INDIA
Thousands flee riots
Tens of thousands of villagers have fled their homes in fear of rioting that has killed at least 18 people in recent days in the remote northeast state of Assam, police said yesterday. An additional 10 people have gone missing since the clashes over land rights erupted in western Kokrajhar District between the region’s ethnic Bodo community and Muslim settlers, Assam Police Chief J.N. Choudhury said. The violence has spread to two neighboring districts. Police have discovered bodies hacked by machetes.
JAPAN
Osprey deployment draws ire
The US military’s Osprey aircraft arrived early yesterday as residents rallied against their deployment after recent crashes raised safety concerns. Live TV footage showed MV-22s being unloaded from a cargo ship at the US Marines’ base in Iwakuni. Protesters in a dozen small boats demonstrated against the controversial aircraft’s arrival, chanting: “We don’t want the dangerous Osprey!” and “Osprey, go back to America.”
AUSTRALIA
‘Hitman scam’ hits phones
Police across the nation warned mobile phone users yesterday to ignore a text message sent to “a large number of people” threatening death if they did not pay A$5,000 (US$5,150). “Sum1 paid me to kill you. get spared, 48hrs to pay $5000. If you inform the police or anybody, death is promised … E-mail me now: killerking247@yahoo.com,” read the text. It prompted hundreds of calls to authorities from worried recipients. Police in the states of New South Wales, Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania all issued statements telling recipients not to be alarmed. Queensland police said the hoax was commonly referred to as “the hitman scam.”
INDONESIA
Sex-tape star out of jail
One of the country’s best-known pop stars has been released from prison on parole after serving two years over a sex-tape scandal. A prison official says hundreds of fans gathered outside the jail yesterday, chanting Nazril “Ariel” Irham’s name and singing his songs as he walked out. Ariel, lead singer of the popular band Peterpan, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years behind bars after sex videos with his celebrity girlfriends hit the Internet. The 30-year-old star was the first celebrity to be charged under a strict anti-pornography law. The law went into effect in 2008, despite strong opposition. Ariel was arrested in June 2010 and said the tapes were stolen and posted online without his knowledge.
PHILIPPINES
Mass grave discovered
The human rights commission said yesterday that it would investigate a report by the military that it has exhumed a mass grave containing at least 30 suspected victims of a 1980s communist rebel purge. Loretta Ann Rosales, chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights, said her office would look into the mass grave, but that it is too early to say whether the remains found in northern Quezon Province were victims of a rebel purge. Soldiers and policemen on Sunday unearthed at least 30 skeletal remains of people believed slain by New People’s Army (NPA) rebels as suspected military spies in the 1980s, army spokesman Major Harold Cabunoc said. The remains were exhumed from a shallow grave discovered by a farmer in San Francisco town, he said. Cabunoc said some of the skeletons bore marks of torture, including cracked skulls.
MEXICO
Thousands protest vote
Thousands of people marched through Mexico City on Sunday to denounce the July 1 election of Enrique Pena Nieto as president, though the protest was smaller than one held earlier this month. Pena Nieto’s capture of the presidency for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has been challenged by his rival, leftist runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who alleges the PRI resorted to vote-buying and money laundering to win. Lopez Obrador is seeking to invalidate the PRI victory at the federal electoral tribunal, and the former mayor of Mexico City has pledged to keep the pressure up on Pena Nieto with rallies around the country starting at the end of this month. Officials in the capital estimated about 30,000 people turned out for Sunday’s protest, less than half the number seen at an anti-Pena Nieto demonstration there on July 7.
UNITED STATES
Pickup crash kills 11
A pickup truck jammed with suspected illegal immigrants crashed into a tree along a rural Texas highway on Sunday, killing 11 passengers and injuring 12 others, police said. The one-vehicle crash on Highway 59 near Goliad, Texas, about 130km south of San Antonio near the Gulf of Mexico coastline, was the second fatal accident in the past three months that involved human smuggling in the region. In Sunday’s fatal accident, police said the 23 people riding in the Ford pickup truck were suspected of being illegal immigrants. The driver lost control and crashed into a tree, Louann Presas of the Texas Department of Public Safety said. Injured victims were transported to hospitals in Victoria, Corpus Christi and San Antonio, Presas said.
UNITED STATES
Bear shops at Sears
Shoppers at a Sears department store in Pennsylvania were evacuated after an unwanted guest — a young female bear — wandered in over the weekend, local media said. The animal became trapped on Saturday night after entering the Sears store in the Pittsburgh Mills mall, located northeast of the city of Pittsburgh, through the automatic doors, the reports said. Shopper Matt Marcinik told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he had seen the bear running across the mall’s parking lot before it went into the store. “It was running up and down the aisles,” Marcinik told the newspaper. “It darted past several people. They didn’t even know it was a bear.” Wildlife officials shot the roughly 57kg bear — which was wearing a tracking device — with a tranquilizer and captured it. No injuries were reported.
LIBYA
Kidnappers release official
The president of the country’s Olympic Committee said hours after he returned home on Sunday that his kidnapping remains a mystery, but that authorities promised to investigate the case. Committee chief Ahmed Nabil al-Taher al-Alam was released unharmed a week after unknown gunmen abducted him from his car in the capital. “It will be become clearer in the coming days. They raised no issue and they made no requests,” he said. Al-Alam said his kidnappers posed as officials when they took him near his office on Tripoli. They later released him in Misrata, and rebels helped bring him back to Tripoli in coordination with security officials. “It is a mystery. Investigation is promised and may this be a good omen to end these kidnappings,” he said.
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
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
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