INDIA
Help offered to ill toddler
A top private hospital in New Dehli has offered to treat an 18-month girl whose head has swollen to more than double its normal size because of hydrocephalus. Roona Begum, whose parents are too poor to pay for her treatment, was discovered last week living in remote Tripura State. The publication of pictures taken by an Agence France-Presse photographer on Friday last week led numerous well-wishers to offer donations, while a Web site has been set up to collect money for her. Sandeep Vaishya, who is the head of neurosurgery at a hospital for the private Fortis Healthcare group, has promised to examine the girl and see if surgery was possible.
NEW ZEALAND
Anti-protest bill attacked
Rights groups and conservationists yesterday condemned a move to ban protests at sea, accusing the government of pandering to the interests of oil companies. A planned new law allows the military to arrest protesters in the nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and ramps up the penalties facing demonstrators to include jail terms of up to a year and fines reaching NZ$100,000 (US$84,000). Greenpeace campaigner Steve Abel said Resources Minister Simon Bridges was trying to silence opposition to plans to exploit the EEZ, which is believed to contain significant oil reserves. More than a dozen group, including Amnesty International, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and the World Wildlife Fund, have also signed a joint letter slamming the law as “a sledgehammer designed to attack peaceful protest at sea.”
AUSTRALIA
The moon affects sharks
The moon and water temperature affect the diving behavior of sharks, researchers said yesterday, in a discovery that could help prevent fishermen from inadvertently catching the marine predators. A team from the University of Western Australia’s Oceans Institute and the Australian Institute of Marine Science spent nearly three years monitoring gray reef sharks off Palau in the Pacific Ocean. They found the sharks stayed in deep water on full-moon nights, but rose to the shallows with the new moon. The study also said it may be an anti-predator response where reef sharks seek to avoid increased light nearer the surface that may aid the hunting abilities of larger sharks.
PAKISTAN
Ashraf disqualified
An election tribunal on Monday disqualified former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf from contesting next month’s general elections over graft allegations, an official said. Ashraf, a candidate for the Pakistan People’s Party, was prevented last week from standing in his native Gojar Khan district in Punjab Province after his opponent accused him of corruption. He filed an appeal, but both high court judges on the tribunal rejected the appeal and disqualified him.
EGYPT
Mubarak stays in jail
Former president Hosni Mubarak will remain in custody on new corruption charges, despite a court order to release him before his retrial over the killing of protesters in the uprising against him. The order on Monday by the Cairo Criminal Court followed Mubarak’s request to be released after two years in detention without a final verdict. The court said Mubarak could be released on bail if he was not wanted for any other court cases, but prosecutors then pointed out that Mubarak has three other cases pending. The 84-year-old Mubarak has been in detention since April 2011.
UNITED KINGDOM
Group sues over spy tech
A human rights group is suing the government over the export of sophisticated surveillance technology that has been used to spy on dissidents in Bahrain and elsewhere. Privacy International said yesterday it had filed a lawsuit before London’s High Court over the government’s refusal to say whether it was investigating Gamma International, whose FinFisher software has been linked to use in more than two dozen countries, including Bahrain, Egypt, Ethiopia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam. Privacy International argues that the export of FinFisher software may be illegal and has demanded officials investigate.
SAUDI ARABIA
Let women drive: prince
Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, a nephew of King Abdullah, has thrown his support behind allowing women to drive, saying it makes economic sense. Women are barred from driving in the kingdom — leaving them reliant on mostly foreign drivers. “[The question of] women driving will result in dispensing with at least 500,000 foreign drivers, and that has an economic and social impact for the country,” the prince said on his Twitter account on Sunday.
SYRIA
Regime issues amnesty
President Bashar al-Assad has issued a general amnesty for crimes committed in the war-torn country prior to yesterday, state news agency SANA reported. Under the decree, “the death penalty will be replaced with a life sentence of hard labor,” the agency said. Al-Assad has issued several amnesty decrees since an uprising against his regime erupted in March 2011. The latest will not apply to people found guilty of smuggling weapons or drug-related crimes.
UNITED STATES
School claims tsunami boat
A small boat that washed up in northern California after the massive 2011 tsunami that hit Japan has been claimed by a city that was devastated in the disaster. The Triplicate newspaper in Crescent City, California, reports that officials in the Japanese city of Rikuzentakata are in a “giddy state of shock” and would love to get the boat back. Rikuzentakata spokeswoman Amya Miller says hours after photographs of the 6m boat were posted to Crescent City’s Facebook page, a teacher from a Japanese high school’s marine sciences program said the vessel was theirs. Humboldt State University geologist Lori Dengler says she posted the photographs recently after a university librarian translated the name of the high school from the boat.
UNITED STATES
Police jailed for spying
An Alaska-based military policeman was sentenced to 16 years in prison and will receive a dishonorable discharge for selling military secrets to an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian spy, a military panel decided. A panel of eight military members from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage recommended a 19-year sentence for Specialist William Colton Millay, but that was dropped to 16 years because of a pretrial agreement. He will receive credit for the 535 days he has been jailed since his Oct. 28, 2011, arrest. The panel also reduced him in rank to private and he will forfeit all pay and allowances. The 24-year-old Millay pleaded guilty last month to attempted espionage and other counts. Military prosecutors painted Millay as a white supremacist who was fed up with the army and the country, and was willing to sell secrets to an enemy agent, even if that would cost his fellow soldiers their lives.
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