BENIN
New government formed
President Thomas Boni Yayi on Sunday named a new government after sacking his entire Cabinet in part over concerns of some members’ alleged links to a businessman accused of trying to poison him. Yayi named a 26-member team and opted not to appoint a prime minister, a presidency statement said. There had been disagreements between Yayi and former prime minister Pascal Koukpaki and he will not be part of the new team. Koukpaki and another member of the government were suspected of being close to the businessman charged with the alleged poison plot, Patrice Talon, a presidential advisor said. There are no opposition politicians in the new government. Talon is currently in France, where a court is considering whether he should be extradited.
U.A.E.
Jihadists plan jail break
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Nasser al-Wuhayshi said he would free jailed Islamist militants soon in a statement found on a jihadist Web site. Wuhayshi did not say how he would free those jailed, but al-Qaeda militants staged at least two prison breaks last month. Intercepted communication between al-Wuhayshi and al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahri was part of intelligence that prompted Washington to close 19 US embassies and send some staff in Yemen home last week. “We ask God to make us a cause for unlocking your incarceration and relieving your agony,” al-Wuhayshi said in the statement. “Your brothers are pounding the walls of injustice and the thrones of oppression. These walls and thrones are coming down every day and victory is but one step. Victory is one hour of perseverance.”
IRAQ
Group claims Eid bombings
An al-Qaeda affiliate said it carried out Saturday’s Eid al-Fitr bombings, which killed dozens of people, in response to a government campaign to arrest suspected militants, the SITE Monitoring group reported yesterday. The statement from Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) posted on jihadist forums claimed responsibility for the attacks across Baghdad and in southern provinces targeting people celebrating the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, SITE said. It has been one of the country’s deadliest Ramadan holidays in years, as Sunni Islamist militants wage an insurgency against the Shiite-led government. “They will pay a high price for what they did and they will not be secure day or night during Eid or other times, so they should watch their footsteps and stop the detention campaigns and cease harming the Sunni clans,” the ISIL statement said, according to a SITE translation.
SRI LANKA
Mosque closed after attack
The Sri Lanka Muslim Council closed down a new mosque in Colombo yesterday after attacks by a Buddhist mob. The council said it had agreed to shut its Grandpass mosque and move to an older place of worship that the government had earlier earmarked for demolition. “We have a compromise deal worked out last night,” council president N. M. Ameen told reporters. “The government will rescind the order acquiring the old mosque premises and will grant more land and help with renovations and improvements.” Buddhist-led mobs vandalized the new mosque on Saturday, wounding at least four people. Sporadic clashes also erupted on Sunday. Buddhists had objected to the setting up of the new mosque near a Buddhist temple even though it was built to replace the older mosque to be torn down for city works.
FRANCE
Soldier held over attack plan
Police have arrested a young soldier on suspicion of planning to fire shots at a mosque near the eastern city of Lyon, the Ministry of the Interior said on Sunday. The 23-year-old man, who investigators say is “close to the radical far-right,” was detained at his airbase near Lyon. He was remanded in custody on Wednesday last week and charged with the possession of ammunition and plans to damage a place of worship “in connection with a terrorist enterprise.” Judicial officials said he told investigators that he planned to fire the shots at the Minguettes mosque at Venissieux on Thursday last week at the end of Ramadan. He also admitted to throwing an incendiary device at a mosque door in southwestern Libourne in August last year.
BRAZIL
Petrobras accused of bribes
State-run energy giant Petrobras funneled kickbacks to officials from political parties, the weekly Epoca magazine reported on Sunday. Epoca cited evidence from lobbyist Joao Augusto Rezende, a former head of BR Distribuidora, a Petrobras subsidiary. The lobbyist for the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), which is part of President Dilma Rousseff’s ruling coalition, said between 60 and 70 percent of the graft money was passed on to the PMDB. Epoca also reported that Joao Vaccari Neto, the ruling Workers Party’s finance secretary, received the equivalent of US$8 million in kickbacks from construction conglomerate Odebrecht as part of a Petrobras international contract during Rousseff’s 2010 presidential campaign. The weekly quoted Augusto as saying he and Vaccari arranged for the money to be transferred to the Rousseff campaign. However, Vaccari was quoted as saying he was not in charge of the Rousseff campaign’s finances and that all donations were made “within the law.”
THE NETHERLANDS
Prince Johan Friso dies
Prince Johan Friso, who went into a coma following a skiing accident in February last year, has died, the government said yesterday. “Prince Friso died from complications that arose as a consequence of the brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation following his skiing accident,” the government said in a statement. The prince, 44, was skiing off-piste in Lech, Austria, when he was buried in an avalanche. He was initially treated at a London hospital and was brought back to The Hague last month.
HUNGARY
Alleged war criminal dies
Laszlo Csatari, a 98-year-old Hungarian who topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of alleged war criminals, has died in hospital, his lawyer said yesterday. Csatari was alleged to have been actively involved in the deportations of thousands of Jews to death camps in World War II from a town in present-day Slovakia. After being sentenced to death in absentia in 1948 he made it to Canada where he worked as an art dealer before being stripped of his citizenship in the 1990s. He returned to Hungary where he lived until prosecutors began investigating his case in late 2011 on the basis of information from the Wiesenthal Center. In June Hungarian prosecutors charged him, saying he was “actively involved in and assisted the deportations” in 1944 of Jews from a ghetto in Kassa, now known as Kosice. The former police officer “regularly beat the interned Jews with his bare hands and whipped them with a dog-whip without any special reasons, regardless of their sex, age or health,” prosecutors said. He had been under house arrest ever since.
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