VIETNAM
Priest beaten over site plan
A Catholic priest was beaten unconscious by a group of “thugs” following the destruction of a house he intended to turn into an orphanage, the church said in a statement. The Reverent Nguyen Van Binh had built the house on a piece of land he purchased near his church in Chuong My District outside Hanoi, the Office of the Hanoi Archdiocese said in a statement posted on its Web site. It said Binh, who wanted to turn the site into an orphanage, visited the house last weekend and found it had been destroyed and was then attacked and knocked unconscious by a group of men at the site.
CHINA
Dam forces more moves
Another 100,000 people may have to move away from the Three Gorges Dam because of the risk of disastrous landslides and bank collapses around the reservoir of the world’s biggest hydroelectric facility, state media said yesterday. The number of landslides and other disasters has increased 70 percent since the water level in the US$23 billion showcase project rose to its maximum level in 2010, Liu Yuan, an official with the Ministry of Land Resources, was quoted as telling China National Radio. Surging waves from such events also pose a threat to shipping, said the report, which was posted on a government Web site and carried by the Shanghai Daily newspaper.
MALDIVES
Early election called
The president announced yesterday that he would call for an early presidential election amid opposition demands following a contentious power transfer earlier this year. President Mohammed Waheed Hassan said the election would be held in July next year, the earliest permitted by the constitution, according to a statement from his office. The vote was originally scheduled for late next year. Hassan took over in February when his predecessor, Mohamed Nasheed, resigned after weeks of public protests and eroding support from the police and military. Nasheed claimed he was forced to resign at gunpoint and challenged Hassan to order early elections.
JAPAN
Baldness study fuels hope
Researchers have successfully grown hair on hairless mice by implanting follicles created from stem cells, they announced yesterday, sparking new hopes of a cure for baldness. Led by professor Takashi Tsuji from Tokyo University of Science, the team bioengineered hair follicles and transplanted them into the skin of hairless mice. The creatures eventually grew hair, which continued regenerating in normal growth cycles after old hairs fell out. When stem cells are grown into tissues or organs, they usually need to be extracted from embryos, but Tsuji and his researchers found hair follicles can be grown with adult stem cells, the study said.
SINGAPORE
Metro breaks down again
Disruptions paralyzed a new multibillion-dollar line on the city-state’s metro yesterday, the third straight day of rush-hour delays on the gleaming train system. The problems as commuters rushed to work lasted two hours and affected eight stations on the new 36km section of the metro, including stops that opened only six months ago. It came two days after the start of public hearings focusing on a massive disruption in December last year affecting 127,000 commuters, some stranded for hours underground in the worst breakdown since the metro was inaugurated in 1987.
UNITED KINGDOM
Libyans sue Jack Straw
Two Libyans who claim Britain’s complicity in their torture by the regime of former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi are taking legal action against former foreign secretary Jack Straw, their lawyers said yesterday. Abdelhakim Belhaj, who became Tripoli’s military commander after Qaddafi was ousted last year, and fellow Qaddafi opponent Sami al-Saadi claim British involvement in their illegal rendition in 2004. Their lawyers said legal papers have been served on Straw following media reports that he approved the men’s capture and transfer to Libya. Straw told the BBC he was unable to comment on the case because of an ongoing police investigation.
UNITED KINGDOM
No bounty for Obama
A politician on Tuesday denied offering a £10 million (US$16 million) reward for the capture of US President Barack Obama, an allegation reported then later retracted by Pakistan’s Express Tribune newspaper. Nazir Ahmed, a member of parliament’s upper chamber and the Labour Party, said he was deliberately misquoted during a recent speech in an effort by political enemies in Pakistan to discredit him. “I never mentioned Obama and I never mentioned a bounty. I do not support terrorism and would never urge anybody to attack someone or capture someone,” said Ahmed, who was suspended by the Labour Party pending an investigation.
UNITED KINGDOM
Theft in parliament
Four barrels of beer, a bottle of champagne and a bicycle repair kit have been reported stolen from parliament in recent months, official records showed on Tuesday. A flower arrangement, two iPads, a passport and a printer were also among 36 reported thefts from June up to March 22, the House of Commons Commission said. The thieves’ haul was revealed following a question by MP Keith Vaz, who chairs the lower House of Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee scrutiny body. Vaz had a laptop and iPad stolen from his Westminster office last year.
GERMANY
DJ sues ‘sex mad’ woman
A Munich disc jockey held for five hours as a “sex slave” said on Monday he would press charges of sexual coercion and deprivation of freedom against a 47-year-old woman he had met just a few hours earlier in a pub. “She was sex mad and there was no way out of the [woman’s] flat,” Dieter S, 43, told T.Z. newspaper. He told the daily that he had consensual sex with the woman three times earlier that day on Easter Monday. However, when he wanted to leave, he discovered she had locked the doors from the inside and hidden the key so he could not leave. “I realized I was trapped and had to keep going until she fell asleep,” Dieter said. “So we had sex five more times.” When the woman fell asleep, he placed an emergency call to police. The woman unlocked the door to let the authorities in. She then “tried to persuade the police officers to join her in ‘related activities’ — albeit unsuccessfully,” Munich police wrote in a press release.
NIGERIA
US warns of bombing
The US embassy yesterday issued an emergency warning to its citizens that a radical Islamist sect may be planning attacks on hotels in Abuja. The embassy said it “has received information that Boko Haram may be planning attacks in Abuja, Nigeria, including against hotels frequently visited by Westerners.” The warning said the US had no further information and that the Nigerian government was aware of the threat.
UNITED STATES
No need for strip search
Port of Portland police say a 49-year-old man stripped naked at Portland International Airport as a protest against airport security screeners. The incident report said John Brennan’s actions on Tuesday evening caused some passengers to cover their eyes and their children’s eyes while others looked, laughed and took photos. Two screening lanes were temporarily closed. Police say the Portland man was arrested for investigation of indecent exposure and disorderly conduct. He later told authorities he flies often and “disrobed as a form of protest against TSA [Transportation Security Administration] screeners he felt were harassing him.” He missed his flight to San Jose, California.
MEXICO
Fourteen corpses found
Authorities have found 14 dismembered bodies near the US border, an official said, the latest grisly remains from drug violence that has killed tens of thousands since 2006. “These 14 bodies were apparently left in a van in the early hours of the morning with a message directed at an organized crime group,” the official in the Tamaulipas State Government said on condition of anonymity. The official did not provide further details about the message or who might have been behind the attack.
UNITED STATES
Prisoner sues over foreskin
A prison inmate is suing the hospital where he was circumcised as a newborn, saying he only recently became aware that he’d undergone the procedure and that it robbed him of his sexual prowess. Dean Cochrun, 28, is asking for US$1,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. He also asks in the lawsuit that his foreskin be restored “in the hopes I could feel whole again,” though he acknowledged that he did not expect such a restoration to be anything more than aesthetic. Cochrun, who is imprisoned on a kidnapping conviction, filed the federal lawsuit on Friday against Sanford Hospital. Cochrun claims that an “unknown doctor” misled his mother to believe that the procedure was medically necessary. Cochrun argues that the procedure was unnecessary, unethical and without medical benefit.
UNITED STATES
Cash laundered via toys
Five people were arrested on Monday in a money laundering scheme that allegedly funneled millions of dollars in Colombian and Mexican drug profits through a US toy company, federal officials said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the two owners of California-based Woody Toys, Zhou Jia-hui and Li Dan-xin, and three company employees were arrested on charges of evading federal reporting requirements for financial transactions. Two toy dealers from Mexico were arrested on similar charges. Zhou and the two toy dealers are also charged with conspiring to launder money in a scheme that officials said channeled at least US$6 million to the toy company between 2005 and last year.
YEMEN
Saudis refuse to do deal
Saudi Arabia rejected any negotiations with al-Qaeda for the release of a diplomat seized last month and vowed to do all it can to free the hostage, a pan-Arab newspaper reported yesterday. A Saudi spokesman said on Tuesday that a suspected al-Qaeda militant has claimed responsibility for kidnapping the diplomat, Abdallah al-Khalidi, and demanded the release of militants in Saudi prisons. He threatened in a call to the Saudi embassy in Sana’a to kill the diplomat unless their demands are met.
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