PHILIPPINES
China accused over ramming
Manila yesterday accused China of ramming Filipino fishing boats off a disputed shoal in the South China Sea and demanded that Beijing respect its sovereignty over the potential flashpoint territory. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it has sent two notes of protest over the Jan. 29 incident off the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), which Taiwan also claims, as well as the removal of critically endangered giant clams by Chinese fishermen in the area a week earlier. “The Philippines continues to urge China to respect the Philippines’ sovereign rights and jurisdiction,” ministry Secretary Albert del Rosario said.
NORTH KOREA
Memoir claims attacked
Pyongyang yesterday attacked a “deceitful” memoir by former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak in which he claimed Pyongyang tried to sell Seoul a leadership summit. The North said Lee had “begged” for a sit down with its then-leader Kim Jong-il. “The traitor Lee reached out to us and begged us to accept a special envoy or a summit whenever he was cornered politically,” the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency. In his just-published memoir, President’s Time, Lee said the North had demanded an “absurd” [US]$10 billion payoff and close to a million tonnes in food aid in 2009 in return for agreeing to a summit with Seoul.
INDIA
Senior official sacked
The government has forced one of its most senior officials to resign after reports said he had interfered in a police probe into a Ponzi scheme. The government said late on Wednesday that it had accepted the resignation of Home Secretary Anil Goswami with “immediate effect” without giving reasons. Newspapers yesterday said that Home Minister Rajnath Singh sacked Goswami after being notified that he had tried to halt the arrest of a former minister under the previous Congress government.
INDIA
Police detain protesters
Police yesterday detained hundreds of people who were protesting against attacks on churches in New Dehli and who accuse the government of inaction to prevent or investigate the incidents. Police said the protesters were detained as they marched toward the residence of Home Minister Rajnath Singh in an area where protests are banned. “The protesters have no permission to protest on the road. They can’t just march to the home minister’s residence. We have to protect the homes of VIPs,” a senior police officer, Mukesh Kumar Meena, told New Delhi Television network.
PHILIPPINES
Bali bomber likely dead: FBI
The FBI yesterday said that DNA analysis indicates one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, Bali bomber Zulkifli bin Hir, was likely killed in a police raid last month that also claimed the lives of 44 officers. Zulkifli, also known as Marwan, was the main target of an operation in a remote town on Sunday last week. He is a key suspect in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people. The FBI tested a biological sample from a body identified by local police as Zulkifli, David Bowdich, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said in a statement. “Although the results of the DNA examinations do not provide absolute identification, the results do support that the biological sample provided by Philippine authorities came from Marwan,” he said.
RUSSIA
Mother released from prison
A mother of seven, charged with treason for allegedly informing the Ukrainian embassy about troop movements into eastern Ukraine, said she lived through “hell” before her release from a high-security Moscow prison. Svetlana Davydova was detained on Jan. 21 at her home in the western city of Vyazma and sent to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison. She was released on Tuesday after human rights officials appealed for her to be granted bail. “I went through such hell. I want to thank everyone for their support,” Davydova said on Wednesday in an interview posted on the Web site of civil rights group Open Russia, which is funded by former imprisoned oil tycoon and now opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “My arrest was a shock. The fact I was isolated from society and wasn’t allowed to contact my relatives was stressful.” Davydova called the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow after she noticed soldiers from a nearby army base apparently being sent to Ukraine’s rebel-held eastern Donetsk region, according to investigators, Kommersant newspaper reported on Thursday last week.
SWITZERLAND
Missing teen found alive
A 19-year-old American student, who disappeared over the weekend while skiing in the Alps, was rescued after 48 harrowing hours lost in the snow, the police said on Wednesday. After searching for more than two days rescuers finally found the teenager, who went missing while skiing on Sunday near the Diablerets resort, the police in the canton of Vaud said in a statement. “The man was found conscious, in a state of hypothermia and exhaustion, and stuck waist-deep in the thick blanket of snow,” the statement said, describing his survival as “miraculous.” The police said the teenager had disappeared while trying to “free ride” back to the resort. The student told public broadcaster RTS he had not wanted to go off-piste, but had become lost in a snow storm.
UNITED STATES
Lung cancer leading killer
Lung cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death among women in developed nations, overtaking breast cancer, which had long been the top killer, researchers said on Wednesday. The new analysis was led by researchers at the American Cancer Society in collaboration with the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France. Researchers said the change reflects trends in tobacco use. Lung cancer has been the top cancer killer among men for several decades in both developed and developing nations. The tobacco epidemic took hold later among women than it did in men. In less developed nations, breast cancer remains the leading cancer killer among women.
UNITED STATES
Flight attendant arrested
An American Airlines flight attendant has been arrested after 317.5kg of coins intended for UNICEF were found in his car at Kennedy International Airport in New York City. A Port Authority police spokesman on Wednesday said that 56-year-old Marco Costa was arrested on Saturday last week on possession of stolen property and other charges. Spokesman Joe Pentangelo said Miami-resident Costa collected US$2,900 in euros, US$1,800 in pound sterling and US$150 in US coins from passengers as part of a charitable partnership with the UN children’s agency. He said bags holding the money in a car sagging low to the ground were found in October 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