UNITED STATES
Bush sorry for French quip
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s rebooted election campaign included an apology to the French on Tuesday for making a joke about their work ethic. “I made the mistake of saying that the Congress operates on a French workweek,” Bush told reporters in a deadpan voice while campaigning in New Hampshire, according to Time magazine. “I really did a disservice to the French.” During last week’s debate among the Republican candidates, Bush had criticized one of his rivals, Senator Marco Rubio, for missing votes, as well as Congress in general for working a three-day week. “I mean, literally, the Senate — what is it, like a French workweek?” Bush said. His comment drew a rebuke from French Ambassador Gerard Araud and e-mails from French journalists. “So, my God, I totally insulted an entire country — our first ally, that helped us become free as a nation. And I apologize. That did a huge disservice to France,” the former Florida governor said.
UNITED STATES
Loaded gun left with child
A man has been arrested for leaving his five-year-old granddaughter in the Arizona desert with a loaded gun while he went off to have a hamburger, authorities said on Tuesday. The child’s family reported her missing four hours after Paul Rater, 53, left his home on Sunday night in the town of Buckeye. Authorities launched a search operation and relatives ended up finding the girl in a desert area with a loaded pistol, said a statement from the sheriff’s office in Maricopa County. Rater acknowledged having abandoned the girl so he could go off for drinks and a hamburger. He was jailed on Monday on charges of abusing and abandoning a child.
UNITED STATES
Man convicted for biting dog
A Florida man has been convicted of biting a small dog on the face and choking him so hard his eye popped out. The Palm Beach Post reported that jurors found 37-year-old David Etzel guilty of animal cruelty on Tuesday. He faces a year or more in jail at his sentencing hearing tomorrow. Etzel’s mother told deputies in April that her 2.03m, 170kg son had been drinking and was teasing her shih tzu named Cujo, prompting the dog to bite him. She said Etzel then bit the dog back. Veterinarians were able to put Cujo’s eye back in, but officials say the animal is permanently blind in that eye. A veterinarian told deputies the injuries were comparable to being hit by a vehicle or attacked by another dog.
HONDURAS
Hungry crocs receive feast
About 11,000 crocodiles that had gone unfed for almost a month — because their owners had their assets frozen due to US accusations they laundered money for drug traffickers — were finally fed on Tuesday, officials said. Pablo Dubon of the state Forest Conservation Institute said 10.5 tonnes of chicken had been provided to feed the animals at the Cocodrilos Continental farm, owned by the Rosenthal family in San Manuel, near San Pedro Sula. The crocodile farm was set up to sell meat and skins. Manager Antonio Mejia said another company that had been a supplier to the farm in the past donated another 2,000kg of cow entrails. “That will take care of us — for two to three days,” he said. On Monday it emerged that the crocodiles and seven lions also kept at the farm were dying of hunger, and that staff had not been paid for more than two weeks.
CHINA
Cop stabbed to death
A man stabbed a police officer to death and wounded three other officers yesterday after a driving dispute, police said, reporting the latest in a spate of knife attacks that have shocked the nation. The 42-year-old suspect, surnamed Deng, was captured after the attack in Luoyang in Henan Province, city police said in a statement on their microblog. On Tuesday afternoon, officers had pulled up Deng for driving a motorcycle without a license, police said. Deng told police that he had returned yesterday with a knife to the place where he had been stopped and attacked the officers on duty there, the statement added. It was the latest in a series of violent incidents, including a mass stabbing at a train station in Kunming last year that left 31 dead.
INDONESIA
Volcano shuts Bali airport
Bali’s airport, one of the nation’s busiest international terminals, was closed yesterday, canceling hundreds of flights, because of ash spewed by a volcano on a nearby island, authorities said. Ngurah Rai International Airport is closed until this morning and would reopen after a re-evaluation of the situation, officials said. “A total of 692 flights have been canceled,” airport authorities said in a statement. Mount Rinjani on nearby Lombok has been spewing ash since last weekend. “Tremors due to volcanic activities are continuously recorded and potential of more eruption is still high,” the meteorological agency said in a statement. Media reported the volcanic eruption had also delayed the deportation of one of India’s most-wanted men, Rajendra Nikalje, widely known as Chhota Rajan. He was arrested in Bali last week after a two-decade international manhunt.
EGYPT
Suicide bombing kills six
A car bomb targeting a police officer’s club in El Arish killed six people and wounded 10 yesterday, security sources said. Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate, Sinai Province, claimed responsibility for the attack, which it described as a suicide bombing. The group has killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers since the army toppled former president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.
ISRAEL
Claws out in strays furor
Claws were out after a Cabinet minister proposed sending stray dogs and cats to another nation as an alternative to government-funded efforts to sterilize them. “Use the budget to transfer stray dogs and/or cats of one gender [all the males or all the females] to a foreign nation that will agree to accept them,” Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel said in a letter to a Cabinet colleague leaked to the Yedioth Ahronoth daily. The proposal, which a spokesman for Ariel said had been rejected after initial consultations within the Agriculture Ministry, was roundly criticized by animal rights activists and bemused opposition politicians. “No way am I going to apply for a foreign passport for Pitzkeleh,” former foreign minister Tzipi Livni tweeted above a photograph showing the smiling Zionist Union party politician reclining on a sofa and feeding her cat. The newspaper report said Arie views spaying and neutering as possible violations of God’s directive “to be fruitful and multiply,” but Zahava Galon, head of the opposition Meretz party, wrote on Facebook that Ariel’s idea ran contrary to “basic morality” — and she quipped that it was time to find a nation prepared to grant the minister shelter instead.
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