FRANCE
Contest offers tower rooms
Four lucky competition winners are set to be the first people in history to use the Eiffel Tower as a vacation home next month. Rental company HomeAway is taking over part of the first floor of the iconic 300m-tall landmark for the duration of the UEFA Euro 2016 soccer tournament in Paris and transforming it into Hausmannian-style living quarters. The competition opened on Thursday for the chance to stay in the famous monument, which provides panoramic views onto the Arc de Triomphe, the Sacre Coeur and the Seine river. HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples called the move “unprecedented” and said it was “guaranteed to provide the most epic vacation memories of a lifetime.”
ISRAEL
Minister of defense resigns
Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon yesterday announced his resignation after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his post to hardliner Avigdor Lieberman to expand his governing coalition. “I told the prime minister this morning that due to his conduct in recent developments, and in light of my lack of trust in him, I am resigning from the government and Knesset and taking a break from political life,” the former armed forces chief of staff said on Twitter. Yaalon’s surprise resignation comes two days after former minister of foreign affairs Lieberman said he would be open to bringing his far-right Yisrael Beitenu party into Netanyahu’s coalition if a number of conditions were met, including being named minister of defense. Yaalon had been at loggerheads with Netanyahu over his insistence that senior officers be encouraged to “speak their mind.” Reports said Netanyahu had been considering offering the retired lieutenant general the ministry of foreign affairs as a consolation, although the offer was never made.
PAKISTAN
Bomber blows himself up
A suicide bomber in the northwest yesterday accidentally detonated his vest while riding a motorcycle on an empty road, killing himself and two other militants also on bike, police said. The incident took place in the Sufaid Sang suburb just northwest of Peshawar, the region’s major city, where the trio were likely planning an attack, a senior local police official told reporters. “Their plan was foiled when the suicide vest of one suicide bomber detonated prematurely,” Kashif Zulfiqar said. “Their target was not known, but they were moving towards a crowded area where there are several police and military check posts,” he added. Police defused a jacket fitted on the dead body of a second would-be bomber and recovered a Kalashnikov rifle, eight hand grenades and hundreds of live bullets. Peshawar Police Chief Mubarak Zeb confirmed the incident to reporters.
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