CANADA
Airplane slides off runway
An Air Canada airplane made an “abrupt” landing and left the runway at the Halifax airport in bad weather, but there were no immediate reports of injuries, authorities said early yesterday. The airline said all passengers on Flight AC624 from Toronto left the plane and went to the terminal. Halifax Stanfield Airport said there were no injuries reported. The airline said a preliminary count indicated 132 passengers and five crew members. Flight tracking service FlightAware showed that the plane is an Airbus A320, which has typical seating for 150.
UNITED STATES
Man fined in ‘legroom wars’
A man who forced a flight to be diverted after reacting angrily to a seat being reclined in front of him was ordered to pay more than US$7,000 by a US court on Friday. The case was part of a series of three incidents dubbed the “legroom wars,” which unfolded over a nine-day period in August and September last year when passengers lost their temper over reclining seats, forcing US passenger planes to divert. Edmond Alexandre, 60, a resident of Paris, pleaded guilty to interference with flight crew members and was sentenced by a federal judge in Boston. A US district judge sentenced Alexandre to one year of supervised release, a US$1,000 fine and restitution of US$6,303 to American Airlines. He had faced a maximum potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
UNITED STATES
Belt yields clues to suspects
Police in Wyoming have charged three people with murder in the case of a headless corpse found in a ditch whose ornately worked belt and buckle ultimately yielded clues to its identity, authorities said on Friday. Sandra Garcia, 27, the ex-girlfriend of the victim, her brother Pedro Garcia, 28, and John Marquez, 51, were charged in the shooting death and mutilation of Juan Antonio Guerra Torres, a 30-year-old Mexican national, Park County Sheriff Scott Steward said in a statement. A duck hunter and his son discovered Guerra Torres’ partly dismembered body in January last year in a drainage ditch off a rural road in remote northwest Wyoming. Police sought the public’s help to identify the man, whose head, left arm and other unspecified body parts were missing. In May last year, investigators were able to name him after they followed leads indicating that his belt and buckle depicting a horse’s head were examples of piteado, a form of craftsmanship practiced in Mexico and popular with horsemen and cowboys.
TOGO
Election postponed 10 days
Togo’s presidential election has been postponed by 10 days to April 25, Minister of Communications Germaine Koumealo Anate announced on Friday, after calls for a delay over claims the voter register was flawed. The chairman of regional bloc ECOWAS, Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, had suggested the postponement during a visit to Togo on Tuesday last week, citing the need to update the electoral roll. The opposition claims the electoral roll is plagued by “serious anomalies” and says it must be checked before a transparent vote can be held. President Faure Gnassingbe is running for a third five-year term in office. He came to power in 2005 after the death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who abolished a limit on the number of mandates. Attempts to introduce term limits have been blocked in parliament, where Gnassingbe’s party has a majority.
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