IRAQ
Army lacks recruits: US
The US has fallen behind its goal of training 24,000 security forces by this fall because the government has not provided enough troops to train, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said on Wednesday. Carter told the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee that the US military had trained just 9,000 soldiers so far. “Our training efforts in Iraq have thus far been slowed by a lack of trainees,” Carter said. “We simply have not received enough recruits.” Last week, the White House said the US was adding another training site in Iraq, near Ramadi, where about 450 US troops would train fighters, particularly Sunnis, in the war against the Islamic State group.
UNITED STATES
Williams to stay with NBC
Brian Williams will not return as NBC Nightly News anchor at the conclusion of his suspension for misrepresenting his role in a news story and following an investigation into other alleged misstatements, but he is expected to return to the network. The New York Times and CNN reported that an announcement on Williams’ future was expected yesterday. NBC News officials and Robert Barnett, Williams’ representative in negotiations with the network, would not comment on Wednesday on the reports. Williams and NBC have been discussing an undefined role for him.
UNITED KINGDOM
Online breast milk risky
A growing online craze among some fitness communities, fetishists and chronic disease sufferers for buying and drinking human breast milk poses serious health risks, experts said yesterday. Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, specialists said there was little evidence to support claims that the milk — traded via Web sites in a lucrative market for adult buyers — is some kind of super food that can boost health and fitness and ward off disease. Claims that it even helps with erectile dysfunction and cancer have no clinical basis, they said. On the contrary, the experts warned, raw and unpasteurized human breast milk bought online can expose consumers to many serious infectious diseases, including hepatitis, HIV and syphilis. It is also potentially very hazardous if used to replace a healthy balanced diet, Sarah Steele, a specialist at the global health and policy unit at Queen Mary University of London, wrote in the journal. Nutritionally, she said, there is less protein in human breast milk than other milks, like cow’s milk. She added that failure of women to sanitize properly when producing milk, failure to sterilize equipment properly and improper or prolonged storage and transportation of milk can also expose consumers to bacterial food-borne illnesses.
UNITED STATES
Books returned to Sweden
Two antique books dating to the 17th century, stolen in Stockholm in the 1990s and sold to people in the US by a German auction house, were returned to Sweden on Wednesday. US authorities handed back the books, intercepted by the FBI from a rare book store in Manhattan and from Cornell University, to the National Library of Sweden at a ceremony in New York. Both books were printed in the early 1600s in Europe. Neither of their most recent owners knew they had been stolen. The work by Italian architect Nicola Sabbatini, printed in 1638, is about stage craft and theater machinery, and Oculus by Bavarian physicist Christopher Scheiner is about the history of optics. It was printed in 1619.
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