UNITED STATES
Teacher charged over lab
Authorities say they found a methamphetamine lab inside the North Carolina home of a 38-year-old elementary-school teacher. Johnston County deputies told reporters that the equipment to make methamphetamine was found on Friday morning when officers served a search warrant on the home in Zebulon, about 38km east of Raleigh. Investigators said Lori Whitley and her 41-year-old husband, Gary, face a number of charges, including manufacturing methamphetamine and child abuse. Deputies say the couple’s eight-year-old son was in the home. Wake County school officials said Whitley has been a third-grade teacher at Wendell Elementary School since 2002. Whether the couple had lawyers was not known.
UNITED STATES
Collegian wins literary prize
A senior at Maryland’s Washington College has been awarded a US$62,900 literary prize. Alexander Vidiani, who grew up in Hunt Valley, a Baltimore suburb, was named the Sophie Kerr winner on Friday. It is the nation’s largest literary prize for undergraduates. Vidiani submitted a portfolio with poems about loss, masculinity, fatherhood and other topics. Washington College professors reviewed 25 writing portfolios for the prize. Vidiani said in a telephone interview that he is elated and honored to have been awarded the prize. In the fall, Vidiani is to start a master’s program in poetry at the University of Maryland. He said he hopes to eventually earn a doctorate and return to Washington College to teach. The award recognizes a graduating senior at the school who shows literary ability and promise.
UNITED STATES
Mutilation case goes to court
An Oklahoma woman accused of slashing the face and cutting parts off the corpse of a romantic rival is due to appear in a Tulsa court tomorrow for a hearing on increasing her bail, law enforcement officials said on Friday. Shaynna Sims last week was charged with the “unlawful removal of [a] body part from deceased,” for allegedly cutting off a toe and the breasts from the body of another woman as it was awaiting cremation at a funeral home, the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office said.
UNITED STATES
Shooting suspect arrested
A man who reportedly shot at George Zimmerman — who is known for the shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin — during a confrontation on Monday along a busy central Florida road has been arrested. Matthew Apperson was on Friday charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and firing a missile into an occupied conveyance, Lake Mary, Florida, police reported in a news release. Apperson on Friday evening turned himself in at the police department. Zimmerman lawyer Don West said the former neighborhood watch volunteer recently moved to another state, but came back to the Orlando suburb of Lake Mary for Mother’s Day. Zimmerman was driving to a doctor’s appointment on Monday when Apperson fired a gun into his truck without provocation, detectives said. The police recovered two guns from Apperson and one from Zimmerman. Both men had their guns legally. The passenger window of Zimmerman’s pickup had a bullet hole in it, and Zimmerman suffered minor injuries from flying glass and debris. Apperson’s attorney, Mark NeJame, on Friday said in an e-mail that his client’s bond was set at US$35,000 and that his release had been arranged.
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