GEORGIA
Former president dies
Former president Eduard Shevardnadze, also a former Soviet foreign minister, died yesterday after a long struggle with illness, his personal assistant said. Shevardnadze, who was 86, played a vital role in ending the Cold War as Soviet foreign minister, went on to lead his native country in the stormy early years after independence. His assistant, Marina Davitashvili, said he had died after a long illness. She did not give any further details. Russia’s Interfax news agency reported he had died at midday local time. As foreign minister under former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Shevardnadze oversaw the thaw in relations with the West before the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union was dismantled. He was one of the intellectual fathers of perestroika (“restructuring”), the reform policy that Gorbachev said was conceived during a stroll along the shores of the Black Sea with his comrade, although they later fell out. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Shevardnadze returned home to become president and brought some stability to the republic after a period of anarchy, when protesters toting Kalashnikovs prowled the streets. He was toppled in the country’s 2003 Rose Revolution. In his final years, he lived in his residence and did not travel much.
UNITED STATES
Marathon-linked trial starts
Testimony is set to begin this week in the federal trial of a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Azamat Tazhayakov is accused of removing a backpack and other items from Tsarnaev’s dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth several days after the bombings. Prosecutors say Tazhayakov and another college friend, Dias Kadyrbayev, took the backpack containing fireworks out of Tsarnaev’s room after they realized he was a suspect in the attack. Tazhayakov has pleaded not guilty to obstruction of justice and conspiracy charges. Opening statements were scheduled for yesterday.
CANADA
Lac-Megantic has memorial
Crowds packed a church in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, to remember the 47 people who were killed a year ago when a runaway oil train derailed and exploded. Early on Sunday morning, about 1,000 people marched in a solemn procession and observed a minute of silence at 1:15am, the exact moment when the fuel-laden train exploded in cataclysmic fireballs devastating the town center. Later, first responders who battled the inferno were applauded as they entered St Agnes Church in long lines. Framed photographs of the people killed in the blast and fire, and floral bouquets were displayed at the front of the church, near the crash site.
ARGENTINA
President to miss event
President Cristina Fernandez will miss Independence Day celebrations this week to continue recovering from an acute throat infection. The Presidential Medical Unit said on Sunday that the 61-year-old leader will perform her duties from the presidential residence through tomorrow, when she was scheduled to preside over events marking 198 years of independence. Fernandez’s withdrawal from public coincides with the start yesterday of negotiations in New York to resolve the nation’s dispute with US bondholders over US$1.5 billion in debts. The illness is the latest health issue to sideline Fernandez. In January, she was treated for hip pain and sciatica. She underwent head surgery to remove a blood clot late last year.
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