various addresses in St Croix over a period of almost three years. Authorities said they had documented about US$400,000 in alleged proceeds from drug sales, but said the total drugs shipped were likely worth much more.
UNITED STATES
Tuna in salmonella scare
A yellowfin tuna product used to make dishes like sushi and sashimi sold at restaurants and grocery stores has been linked to an outbreak of salmonella that has sickened more than 100 people in 20 states and the District of Columbia, the government said. The Food and Drug Administration reported Friday that 116 cases have been reported, including 12 people who have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported. Moon Marine USA Corp. of California, also known as MMI, is voluntarily recalling 26,683kg of frozen raw yellowfin tuna. It was labeled as Nakaochi Scrape AA or AAA when it was sold.
UNITED STATES
Soldier told to stay silent
A civilian attorney for the soldier charged in the shooting deaths of 17 Afghan villagers says his client will not participate in an army review aimed at determining his mental state. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales was expected to face what is called a “sanity board” examination of whether he is competent to stand trial and of his mental state at the time of the March 11 pre-dawn massacre in two southern Afghanistan villages. His Seattle attorney, John Henry Browne, says he instructed Bales to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent because the Army will not allow Bales to have an attorney at the sanity board review and will not allow the examination to be recorded.
UNITED STATES
Drug baron gets 22 years
The leader of a Mexican drug cartel was sentenced on Friday to more than 22 years in prison by a federal judge in Colorado, who said the kingpin’s criminal enterprise sold US$1 billion worth of cocaine in eight US states. Oscar Arriola, 43, was “a clear and present danger to this country and its citizens,” US District Judge Robert Blackburn said. The cartel distributed cocaine in 2002 and 2003 in New York, Illinois, Georgia and five other states from a storage center at a Colorado ranch, before an anonymous tip led to an investigation, the US Drug Enforcement Administration said. Arriola and his brother, Miguel, were among 29 people indicted in 2003 in federal court in Denver. Oscar Arriola was arrested in Mexico in 2006 and extradited to the US in 2010.
UNITED STATES
Women admit abducting man
Two Kentucky women have pleaded guilty to helping kidnap and assault a gay man in the first convictions using a section of the federal hate crime law that protects against attacks motivated by sexual orientation. The US Attorney’s Office in Lexington said Mable Ashley Jenkins and Alexis LeeAnn Jenkins entered guilty pleas to aiding and abetting the kidnapping and hate crime assault of a man in April last year at a mountaintop Appalachian park in southeastern Kentucky.
UNITED STATES
Burglar caught in shower
Police say a naked burglar has been arrested while taking a shower after he sipped champagne and ate a meal in a Southern California family’s home. San Bernardino County sheriff’s Sergeant Steve Wilson says 25-year-old Michael Calvert was arrested at gunpoint by deputies while he lathered up in the shower on Thursday night. KCDZ radio says that after helping himself to a bottle of champagne and a meal, Calvert decided to take a shower in the Joshua Tree home. The Mojave Desert community is 210km east of downtown Los Angeles. The homeowners called police after returning home at 8:10pm and hearing someone in the shower.
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