AFGHANISTAN
Three British troops killed
Three NATO troops killed by a roadside bomb were British, officials said yesterday. The three soldiers from the Royal Highland Fusiliers died on Tuesday when their vehicle was hit on a routine patrol in the district of Nahr-e Saraj, part of Helmand Province. The British Ministry of Defence said that security in Helmand, a hotbed of the Taliban insurgency, was improving, but that it remained a risky and dangerous environment for British troops.
SOUTH KOREA
Psy immortalized in print
The story of rap sensation Psy’s ascent to global stardom with his megahit Gangnam Style has now been immortalized in full color in a comic book. Fame:Psy, which went on sale in the US and South Korea yesterday, focuses mainly on what went into making Gangnam Style, which catapulted the singer to global fame and became YouTube’s most popular song ever with more than 1.5 billion hits. “Has he fallen from the sky? Has he risen from the earth?” the comic begins, with illustrations showing Psy — in the suits he made famous in Gangnam Style and striking poses from his “Horse Riding Dance” — descending from heaven and bursting through the earth.
JAPAN
Mount Fuji in line for honor
The iconic Mount Fuji will likely win recognition as a World Heritage site. The Agency for Cultural Affairs issued a notice yesterday saying it had received notification that the site was recommended for World Heritage status by the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a body affiliated with UNESCO. Formal approval is expected in June at a meeting in Cambodia. Mount Fuji would be the country’s 13th cultural World Heritage site.
AUSTRALIA
Iconic banknote on auction
The nation’s first banknote, printed 100 years ago and found in a letter in England in 1999, has gone on sale for A$3.5 million (US$3.6 million), auctioneers said yesterday. The 10 shilling note, with the serial number M000001, was issued on May 1, 1913, and presented by then-prime minister Andrew Fisher to Judith Denman, the five-year-old daughter of the governor-general at the time, Lord Denman. It was discovered in 1999, nearly 12 years after Denman died, when her effects were being sorted out.
MALAYSIA
Fair elections under threat
Opposition and clean-polls activists said yesterday that the integrity of this weekend’s elections was in doubt after revelations that indelible ink meant to prevent fraud was easily washed off. The country’s long-ruling government is introducing indelible ink in Sunday’s vote. However, reports say that security personnel who took part in early voting had easily been able to clean off the ink, which is applied to a person’s finger to show they had voted and is supposed to remain visible for at least a week.
MYANMAR
One dead in fresh unrest
One person was killed and nine injured after mobs attacked mosques and burned homes in central parts, authorities said yesterday, in the latest religious unrest to erupt in the nation. Riots sparked on Tuesday in the small town of Oakkan, around 100km north of Yangon after a woman accidentally knocked into a young monk, authorities said, amid acute Buddhist-Muslim tensions following a series of attacks in March.
UNITED STATES
Suspected juice spiker jailed
A northern California woman has been arrested on suspicion of spiking orange juice bottles with a deadly dose of rubbing alcohol and stocking the bottles at a Starbucks coffee shop, law enforcement officials said on Tuesday. Ramineh Behbehanian, 50, was arrested at her San Jose home on Monday night and booked into the Santa Clara County Jail on charges of attempted murder and poisoning, San Jose Police Sergeant Jason Dwyer said.
UNITED STATES
Thief mails back ashes
A thief with a soft-hearted streak, who inadvertently nabbed some cremated remains along with thousands of rare gems in a truck burglary in Washington state, has anonymously mailed back the ashes to their owner, police said on Wednesday. The truck owner had been golfing in a Tacoma suburb when his vehicle was broken into by a thief, who stole a briefcase filled with 3,000 prized Oregon sunstone gems, more than 30 silver and gold sunstone rings, and a bracelet with 34 multi-hued stones, Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.
UNITED STATES
Roth honored for advocacy
Philip Roth’s latest honor was as much for what he has done for other writers as for his own work. On Tuesday night, Roth received the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award. He was cited for such novels as Sabbath’s Theater and American Pastoral, but also for his advocacy in the 1970s and 1980s for writers in then-Czechoslovakia and other Eastern bloc countries during the Cold War. PEN is an international writers’ organization that advocates for human rights and free speech. The 80-year-old Roth spoke before hundreds gathered for the PEN Literary Gala at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Attendees included Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Jay McInerney.
GUATEMALA
Police officer shot dead
A police officer was killed on Tuesday when security forces clashed with opponents of a Canadian-owned gold and silver mine project, who had taken 23 officers hostage in the southeast of the country. The officer was shot in the chest and died on the spot near the mine run by Tahoe Resources in the rural town of San Rafael Las Flores, 105km southeast of Guatemala City, Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez said. Five others were wounded. The battle took place when security forces were sent in to free 23 police officers who had been taken hostage and disarmed by hundreds of townspeople the previous day. The hostages were freed. Residents fear the mine will destroy a mountain and drain their water resources.
PERU
Ambassador in shop fracas
A supermarket altercation involving the Ecuadoran ambassador to Peru has many Peruvians calling for the envoy’s expulsion. Ambassador Rodrigo Riofrio allegedly struck and kicked a Peruvian mother and daughter after accusing the two of cutting into a line. The mother said he called them “ignorant Peruvians” and made a disparaging reference to the country’s indigenous population. She told a TV channel that Riofrio hit and kicked her and her daughter on Saturday in front of dozens of witnesses. However, she did admit that her daughter had struck the first blow, slapping Riofrio’s wife in the face after she insulted her. Video taken afterwards showed Riofrio being harangued by witnesses. Ecuador’s embassy issued an apology on Monday, but said it does not accept the women’s version of events.
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