ITALY
Chinese cops begin patrols
Chinese police officers are in Italy to start patrols with Italian officers in Rome and Milan in a two-week experiment. Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said on Monday that the aim is to make Chinese tourists feel safe and added that it is the first time China has sent police officers to Europe for such a project. Starting yesterday, two Chinese uniformed police officers were to patrol with their Italian counterparts in Rome, while two others were to patrol with local police in Milan. For the second week, the Chinese will switch cities. The Chinese, who speak Italian, received training from Italian officials in Beijing. About 3 million Chinese tourists visit Italy annually.
UNITED STATES
Sting nets would-be bomber
A Florida man has been arrested and charged with trying to blow up a synagogue with a fake bomb following an FBI sting operation. James Gonzalo Medina, 40, was accused of intending to use a “weapon of mass destruction” at a synagogue in the city of Aventura near Miami, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. The FBI had earlier placed him under surveillance after he expressed anti-Semitic sentiments to an undercover informant. The criminal complaint says Medina claimed to have converted to Islam about four years ago and planned to claim that the Islamic State group had planned the attack. After Medina studied the synagogue, he was given an inert device he believed to be a bomb. He was arrested on Friday last week while en route to the synagogue.
MEXICO
Severed heads discovered
Two severed human heads were found in Mexico City over the weekend, authorities said on Monday — gruesome discoveries that are more common in other regions of the nation. A man’s head was found in a suitcase on Sunday in the crime-ridden neighborhood of Tepito, an official in the city prosecutor’s office said. Elsewhere, another head was found on Saturday, along with a hand and two forearms inside a black plastic bag that was dumped on a street corner in Atlampa District. More body parts from the same individual were found in bags discarded in two other municipalities, Mexico City prosecutors said. They said the bodies have been tentatively identified as those of a 23-year-old and a 27-year-old. Both have criminal records and were from a municipality in northern Mexico City. City officials have insisted that drug cartels do not operate in the metropolitan area of more than 20 million people.
GUATEMALA
Extortion gang raided
Security forces on Monday launched raids on one of the nation’s biggest gangs, arresting 72 suspected members of a cell specializing in extortion, officials said. More than 120 raids were carried out by nearly 300 law enforcement officers and prosecutors in the south, center and northeast of the nation. “The operation is focused on fighting the scourge of extortion,” Chief State Prosecutor Thelma Aldana told a news conference. The raids targeted members of the notorious Barrio 18 gang, who formed a ring known as Solo para Locos (Only for Crazies) that strong-armed public transport companies plying routes between the capital and southern coastal areas, the public ministry said. Aldana said the extortion cell earned nearly US$400,000 a year from its illegal activities and was linked to 30 murders. A spokeswoman for the public ministry said the raids turned up weapons and ammunition, grenades and other explosives, mobile phones and cash.
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