UNITED STATES
Cop found not guilty
The Baltimore police officer facing the most serious charges in the death of Freddie Gray was acquitted on Thursday. The trial was for the officer who drove the van in which Gray was being taken to a police station and suffered an ultimately fatal spine injury. Caesar Goodson was acquitted on all charges, including second degree murder and manslaughter. Goodson was the third of six officers charged over the death of the 25-year-old, which triggered riots in Maryland’s largest city last year. No guilty verdicts have been handed down in the three trials. Because the state failed to meet its burden of proof in any of the seven charges against Goodson, “the verdict on all counts is not guilty,” Judge Barry Williams, who presided over the case, told a packed courtroom.
UNITED STATES
Kids get ‘Hamilton’ grant
The Rockefeller Foundation said it is giving US$6 million to help 100,000 schoolchildren see the Tony Award-winning musical Hamilton. The foundation said on Thursday the funding would allow students at some schools in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Washington area to see the show for US$10. Plans are already in the works to open a Chicago company of Hamilton, as well as one in London and a US national tour to start on the west coast. The students are to attend special matinee performances and interact with cast members during the program. The funding follows last year’s pilot program that provided US$1.5 million for 20,000 New York schoolchildren to see the musical.
AUSTRALIA
Debris could be from MH370
A piece of aircraft debris found off the coast of Tanzania is to be examined to see whether it could be from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, Australian officials said yesterday. Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester gave no description of the fragment found on Pemba Island, the latest in a string of pieces being examined for links to the aircraft lost more than two years ago with 239 people onboard. “The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is seeking further information on the debris to ascertain whether it was from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, MH370,” Chester said in a statement. The bureau said Malaysian officials were in contact with Tanzanian authorities to arrange for the piece to be examined.
RUSSIA
Putin pans power project
President Vladimir Putin has voiced strong concern about Mongolia’s plans to build a hydroelectric plant on a river flowing into a lake in Siberia. Putin, speaking during a meeting on Thursday with leaders of China and Mongolia in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, said that the prospective China-funded dam on the Selenga River would threaten Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake. He suggested that Russian power plants could increase electricity supply to Mongolia instead to meet its energy needs.
UNITED NATIONS
Missile launches condemned
The Security Council on Thursday strongly condemned two North Korean ballistic missile launches this week, calling them a “grave violation” of a ban on all ballistic missile activity that is contributing to the nation’s nuclear weapons program. The council reiterated its demand that North Korea end its “flagrant” violations, halt all nuclear tests and ballistic missile activity, and comply with five sanction resolutions imposed since the nation’s first nuclear test in 2006.
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