CHINA
Arrests made over vaccines
Police have arrested 135 people in 22 provinces for illegally buying and selling vaccines, in the latest scandal to shake the nation’s confidence in vaccine safety. In an online statement on Friday, the national prosecuting office said arrest warrants were issued for 125 people for running vaccine businesses without a license. It said 15 of them have been formally indicted, and two were found guilty. Ten health officials were arrested for on-duty negligence. The accused health officials worked at local public health centers and knowingly bought the illegal vaccines and used them on people, the prosecuting office said. The massive investigation follows a case in March when a doctor in the eastern Shandong Province were found to have sold 2 million doses of improperly stored or expired vaccines.
INDIA
Road accidents kill 30
Two deadly road accidents in the northern Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh killed at least 30 people and injured 24, police said yesterday. An overcrowded jeep fell into a gorge 304m deep early yesterday, killing 13 people in Kinnaur District, about 200km east of state capital, Shimla, police said. “Thirteen people have died and one is injured. Ten of them were from one village,” said Surinder Mohan, a local police officer. It followed a separate tragedy late on Friday when a passenger minibus bus swerved off a hilly road into a gorge, killing 17 people and injuring 23 in the state’s Chamba District.
NORTH KOREA
Diplomat dies of cancer
A top diplomat who negotiated a short-lived 1994 deal with the US to freeze its nuclear programs in exchange for international aid has died of cancer, the nation’s state media said yesterday. The Korean Central News Agency said Kang Sok-ju, a “trustworthy revolutionary comrade” of leader Kim Jong-un and an “excellent son” of the nation’s ruling party, died of esophageal cancer on Friday afternoon at the age of 76. Kang, a longtime foreign policy specialist, was Pyongyang’s chief negotiator when it reached a landmark agreement with Washington in 1994 to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear facilities in exchange for international aid to build two electricity-producing nuclear reactors. The deal fell apart in 2002 after revelations that the nation had operated a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of the agreement, which was disclosed shortly after a meeting between Kang and then-US assistant secretary of state James Kelly.
VANUATU
Women to enter parliament
The Pacific island nation is to pass constitutional amendments to reserve seats in parliament for women, Minister of Justice Ronald Warsal said. There are currently no women in the nation’s 52-seat parliament. The nation, made up of a string of islands, has a population of 250,000 people. Amendments to the constitution could take place as early as next month, Warsal told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “We do not have a fixed number yet as to the number of seats, but the amendment will be to the constitution to say parliament will prescribe a system which will include reserved seats for women,” Warsal said. “It has been over 10 years since we have had a woman in parliament... It is very hard for women to win seats in Vanuatu, so it is better that we amend the constitution,” he said.
BRAZIL
Rio sees protracted firefight
A heavy firefight between law enforcement and drug trafficking gangs raged for hours in Rio de Janeiro’s largest slum, sowing panic among residents. The gun battle broke out on Friday afternoon in Rocinha, a massive slum wedged into one of the city’s richest neighborhoods. No deaths or injuries were immediately reported. On its Instagram feed, the elite BOPE police unit said its agents were after a notorious drug trafficker believed to be holed up in the slum. The trafficker, known as Rogerio 157, was not thought to have been captured. The firefight dragged on for several hours, alarming both Rocinha residents as well as those living in nearby wealthy neighborhoods. Rocinha is among Rio’s so-called pacified slums, with a police presence.
COSTA RICA
Volcano chokes San Jose
A volcano erupted on Friday near San Jose, choking surrounding communities with smoke and ash. In the capital, 30km from the Turrialba volcano, the air reeked of sulfur as dust and ash coated buildings and vehicles. “It seems to me to be the strongest [Turrialba] eruption in the past six years,” volcanologist Gino Gonzalez said in televised comments. He spoke to media near the site of the eruption, where a vast cloud of gray smoke was billowing from the 3,340m volcano. Television channels showed footage of shuttered schools and hundreds of people flocking to hospitals with breathing and skin problems. The National Emergencies Commission in a statement advised people to wear masks and tight clothing to protect their lungs and skin from the ash. Gonzalez said the wind was blowing the ash and smoke west, toward the country’s most populated areas.
UNITED STATES
Dead body found on dolly
On a narrow street on New York’s Staten Island lined with mostly brick-and-siding duplexes, it was a conspicuous sight: A man pushing the body of an unconscious woman on a dolly. On Friday, just after 7am, authorities said, someone called the police. As officers arrived to Post Lanein, the Mariners Harbor neighborhood on the island’s northern shore, the man with the dolly ran off. The woman, who was described by the police as in her 20s or 30s, was pronounced dead by emergency workers at the scene, the authorities said. Her name has not been released. The medical examiner is to determine the cause of death. However, investigators are trying to locate the man, Anthony Lopez, 31, who they said was last seen with her body. Later on Friday, police said Lopez’s connection to the woman remained unclear and released a mug shot of Lopez taken last month after he was arrested on a charge of fare evasion.
UNITED STATES
Blimp lands next to highway
A blimp has made an emergency landing and deflated at a construction site next to a Philadelphia highway. No injuries have been reported on the two-passenger blimp or on the ground where it landed, near the SugarHouse Casino. The blimp floated over the Delaware River on Friday night before going down in the Fishtown neighborhood along Interstate 95. A section of the highway was closed briefly while crews secured the area and inspected the blimp. It is unclear what caused the blimp to go down. Police said the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have been notified. The blimp displayed advertising for adhesives company Bostik Inc, based in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.
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