THAILAND
Lao airforce plane crashes
A Laos airforce plane carrying about 20 people including the country’s defense minister and other senior officials crashed on Saturday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. There was no immediate word on casualties, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Sek Wannamethee said. The plane took off from the Lao capital, Vientiane, yesterday morning and crashed in the Lao province of Xiangkhoung, about 470km away. The aircraft was carrying Lao Defense Minister Douangchay Phichit, who is also a deputy prime minister, and several other high-ranking officials, including the governor of Vientiane. They were heading to an official ceremony for the Ministry of Defense, said Sek, who was informed of the crash by authorities in neighboring Laos. He did not immediately have any other details, and there was no official statement on the crash from authorities in Laos.
CHINA
Pipeline collapse kills 11
A pipeline in a coal mine has collapsed, killing 11 people, Xinhua news agency and a local work safety official said yesterday. The official at the provincial work safety bureau, who only gave his last name, Han, said that two more people were missing from the accident that took place on Wednesday in the city of Yulin in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. He said odds were slim they would be found alive. Xinhua said 37 people were in a shaft when a cement pipeline collapsed in the state-owned mine that was under construction. It said rescued recovered two bodies and pulled out 24 people alive on Wednesday. The nation has some of the world’s deadliest mines, killing more than 100 people since the start of the year, but they are getting safer with stricter work safety enforcement.
CHINA
Former executive probed
A former executive of state-owned China Resources Co, a conglomerate of energy, land and consumer businesses in China and Hong Kong, is under investigation, the nation’s top anti-corruption body said. Wang Shuaiting (王帥廷), vice chairman of China Travel Service Hong Kong, is suspected of serious disciplinary violations — Beijing’s official jargon for graft — during his tenure at China Resources, the nation’s Central Discipline Inspection Commission said in a one-line statement on its Web site. The probe follows a similar investigation into Song Lin (宋林), the ex-chairman of China Resources who has been sacked from his post, state media said. Such investigations are part of a wider anti-corruption drive launched by President Xi Jinping (習近平), who has vowed to tackle pervasive graft, saying he will go after high-flying “tigers” as well as lowly “flies.”
JAPAN
Star held for drug possession
Pop star ASKA was arrested yesterday for possessing illegal stimulant drugs in his apartment in Tokyo, reports said. Investigators were probing how ASKA — who is part of the popular music duo CHAGE and ASKA — obtained the “small dose” of drugs and whether he had used them, NHK and Tokyo Broadcasting System Television said. ASKA, 56, whose real name is Shigeaki Miyazaki, reportedly denied the charges. Before his arrest, he also rejected news reports that he was a drug addict. Authorities were not immediately available to confirm his arrest. CHAGE and ASKA made their musical debut in 1979 and remain hugely popular in Japan and other Asian countries where the duo have toured places such as Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
UNITED STATES
Watergate aide dies at 79
Jeb Magruder, the aide to former US president Richard Nixon who was imprisoned for his role in the Watergate scandal and later claimed he overheard the president order the break-in, has died. He was 79. Magruder died on Sunday last week from complications from a stroke, according to Connecticut’s Hull Funeral Service home, which posted an obituary on Friday. He joined Nixon’s administration in 1969 as a White House deputy communications director, moving two years later to manage Nixon’s re-election campaign. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice in the cover-up that followed the burglary of the US Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington. Magruder spent seven months in prison. He was one of two dozen people eventually jailed for their role in the planning, execution and cover-up of what became one of the largest political scandals in US history. Magruder coordinated with White House counsel John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy, a member of Nixon’s special investigations team, on plans to gather intelligence for Nixon’s re-election campaign. Dean and Liddy went to prison for their roles in the scandal.
ARGENTINA
‘Unthinkable’ fossils found
Dinosaur fossils found in Patagonia provide the first evidence that long-necked, whip-tailed diplodocid sauropods survived well beyond the Jurassic period, when they were thought to have gone extinct, Argentine paleontologists said on Thursday. Pablo Gallina, a researcher at Buenos Aires’ Maimonides University, described the find as the first definitive evidence that diplodocids reached South America, and the most recent geologic record of this branch of sauropod anywhere. “It was a surprise, because the first remains we found were very deteriorated and we didn’t think much of them, but later through careful laboratory work, cleaning rock from the bones, we could see that they were from a diplodocid, something unthinkable for South America.” Gallina’s team says the fossils show that diplodocids roamed South America during the early Cretaceous era, well after scientists thought these kinds of dinosaurs became extinct.
FRANCE
Man dives under dress
A man rushed onto the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival and dove beneath actress America Ferrera’s dress. Security officials quickly pulled the man away as he tried to hide under Ferrera’s voluminous dress before the Friday premiere of How to Train Your Dragon 2. Ferrera did not seem ruffled on the carpet and was in good spirits at the movie’s afterparty, laughing with guests and taking pictures. She declined comment on the incident and festival organizers did not immediately return messages about the matter.
CANADA
Rob Ford spotted in Ontario
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been spotted in a small Ontario town despite his lawyer insisting that he is still in rehab. Dozens of people spotted Ford outside a shopping plaza in Bracebridge, a community in the province’s countryside, resident Brody Lisle, 19, said on Friday. Lisle was one of many locals who posed with the mayor for a photo. Ford’s lawyer Dennis Morris would not confirm his client’s whereabouts, but said he remains in rehab. Ford announced late last month that he was seeking treatment for an alcohol problem after new allegations of substance abuse surfaced in the media.
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