BRAZIL
Cuban doctors arrive
More than 200 Cuban doctors have arrived in the country to work in impoverished areas where physicians and medical services are scarce in Latin America’s biggest country, the Ministry of Health said on Saturday. Ministry press officer Ed Ruas said 206 doctors arrived in the city of Recife to take a connecting flight to Brasilia, the capital. He said another 194 doctors were to arrive yesterday in the city of Salvador. The 400 are the first of an expected 4,000 physicians from Cuba who will eventually work in the country. About 250 doctors from other countries arrived in Brazil on Friday, along with Brazilians who studied abroad. They and the Cubans are part of the “More Doctors” program to get more physicians working in underserved areas. Foreign doctors in the program will receive the equivalent of US$4,080 a month. In the case of the Cubans, the country will send their wages to Cuba’s government through the Pan American Health Organization and Havana will decide how much each doctor will receive.
MEXICO
Drug lord’s release appealed
Federal prosecutors have filed an appeal with the Supreme Court against a court’s decision to free a drug lord. The Attorney General’s office says it has asked the country’s highest court to review a federal court’s decision to release Rafael Caro Quintero because the court’s arguments are “absurd and illogical.” Caro Quintero was 28 years into a 40-year sentence for helping orchestrate the 1985 killing of US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. He has disappeared from the public eye since his release two weeks ago. A three-judge federal appeals court overturned his sentence in Camarena’s case on procedural grounds, saying he should have been tried in a state court instead of federal court.
COLOMBIA
Peace talks to restart
The government has announced that peace talks with the country’s largest guerrilla army will be renewed today in Cuba after the rebels temporarily walked away from the negotiations. Almost simultaneously, the army said that 13 members of the military were killed in a rebel ambush on Saturday in Arauca Province, about 390km northeast of the capital, Bogota. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, temporarily walked away from the talks on Friday over President Juan Manuel Santos’ refusal to agree to modify the constitution if a peace pact is struck. On Saturday, government negotiator Humberto De la Calle said: “After an evaluation, it is confirmed that the FARC has made the decision to return to the negotiating table at 8:30am on Monday to continue the talks.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Helicopter crash kills four
Four people were killed when a helicopter carrying oil workers crashed into the sea off Scotland’s Shetland Islands, raising fresh questions about safety in the remote North Sea energy sector. Fourteen people were rescued after the Super Puma L2 helicopter, made by EADS unit Eurocopter, came down — the fourth incident in the area involving different models of the widely used aircraft in just more than four years. Scottish police said three bodies had been recovered and work was underway to recover the body of the fourth person. Sky News said the fourth body was in the wreckage. The helicopter hit the sea as it approached Sumburgh airport.
CHINA
Fewer Japanese visits
The number of Japanese tourists visiting Beijing fell by more than half in the first six months of the year amid a spike in tensions between the countries, official statistics show. Beijing’s statistics bureau said yesterday that 136,000 Japanese tourists visited the capital between January and last month. That was down 53.7 percent from the same period last year. The drop follows violent anti-Japanese protests in Beijing and several other cities in September last year in response to complaints from the government over Japan’s move to nationalize uninhabited East China Sea islands claimed by the country. Japanese businesses were torched and Japanese-brand cars were smashed, despite having been locally made. There were also scattered reports of assaults on Japanese citizens, although none of the attacks were serious.
CHINA
Cockroaches escape farm
At least 1 million cockroaches have escaped a farm where they were being bred for use in traditional medicine, a report said. The cockroaches fled the facility in Dafeng, Jiangsu Province, for surrounding cornfields earlier this month after an “unknown perpetrator” destroyed the plastic greenhouse where they were raised, the Modern Express newspaper said. Disease control authorities have sent five investigators to the area to come up with a plan to stamp out the insects. Farm owner Wang Pengsheng invested more than 100,000 yuan (US$16,000) in 102kg of Periplaneta americana eggs after spending six months developing a business plan, the report on Friday said. The cockroach is generally considered a pest, but believers in traditional Chinese medicine — which uses both plants and animals, including endangered species — say extracts from it can treat diseases including cancer, reduce inflammation and improve immunity.
AFGHANISTAN
Karzai talks about US killer
The day after a military jury sentenced US Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, 40, to life in prison without the possibility of release — the most severe punishment possible — President Hamid Karzai said: “A life sentence to him or a death sentence to him will not bring back our children that he killed.” Many Afghans had wanted him to receive the death penalty. Bales pleaded guilty in June in a deal to avoid the death penalty for his raids near his outpost on March 11 last year, in which he shot 22 people — 17 of them women and children.
YEMEN
Air force bus bomb kills six
At least six people were killed and 26 wounded yesterday in a bomb attack on a bus carrying air force personnel to base in the capital Sana’a, witnesses and medics said. Ameen Saree, an air force officer who rushed to the scene, said a bomb had been planted in the vehicle. “The bomb exploded in the rear part of the bus and six of our colleagues were immediately killed,” Saree said. The country has been gripped by turmoil since pro-democracy protests against former president Ali Abdullah Saleh broke out in early 2011. Attacks against military personnel are more common in the largely lawless south and east where an Islamist insurgency is still raging. The nation is one of the poorest countries in the Arab world. Next door to world’s top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, it is also battling a powerful branch of al-Qaeda that US officials say is the most dangerous of the global network.
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