INDIA
Submarine ready for trials
The nation’s first home-built nuclear submarine is ready for sea trials in open waters, a step before it becomes fully operational, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced yesterday. The nation unveiled the indigenous 6,000-tonne INS Arihant (Destroyer of Enemies) in 2009 as part of a project to construct five nuclear armed vessels. Singh described the development as “a giant stride in the progress of our indigenous technological capabilities” and said he hoped to see the submarine commissioned soon. The navy inducted a Russian-leased nuclear submarine into service in April last year, joining China, France, the US, Britain and Russia in the elite club of countries with nuclear-powered vessels.
UNITED KINGDOM
Zimbabwe, Iran sign deal
Zimbabwe has signed a secret deal to supply Iran with the raw materials needed to develop a nuclear weapon, in breach of international sanctions, the Times reported yesterday. “I have seen [a memorandum of understanding] to export uranium to the Iranians,” Zimbabwean Deputy Mining Minister Gift Chimanikire told the newspaper. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has publicly backed Iran’s nuclear drive. During a visit by Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Harare in April 2010, Mugabe said his guest should be assured of “Zimbabwe’s continuous support of Iran’s just cause on the nuclear issue.” Chimanikire is a member of Zimbabwe’s opposition and said the uranium deal had been made without his knowledge, and was only known to a handful of people at the top of the government. Despite the agreement, the Times reported analysts as saying that it was likely to be a long time before Zimbabwe’s uranium reserves were ready for export.
CHINA
Trafficking suspects held
Local authorities have detained nine people, including an obstetrician, on suspicion of baby trafficking at a hospital in northwestern China, state media reported. Three government officials and three hospital managers at Fuping County Maternal and Child Health Care in Shaanxi Province were also fired over the baby trafficking scandal, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. Among the detained suspects is Zhang Shuxia, an obstetrician at the hospital who abducted newborns by sometimes falsely claiming the infants were born with congenital problems, it said. Xinhua said police had received 55 reports of child abductions and that Zhang allegedly was involved in 26 of them. Despite severe legal punishments, including the death penalty, child trafficking is a big problem in China. It is very profitable for the traffickers, and demand is strong, driven partly by the traditional preference for male heirs, a strict one-child policy and ignorance of the law.
JAPAN
China’s ships in E China Sea
Four Chinese government ships entered disputed waters in the East China Sea at the center of a bitter row with Tokyo yesterday, the coast guard said. “We are telling them to leave the area,” an official spokesman said, after the ships sailed into waters around the Senkaku islands — known in Taiwan as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) — shortly after 9am. The ships were among five vessels that have been sailing in and out of the disputed zone since last week. The foreign ministry summoned Beijing’s envoy on Thursday after the ships spent more than a day in Japanese territorial waters, marking their longest such incursion since the long-simmering dispute erupted again last year.
COSTA RICA
Child porn suspect arrested
The suspected head of an international child pornography ring was arrested on Friday as part of a probe coordinated with Spain and several Latin American countries, authorities said. Agents, both local and from the global police agency Interpol, arrested the man and seized computers during raids across the country, Judicial Investigation Organization spokeswoman Marisel Rodriguez said. Rodriguez said there was no indication as yet that pornographic material was produced in the country. Local broadcasters identified the suspect as a 45-year-old commercial airlines pilot, reporting he did not resist arrest. A San Jose criminal court decided to release him later in the day, but he is not allowed to leave the country. Rodriguez said the investigation began in April and was conducted in coordination with several countries, including Spain, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador and Uruguay. Brazilian authorities said on Friday they had arrested four people suspected of distributing child pornography online.
UNITED STATES
Police Taser, kill teen
The family of a teenage graffiti artist who died after being stunned with a Taser fired by police officers demanded a full investigation into the incident on Friday. Israel Hernandez, 18, died shortly after being zapped with a Taser when he fled from Miami police who had caught him spray-painting a boarded-up store front on Tuesday. His death has sent shockwaves through Miami Beach’s arts community. Hernandez, who was originally from Colombia, was a well-known graffiti artist whose work had been exhibited locally. “We want a thorough investigation to find out what happened,” his father, also called Israel Hernandez, said on Friday. The Hernandez family was to lead a vigil yesterday where he was caught. Police said officers shot Hernandez with the Taser after he refused to stop.
UNITED STATES
More than 1,600 fight blaze
More than 1,600 Californian firefighters are battling a blaze east of Los Angeles that has injured six people and forced hundreds to flee their homes, authorities said on Friday. The fire is estimated to cover 7,200 hectares, a figure that has nearly doubled since Thursday. Those injured include five firefighters and a civilian, the Riverside County Fire Department said. As of Friday, the fire had destroyed 29 buildings, mostly homes, and was only 40 percent contained. Two of the firefighters were overwhelmed by heat, and the condition of the other three has not been made public. Eight helicopters were being used to fight the fire, which on Thursday forced the evacuation of 1,800 people in several towns near Banning, 150km east of Los Angeles.
VENEZUELA
Maduro sleeps in mausoleum
President Nicolas Maduro is known for his devotion to late president Hugo Chavez and now he says that he sometimes sleeps in the mausoleum where his mentor’s remains are kept. Maduro was Chavez’s vice president and named by him as his successor before he died. During the campaign for the April 14 election he narrowly won, Maduro caused a furor when he said Chavez came to him in the form of a little bird that flew around his head. Venezuela’s president reopened the issue of his use of Chavez’s image on Thursday when, during an act at the former military museum where Chavez’s remains are kept, he said: “I sometimes come at night. At times, many times, I sleep here.” He said he sometimes comes with a retinue. “We enter at night and we stay to sleep. At night, we reflect on things here.”
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