NEW ZEALAND
Jobless offered cash to move
The unemployed are being offered cash by the government to move to the earthquake-damaged city of Christchurch and join in the rebuilding effort. The government announced yesterday it would pay welfare recipients NZ$3,000 (US$2,600) to move to the city if they found any kind of fulltime work there. Christchurch has been slowly rebuilding after a 2011 earthquake killed 185 people and destroyed much of the city’s downtown. Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said the city’s reconstruction is creating thousands of jobs, but some unemployed people do not have the resources to move to Christchurch. She said the money would help pay for moving expenses, accommodation, tools and other equipment. The scheme is initially limited to 1,000 people.
AUSTRALIA
Fiery debris halts flights
An explosive engine failure on a Vietnamese airliner showered fiery debris across a runway at the nation’s second-busiest airport yesterday, preventing planes landing and taking off for 40 minutes, an official said. The malfunction happened as Vietnam Airlines flight 780 was taxiing to take off on a flight to Ho Chi Minh City, Melbourne Airport spokeswoman Anna Gillett said. The twin-engine Airbus A330 came to rest at the intersection of the airport’s two runways, blocking all traffic for 40 minutes until 11:30am, she said. No one was injured. “The issue also resulted in some debris from the plane causing some spot fires on the runaway and surrounding area,” Gillett said. “There are some rumors that the aircraft itself was ablaze with fire — that’s not the case.” A passenger, who identified himself only as Peter, told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio that the jet’s nose had begun lifting for takeoff when the engine failed, forcing the pilots to abort the flight.
ANTARCTICA
New strain of flu detected
A new kind of avian influenza has been detected for the first time in Adelie penguins, though the virus does not seem to make them sick, researchers said yesterday. The virus is unlike any other bird flu known to science, said the report in mBio, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. “It raises a lot of unanswered questions,” said study author Aeron Hurt, senior research scientist at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia. The findings show that “avian influenza viruses can get down to Antarctica and be maintained in penguin populations,” he said. The study is the first to report on live avian flu in penguins, though previous research has found evidence of flu antibodies in penguin blood.
BELGIUM
Jobless mom drowns sons
An unemployed woman whose husband had just lost his job drowned her two sons, aged two and six, in the bathtub due to distress over their future, a prosecutor said. “She was upset by the dire financial situation and said it was the only solution she could find to avoid her children being unhappy when they grew up,” Philippe Dulieu, public prosecutor in the city of Namur, told Belga news agency. The woman, who was born in 1987, gave the two boys sleeping pills once her husband had left the house on Saturday, before drowning them and putting them to bed, the prosecutor said. When the husband returned “she told him the children were already in bed. They spent the evening together, watching TV.” Her husband discovered they were dead on Sunday. She was charged on Monday and placed in custody.
UNITED STATES
Plane crashes into house
A small plane smashed into a Colorado home on Monday, but the pilot was able to walk away and no one else was injured, authorities said. The plane crashed into a residence “after experiencing trouble while towing a banner over Northglenn, Colorado,” a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said. “The pilot escaped from the aircraft and parachuted safely to the ground before the aircraft went down,” he said. Nobody was home at the time of the crash, district firefighters said, and the pilot was transported to hospital, but was not thought to be badly hurt.
UNITED STATES
Naked man hit by car, killed
A naked man who had been running and doing push-ups in a Portland street was struck by a car and killed early on Sunday, police said. Portland police said they received two telephone calls about the man in a street in an industrial area of north Portland, but the man was killed before they arrived at the scene.
EL SALVADOR
Ex-president fled: authorities
The government suspects former president Francisco Flores has left the country, where he faces charges of embezzlement, illegal enrichment and disobedience. Public Safety Minister Ricardo Perdomo yesterday said that Flores is thought to have gone by boat or plane and illegally entered Panama. A judge has not issued an arrest warrant for Flores, who was charged last week with embezzling US$5.3 million while he was president from 1999 to 2004. He is also charged with mismanaging US$10 million that was donated a decade ago by Taiwan’s government during his presidency. Flores has denied wrongdoing. He says he turned the money over to the intended state projects, but has offered no proof of the handover. Perdomo would not say what proof authorities have that Flores left El Salvador.
GUATEMALA
US$2.3m cash man nabbed
Authorities have arrested a man found with nearly US$2.3 million in cash hidden in a compartment in his van, officials said on Monday. Flavio Rojas, 48, was picked up on Sunday night on a highway 10km north of the capital. An estimated half of the country’s population is below the national poverty line. Police are investigating whether Rojas was transporting the money for an organized crime group. Mexican drug organizations like the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel have expanded their trafficking and money laundering operations in the country in recent years, sometimes in combination with local groups.
VENEZUELA
Newspapers slim down
A leading newspaper is cutting the size of its daily editions because of a newsprint shortage. El Universal says it will publish 16 pages a day as of Monday, down from its regular 24 pages. It says it can keep that up for two more weeks. Several other papers have already slimmed or shut down, blaming government currency controls. El Universal says it has had paper sitting in a port since January, but needs US dollars to release it from bond. It blames government delays in allowing it to exchange the local currency for US dollars. The government sells hard currency at low prices, but importers complain it can take months for officials to approve the exchanges, leading to shortages of imports, which result in reduced production for many goods.
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