PANAMA
Company fined over bribes
Brazilian construction company Odebrecht is to pay the Panamanian government more than US$59 million it allegedly handed out in bribes to secure public contracts, Panama’s attorney general said on Thursday. “I’ve received a formal commitment, delivered verbally, to soon hand over the first US$59 million paid as bribes to Panamanian individuals and entities,” Kenia Porcell told reporters. Odebrecht, she said, “has shown a desire to cooperate effectively” with a probe into the bribe payments, documented last month by the US Department of Justice. According to the department, the company paid more than US$59 million in bribes to Panama between 2010 and 2014 to obtain contracts valued at US$175 million.
UNITED STATES
Musicians hit by train
Two members of the R&B group Tower of Power were hit by a train as they walked across tracks before a scheduled gig in Oakland, California, but both survived. The group’s publicist, Jeremy Westby, said in a statement on Thursday night that drummer David Garibaldi and bass player Marc van Wageningen are both responsive and being treated at a hospital. The Oakland Fire Department said earlier that two pedestrians were hit by a passenger train at Jack London Square at about 7:30pm.
UNITED STATES
Chicken waste pose fire risk
With the growing season still weeks away, chicken waste that is to be used as fertilizer is piling up in barns across the south and causing worries about spontaneous combustion. A chicken litter pile this week triggered a wildfire that destroyed a mobile home before being brought under control. Agriculture officials say the right mix of moisture, texture and decomposition is needed to produce a burning pile of waste, and that farmers should be mindful of how high they stack manure in their barns. They recommend that waste piles not exceed 2.1m. In Charleston, Arkansas, on Wednesday, a pile estimated at 2.4m or 2.7m high caught fire. No injuries were reported in the blaze.
UNITED STATES
Guitarist Tommy Allsup dies
Tommy Allsup, a guitarist best known for losing a coin toss that kept him off a plane that later crashed and killed rock ’n’ roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, has died. He was 85. Singer and musician Austin Allsup says his father died on Wednesday at a Springfield, Missouri, hospital from complications from a hernia operation. Tommy Allsup was part of Holly’s band when the Lubbock, Texas, singer died in the 1959 plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. Allsup flipped a coin to see if he or Valens would get a seat on the plane.
UNITED STATES
Boy accused of robbery
A 12-year-old New York City boy is accused of pulling a gun on a classmate and demanding that she give him her chicken nugget. Police said the boy first approached the girl inside a McDonald’s in Harlem on Tuesday and asked her for one of her Chicken McNuggets. When the girl refused, police say the boy followed her as she walked to a nearby subway station and pointed a gun at her head, demanding that she give him a nugget. Police say the girl smacked the gun away and told the boy to leave her alone. The girl reported the incident to school officials the next day and the boy was taken into police custody for attempted robbery. The gun was not found and it is unclear if it was real.
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