UNITED STATES
Marathon reading of Melville
Moby-Dick fans from around the world are getting ready for their own grueling quest — a marathon reading of Herman Melville’s classic. The New Bedford Whaling Museum this weekend is holding its 20th annual nonstop reading of the man versus whale novel. More than 150 volunteers are to recite snippets of the novel aloud in a cover-to-cover reading that starts at midday tomorrow, goes through the night and ends on Sunday about 25 hours later. Hundreds are expected to attend the reading while thousands more follow online. This year’s celebrity reader, who always reads the first section of the book and its famous first line “Call me Ishmael,” is author Nathaniel Philbrick.
UNITED STATES
Florida executes Oscar Ray
Florida put to death on Thursday a former truck driver who murdered three young women in 1986 and made headlines again after one of his defense team fell in love with him. Convicted serial killer Oscar Ray Bolin, 53, became the first person to be executed in the US this year after receiving a lethal injection at 10:16pm, a local prison administration official said. Bolin was also convicted of kidnapping and rape in another case. His victims were aged 17, 25 and 26.
BOLIVIA
Titicaca to be cleaned up
Bolivia and Peru on Thursday agreed to provide more than US$500 million toward cleaning up Lake Titicaca, whose polluted waters are home to some animals nearing extinction, a Bolivian environment official said. The deal, which is meant to improve the lake’s biodiversity, includes environmental management and recovery through to 2025. Lake Titicaca, the highest in the world, at an altitude of 3,800m above sea level, provides a habitat for a number of frogs, birds and fish, including two species that are close to extinction. Minister for the Environment and Water Alexandra Moreira and Peruvian Minister of State for the Environment Manuel Pulgar signed the agreement during a public event. “For the short term we have a limit of US$117 million and for the long term US$400 million,” Moreira’s advisor Sergio Arispe said. “It’s a logistical matter we are trying to manage through 2025,” he said. Part of the waste in the lake is generated by the Bolivian city of El Alto, near La Paz, which is home to about 800,000 people.
HONDURAS
‘White City’ search begins
Honduras on Thursday said it was starting a major archeological dig for a mysterious, ancient “White City” supposedly hidden in jungle in its northeast that explorers and legends have spoken of for centuries. “Today a group of archeologists and scientists is traveling to the White City to start excavations in coming days,” President Juan Orlando Hernandez said in a speech. The hope is that they might uncover incontrovertible proof of the existence of the fabled site, which has also been called “the City of the Monkey God” and, in Spanish, la Ciudad Blanca. According to 16th-century Spanish conquistadors and to legend, the settlement, dating back thousands of years, is meant to be filled with fabulous riches. Explorers over the past century have claimed several times to have spotted the White City in the thick jungle inside the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve on Honduras’ Caribbean coast. Archeologists in recent decades found what looked like ancient mounds. Then in 2012 an American documentary team using mapping technology in a small plane discovered what appeared to be the overgrown remains of an ancient civilization.
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