CHINA
Ex-Shanghai official jailed
The former health commission deputy director in Shanghai has been sentenced to 19 years in prison after being found guilty of taking bribes, corruption and embezzlement, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Former Shanghai Commission of Health and Family Planning deputy director Huang Fengping (黃峰平)was arrested in December 2013 amid a government crackdown on corruption in the health service. Xinhua, quoting the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate Court, said Huang was found to have embezzled 70,000 yuan (US$11,200) of public property and taken monetary bribes amounting to 3.1 million yuan.
SENEGAL
Hissene Habre faces trial
A court has decided to try former Chadian president Hissene Habre on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture. The Extraordinary African Chambers in the Senegalese Courts made the announcement on Friday evening in response to the findings of a 19-month investigation into alleged crimes committed during Habre’s presidency, which lasted from 1982 to 1990. Habre lived a life of luxurious exile in Senegal for more than 20 years until June 2013, when paramilitary police officers stormed one of his two homes in the capital, Dakar, and took him into custody. The trial is expected to begin in May or June.
MEXICO
Train-bus toll hits 20
The number of confirmed dead from a collision between a passenger bus and a freight train in the north of the nation has been raised to 20, officials said on Saturday. Authorities in the state of Nuevo Leon said 16 dead were taken to facilities there after Friday’s crash, and officials in neighboring Tamaulipas said four fatalities were at a hospital in that state. The cause of the accident at a grade crossing is still under investigation. It happened in the Tamaulipas town of Anahuac, which is near the border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas. The train was operated by the Transporte Frontera line on a route from Nuevo Laredo to Coahuila. Officials said the bus was traveling from Nuevo Laredo toward Nueva Rosita in Coahuila.
SPAIN
Airport boar-ding problems
The national airport authority on Saturday said that a wild boar broke through a perimeter fence at Madrid Barajas Airport, briefly closing runways and delaying two landings. The beast set off security alarms late on Friday. The incident delayed an incoming flight from London for 20 minutes and a domestic flight from A Coruna by 10 minutes, the airport authority’s statement said. The hole was repaired.
CROATIA
‘Pot-eye’ the Sailor?
A man is appealing his conviction on charges of promoting drug use after he used Facebook to depict the main character of Popeye the Sailor Man imbibing an alternative to his trademark spinach. Stjepan Pavlekovic, a 49-year-old unemployed geologist, posted a picture of Popeye in front of a marijuana plant, with pot leaves tattooed on his forearms, and a pipe giving off green smoke. He also posted a picture of Disney’s Snow White being offered a marijuana leaf by a witch. Pavlekovic says he was just joking. Authorities in Varazdin, northern Croatia, fined him 1,000 kunas (US$148). “This is absurd. I posted that as a joke,” Pavlekovic, who lives in the northern town of Lepoglava, told reporters on Friday. He filed an appeal against his conviction last week.
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