ISRAEL
PM has hernia procedure
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underwent successful hernia surgery yesterday and was set to be discharged from hospital the same day, but will require several days rest to make a full recovery, aides and doctors said. During the overnight procedure, Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon temporarily assumed the 63-year-old prime minister’s powers, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. Yaalon was also slated to head a Cabinet-level meeting yesterday to select Palestinian security prisoners for release as part of US-sponsored peace negotiations, the second round of which are to take place on Wednesday in Jerusalem. Yuval Weiss, director of the Jerusalem hospital where the surgery took place, said the operation was ordered at short notice as a precaution against Netanyahu’s condition deteriorating.
BAHRAIN
US teacher deported
A US nursery-school teacher has been deported for allegedly writing articles on social media sites linked to radical groups and for violating the terms of her work permit as the kingdom intensifies its crackdown on dissent. The Ministry of State for Communications did not identify the woman, but said she wrote under a pen name and had broken the law by working as an unaccredited journalist. The teacher wrote articles for online publications including As-Safir newspaper, which is linked to the Shiite group Hezbollah, and the outlawed Bahrain Center for Human Rights newsletter, the state news agency said on Saturday. The ministry had received a complaint about the woman who used Twitter and other social media to write articles “deemed to incite hatred against the government and members of the Royal family, as well as spreading misinformation and encouraging divisions in Bahraini society based on religious sect,” it said.
PHILIPPINES
Nation braces for typhoon
Officials say more than 3,000 passengers have been stranded on piers in the northeast of the nation as ferry services were suspended due to an approaching typhoon, the strongest to threaten the country this year. Government forecasters told reporters yesterday that Typhoon Utor, with winds of 150kph gusting up to 185 kph, could gather strength over the Philippine Sea before it slams into northeastern Aurora province today. Utor, moving west-northwest at 19kph, was forecast to dump up to 25mm of rain an hour within a 600km diameter of the typhoon, the bureau said. “Residents in low-lying and mountainous areas ... are alerted against possible flash floods and landslides,” it stated in an advisory. The bureau also warned seafarers to remain at port due to strong waves.
AFGHANISTAN
Chinese killed at Kabul party
Police say that three Chinese citizens found dead in an apartment building in Kabul last week were shot to death during a party. General Mohammad Zahir, chief of the criminal department of the Kabul Police, yesterday confirmed reports in the Chinese media that authorities found four bodies, including three Chinese citizens — two women and one man — in an apartment on Thursday. “They had a party and what happened during their party? Who shot and killed four people? We have to find out and we will come up with the answers after we complete our investigation,” he said. Zahir also confirmed that two more Chinese went missing, but one had been found. He said the fourth body was an Afghan, without giving further details.
PANAMA
Ship carried more explosives
Authorities say they have found more explosives aboard a North Korean-flagged ship detained in the Panama Canal for carrying undeclared arms from Cuba. Anti-drug prosecutor Javier Caraballo said on Saturday that inspectors found a kind of “anti-tank RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]” explosive when they opened one of five wooden boxes on the Chong Chon Gang. He said the other boxes were not opened because of security fears. The discovery comes just over a week after authorities said explosive-sniffing dogs had found another batch of ammunition for grenade launchers and other unidentified types of munitions. The ship was seized on July 15 based on intelligence that it may have been carrying drugs. The manifest said it was carrying 10,000 tonnes of sugar, but Cuban military equipment was found beneath the sacks.
CANADA
Boys killed by python buried
Two young brothers who were killed by a python that had escaped from its quarters were buried in the same coffin on Saturday. Connor and Noah Barthe, aged six and four respectively, were laid to rest in a service attended by about 100 people. They were found dead on Monday last week in an apartment above a pet shop in the town of Campbellton, New Brunswick. “It is a moment of extreme suffering, but there should not be anger or accusations at this time,” military chaplain Maurice Frenette said. The boys had been enjoying a sleepover with a friend, the young son of Jean-Claude Savoie, whose private menagerie of exotic animals included an African rock python. The initial police investigation found that the python probably managed to escape from its terrarium in Savoie’s apartment by nosing through a ventilation duct in the ceiling and dropping into the boys’ bedroom nearby. Animal experts expressed astonishment at the tragedy, many noting that African rock pythons would not normally attack humans.
BRAZIL
Lula gets cancer all-clear
Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was given the all clear on Saturday after tests showed no sign of the throat cancer he was diagnosed with two years ago. “The medical team did not notice a return of the disease,” Roberto Kalil Filho of Sao Paulo’s Sirio-libanes hospital told a press conference. Lula underwent a PET/CT tomography scan, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan and a laryngoscopy and all three test results were deemed normal, the doctors said.
MEXICO
Kingpin set to be freed
Defense attorneys believe freedom is imminent for a second member of the trio of drug kingpins responsible for the 1985 slaying of a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent, one of his attorneys said on Saturday. In the US, outrage grew over the surprise decision to overturn drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero’s 40-year sentence for the notorious kidnapping, torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena on procedural grounds after 28 years behind bars, saying he should have originally been prosecuted in state instead of federal court. Also imprisoned in the Camarena case are Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, two of the founding fathers of modern drug trafficking in the country. Fonseca Carrillo’s attorney, Jose Luis Guizar, said his team had filed an appeal based on the same procedural grounds used by Caro Quintero, and expected him to be freed within 15 days by a different court in Jalisco.
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