MEXICO
Priest’s remains found
The remains of a Ugandan priest who traveled to the country as a missionary were found along with another 12 bodies in a clandestine grave there, religious officials said on Friday last week. The bodies were discovered on Oct. 29 in the troubled southern state of Guerrero, a spokesman for the diocese of the state capital Chilpancingo told reporters on condition of anonymity. The priest, who was apparently was killed by a bullet in the head, was reported missing on April 30. Residents who witnessed the kidnapping said that Father John Ssenyondo was intercepted by a group of armed men while returning from a rural community where he had gone to celebrate Mass. He was apparently killed for refusing to baptize a child whose parents were not married.
CZECH REPUBLIC
Miners killed in quake
An official said a powerful tremor has killed three men working in a coal mine. OKD mining company spokesman Marek Sibrt said the miners died late on Friday morning, 900m below the surface at the CSA mine in Karvina, 360km east of Prague. Sibrt says nine other miners working at that location were saved by a specialized team of mining rescuers. They escaped with injuries that were not life-threatening. No other details, including the identities of the victims, were immediately released. Jan Zednik of the Institute of Geophysics told Czech public television that the tremor had a magnitude of 3.5.
FRANCE
Mystery wild cat not tiger
A two-day search by about 200 French police and members of the armed forces for a wild cat roaming through towns and across a major highway came to one conclusion on Friday: It is not a tiger. The wild cat caught in several fuzzy photographs in the town of Montevrain was spotted again on Friday morning by truckers on a main route between Paris and eastern France. However, in a statement late on Friday, the regional administration near the search site said experts have concluded that the wandering animal is not a tiger, but a feline of an unknown species. France’s national hunting office could not be reached for comment. One theory is that the mystery cat could be a lynx — a wild cat once common in France before being hunted out of existence. It was reintroduced in France in the 1970s, according to the wildlife group Ferus. However, the nearest known lynx habitat, the Vosges Mountains, is 350km from where the cat was first spotted on Thursday last week.
RUSSIA
Wiki alternative in works
Russia plans to create its own answer to Wikipedia to ensure its citizens have access to more “detailed and reliable” information about the nation, the presidential library said on Friday. Citing Western threats, the Kremlin has asserted more control over the Internet this year in what critics call moves to censor the Web, while introducing more pro-Kremlin content similar to closely controlled state media, such as TV. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia assembled and written by Internet users around the world, has pages dedicated to nearly every region or major city within Russia’s 11 time zones, but the Kremlin library said this was not good enough. “Analysis of this resource showed that it is not capable of providing information about the region and life of the nation in a detailed or sufficient way,” the state news agency RIA quoted a statement from the presidential library as saying. President Vladimir Putin has branded the Internet a “CIA special project.”
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
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
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