RUSSIA
Putin delays Kazakh visit
President Vladimir Putin has postponed a visit to Kazakhstan, officials from both countries said on Wednesday, although the Kremlin dismissed another report that plans had changed because Putin was unwell. Dauren Abayev, adviser and spokesman for Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, announced the delay of the meeting, originally scheduled for this week, without giving a reason or a new date. Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko had been expected to join Putin and Nazarbayev for talks in Astana to discuss economic cooperation, the conflict in Ukraine and other issues. He is now expected to visit at a later date.
UNITED STATES
Salvadorean loses appeal
The Board of Immigration Appeals on Wednesday upheld a deportation order against former Salvadorean defense minister Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who is accused of grave human rights violations, including torture and extrajudicial killings, during his nation’s civil war. As head of El Salvador’s Civil Guard and later defense minister, Vides Casanova “participated” in acts of torture and extrajudicial executions, by preventing either by omission or commission, defendants from being taken to trial, the board said. His deportation had been ordered in 2012, but he lodged an appeal against it. Vides Casanova arrived in the US in 1989 on an immigrant visa.
MEXICO
Whale fatally injures tourist
A 35-year-old Canadian woman died from injuries obtained when a surfacing gray whale crashed onto a tourist boat, the Baja California Sur state prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday. Firefighter commander Juan Carvajal Figueroa said the woman was in a boat with other tourists returning to the port of Cabo San Lucas about noon on Wednesday when the whale jumped from the water and landed on the boat, tossing the woman into the water. Navy personnel responded to the scene and moved the woman to shore. She died after being taken to a nearby clinic.
UNITED STATES
Alzheimer’s work touted
An experimental, non-invasive technique using targeted ultrasound has shown promise in lab animals toward eliminating the brain plaques that cause Alzheimer’s disease, researchers said on Wednesday. Tests on mice showed the approach eliminated almost all amyloid plaque in 75 percent of the animals studied, without damaging brain tissue, according to the study in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The therapy was delivered to the mice over several weeks. At the end, most of the treated animals were performing better in mazes, memory tests and other basic tasks than untreated mice. Researchers at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, plan to test the method in sheep next.
FRANCE
Robbers ambush jewel vans
About 15 armed suspects ambushed two vans carrying jewels worth millions on a highway in Burgundy in the dead of night, ejecting their drivers and speeding off. The vans were slowing down to approach a tollbooth on the A6 highway connecting Paris and Lyon at about midnight on Tuesday when four cars surrounded them and forced them to stop. No one was injured, and the van drivers were left at the scene. The vans were found burned 50km away. A search for the suspects is under way.
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