COSTA RICA
Bus crash kills 12 people
A bus plunged off a steep road in a mountainous area north of the capital on Thursday, killing 12 people and injuring another 12, rescue officials said. The 31 passengers on the bus were retired staff members of the National University on their way to a reserve to carry out social work, the institution’s rector said. “It looks like the bus’ brakes failed,” Esteban Gonzalez, the son of one of the survivors, told a TV network. The accident occurred near Cinchona, a village about 25km north of the capital San Jose, on a road winding between two volcanoes.
UNITED STATES
Woman charged with murder
A woman has been charged in the death of a 19-year-old woman whose body was found nearly 30 years ago in Kansas City. The Wyandotte County District Attorney’s office on Thursday said in a statement that 48-year-old Carolyn Heckert is charged with first-degree murder in the December 1989 death of Sarah DeLeon, who was found stabbed to death along some railroad tracks. Heckert is being held on a US$1 million bond following her arrest on Wednesday in Smithville, Missouri, which is about 30km east of Kansas City. Police have said new DNA collection and testing technology prompted investigators to reopen the DeLeon case in July 2014.
UNITED STATES
Toddler chokes on octopus
A southern Kansas man who admitted to endangering a child after his girlfriend’s two-year-old son ended up with a small octopus lodged in his throat on Thursday was sentenced to two years of probation. Matthew Gallagher, 37, also received a suspended one-year jail term after pleading guilty to a reduced count of child endangerment, as well as charges of battery and interference with law enforcement. All are misdemeanors. The boy’s 21-year-old mother told investigators she returned to her Wichita home from work on April 5 to find Gallagher performing CPR on her son, whom court records identified only as “C.F.” The boy later vomited at a hospital and medical staff suctioned an octopus from his airway. Wichita police detective Kevin Brown wrote in an affidavit that Gallagher initially told him he had fed the boy chicken for dinner, while Gallagher dined on sushi and small octopuses. Gallagher later admitted to Brown that he had fed octopus to the boy. Gallagher was originally charged with aggravated child endangerment, which alleged he “unlawfully and recklessly” caused or allowed a situation that put the boy’s “life, body or health” at risk.
CHINA
Haima churns toward China
Typhoon Haima churned toward southern China yesterday after smashing into the northern Philippines with ferocious wind and rain, triggering flooding, landslides and power outages, and killing at least 13 people. China suspended rail services in several provinces in the south, where the typhoon was expected to make landfall in the afternoon. In Shenzhen, authorities ordered schools, markets and factories to close, halted public transportation and evacuated some areas. Hong Kong hunkered down as Haima lashed the financial hub with rain and wind gusts of up to 109kph. Schools and offices were shut, trading on the stock market suspended and commuter ferry services halted after the third most serious storm signal was signaled, leaving an eerie calm in the streets of the normally bustling territory.
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