JAPAN
Manila to get patrol boats
Tokyo plans to donate patrol boats costing ¥1 billion (US$11 million) each to the Philippines, ramping up regional efforts to monitor China’s maritime activity in disputed waters, the Nikkei Shimbun said yesterday. The government plans to finance the deal in its fiscal 2013 budget starting in April and hopes to officially sign it early next year, the newspaper said. The report did not specify the number of boats on offer. Both countries are locked in separate territorial disputes with China. A draft budget of ¥2.5 billion has also been alloted for the Japan Coast Guard to train Filipino and Vietnamese personnel as part of additional efforts to boost security cooperation with Southeast Asia, the Nikkei said.
AFGHANISTAN
Prison abuse widespread
An official investigation into torture in prisons has found widespread abuse, President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday, following a UN report into the problem. “According to the report of the commission of inquiry, half of the prisoners interviewed complained of mistreatment, harassment and even torture during their detention,” the president’s office said in a statement. It described prisoners’ access to lawyers as “problematic,” but made no conclusions or recommendations. Karzai ordered the probe after the UN report last month showed that 326 of 635 prisoners interviewed said they had been abused, including 80 minors. Fourteen types of torture were described in the report, including beatings with cables and pipes, attacks on the genitals, threats of execution or rape and electric shocks.
BANGLADESH
Bus crash kills 17 pilgrims
A bus carrying pilgrims to the beach resort town of Cox’s Bazaar yesterday plunged into a dried-up river, killing at least 17 people and injuring another 26, police said. The bus crashed into the Matamuhuri’s parched river bed after the driver lost control of the vehicle, which then smashed through railings on a bridge. “So far, we have 17 people dead. Sixteen died on the spot and another on the way to the hospital,” Cox’s Bazaar police chief Azad Miah said, adding that 18 of the 26 people injured had been admitted to hospital.
CAMBODIA
French tourist’s body found
Police have launched a murder investigation after the naked body of a 25-year-old female French tourist was found floating in a river, officials said yesterday. The victim was found on Sunday in the southern province of Kampot, a day after she was last seen alive leaving her guest house by bicycle, provincial deputy police chief In Chiva said. “We conclude that it is a murder case because she was seriously hacked on the forehead,” he said, adding that there were also injuries on the victim’s arms. The French embassy said the family had been informed.
CANARY ISLANDS
Five killed in safety drill
A lifeboat being used on a safety drill aboard a cruise ship fell about 20m into a port on Sunday when a cable snapped, trapping crew members beneath it and killing five of them, officials said. None of the hundreds of passengers aboard the British-operated vessel were involved in the accident, which also injured three crew members, the port authority said. Divers raced to the lifeboat, which had hit the water upside down, recovering four bodies and trying without success to revive a fifth crewman who had stopped breathing, the authority said. The dead crewmen included three Indonesians, a Filipino and a Ghanian, it 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
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