JAPAN
Volcano spews 5km plume
Residents in the southern city of Kagoshima were busy washing ash off the streets yesterday after a nearby volcano spewed a record-high smoke plume into the sky. Ash wafted as high as 5km above the Sakurajima volcano in the on Sunday afternoon, forming its highest plume since the Japan Meteorological Agency started keeping records in 2006. Lava flowed about 1km from the fissure, and several huge volcanic rocks rolled down the mountainside. Kagoshima officials said in a statement that this was Sakurajima’s 500th eruption this year alone.
SOUTH KOREA
Joint military drills start
The country began annual joint military drills with the US yesterday that North Korea usually calls a rehearsal for invasion. North Korean state media have not made major statements on the exercises thus far. The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills set to continue until Aug. 30 are computer-simulated war games that involve 30,000 US and 50,000 South Korean troops, according to the Ministry of Defense and the US military command in Seoul.
AUSTRALIA
Baseballer murdered in US
A family was yesterday struggling to come to terms with the “senseless” death of their baseballer son in a random drive-by shooting by three teenagers in the US. Chris Lane, 22, was in the US on a baseball scholarship and was jogging in the small town of Duncan, Oklahoma, when he was shot in the back on Friday last week and left to die on the side of the road. Three teenagers aged 15, 16 and 17 were arrested and face the death penalty, Duncan Chief of Police Danny Ford told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “They wanted to be Billy Bob Badasses. I think they were on a killing spree. We would have had more bodies that night if we didn’t get them,” Ford said.
NEW ZEALAND
First same-sex couples wed
Dozens of same-sex couples said “I do” yesterday as the nation became the first Asia-Pacific country, and only the 14th in the world, to legalize gay marriage. Vows were exchanged in venues ranging from an airliner cruising at 9,150m to a historic bath house as gay men and women took advantage of the law change. The amendment to the Marriage Act was passed by parliament in April, but did not come into effect until yesterday.
INDONESIA
Prison riot quelled
Security forces have retaken control of an overcrowded prison in North Sumatra Province following a night-long riot, and have captured most of the estimated 30 convicts who escaped, authorities said yesterday. The riot erupted on Sunday afternoon at the Labuhan Ruku jail, which was built for about 300 prisoners, but houses more than 850. Local police chief Lieutenant Colonel Japerson Sinaga said the riot began when a warden was beaten by inmates who had just been transferred to the facility from other prisons. Inmates torched the prison and at least 30 prisoners overpowered security guards.
CHINA
Floods kill 105
Devastating floods at opposite ends of the country have left 105 people dead and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate their homes in recent days, officials and Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Flooding in the northeast that left 72 people dead was described as “the worst in decades” by Xinhua, while another 33 people died in Guangdong Province, where 510,000 were evacuated.
GERMANY
Hermaphrodites recognized
The nation will become the first in Europe to join a small group of nations which recognize a third or “undetermined” sex when registering births, the Suddeutsche Zeitung said. From Nov. 1, babies born without clear gender-determining physical characteristics will be able to be registered without a sex on their birth certificates, according to the report. While transsexuals are already legally recognized, hermaphrodites — those with both male and female genitalia — have always been forcibly registered as one or other sex at birth.
TUNISIA
Ennahda agrees to talks
The governing Islamist party Ennahda switched course on Sunday and agreed to meet with opposition parties to seek a consensus on resolving the country’s worst political crisis since its 2011 Arab Spring revolution. Fethi Ayadi, chairman of the party’s supreme council, said the talks could start by the end of the week and could consider opposition demands for a caretaker technocrat government to find a way out of the current standoff. Ennahda chairman Rached Ghannouchi firmly rejected that demand on Thursday last week, prompting criticism from opposition leaders who accuse his party of complacency toward threats from violent hardline Salafis.
GERMANY
Al-Qaeda plots attacks: ‘Bild’
Al-Qaeda is plotting attacks on Europe’s high-speed rail network, the mass circulation daily Bild reported yesterday, citing intelligence sources. The extremist group could plant explosives on trains and tunnels or sabotage tracks and electrical cabling, Bild said. Bild said the information came from the US National Security Agency, which had listened in to a conference call involving top al-Qaeda operatives. The attacks on Europe’s rail network was a “central topic” of this call, Bild said. Authorities have responded with discrete measures such as deploying plainclothes police officers at key stations and on main routes, the daily said.
UNITED STATES
Rare Ferrari auctioned
A rare 1967 Ferrari owned by an orphan-turned-millionaire sold at auction for US$27.5 million. The red Ferrari was one of only 10 ever built, and its single-family ownership increased interest in the sale, the Los Angeles Times reported. The owner, the late Eddie Smith, was a former mayor of Lexington, North Carolina. He died in 2007 at age 88. “This is a bittersweet moment for us,” Eddie Smith Jr told a crowd before bidding began on Saturday. In keeping with his father’s philanthropy, the family was giving all proceeds to various charities, Smith Jr said.
GERMANY
Gunman holds three hostage
A gunman took three people hostage at the city hall in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt yesterday, officials said, and a planned election rally there featuring Chancellor Angela Merkel was canceled. The hostage-taker was a young man armed with a handgun, and the hostages were believed to include Ingolstadt Deputy Mayor Sepp Misslbeck, police spokesman Hans-Peter Kammerer said. The incident started shortly before 9am. Police said they are in contact with the man by telephone. There is no immediate word on what he wanted. The dpa news agency reported that Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said the man had previously stalked a female employee at the city hall. The hostage-taking happened several hours before Merkel was due in the city for a late afternoon rally in the square in front of the city hall.
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