UNITED STATES
Fossils provide ‘direct link’
The oldest fossils ever found are “direct evidence” of life on Earth 3.8 to 4.3 billion years ago when the planet was still in its infancy, researchers reported on Wednesday. “The microfossils we discovered are about 300 million years older” than any runners-up, said Dominic Papineau, a professor at University College London who made the discovery. The dating puts the fossils “within a few hundred million years of the accretion of the solar system,” he said in a video statement. The results were published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature.
Photo: Reuters / Matthew Dodd / University College London
MEXICO
Guzman seeks deportation
A lawyer who has worked on behalf of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is calling on US President Donald Trump to deport the drug lord jailed in the US. Lawyer Jose Luis Gonzalez Meza held up a banner outside the attorney general’s office in Mexico City on Wednesday that read: “Mr Trump, Deport the illegal and criminal Chapo Guzman.” Trump has pledged to deport migrants who have committed illegal acts. Gonzalez Meza says local prosecutors violated due process when they extradited Guzman to the US in January. He said that means Guzman “is in the United States illegally. We are going to ask he be returned, because he is illegal and criminal.”
SPAIN
Campaign bus impounded
Madrid authorities on Wednesday said that they impounded an orange-and-white bus used by a group campaigning against teaching schoolchildren about transgender people. Madrid Mayor Manuela Carmena said police stopped the bus from returning to the city’s streets to prevent a hate crime. The bus has several anti-transgender phrases written on its sides, including: “If you’re born a man, you’re a man. If you’re a woman, you will always be a woman.”
SWEDEN
Return to draft mulled
The center-left is to decide today whether to reintroduce military conscription next year, amid lingering difficulties filling the ranks on a voluntary basis and a more uncertain security situation, public broadcaster SR reported. The nation mothballed compulsory military service in 2010, but military activity in the Baltic region has increased in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, prompting Stockholm to step up military preparedness. A new draft would cover men and women born in 1999 or later, though only a minority would be selected to serve.
UNITED STATES
No more Oscars for pair
The two accountants found at fault for botching the climactic announcement of the winner for best picture at the Academy Awards have been officially declared unfit for any future Oscar duty, organizers of the ceremony said on Wednesday. Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz, blamed for the envelope mix-up that led to La La Land being erroneously named best film before Moonlight was declared the actual winner, are still partners at PricewaterhouseCoopers, but they will no longer be permitted to tabulate Oscar votes or hand out envelopes containing winners’ names at the ceremonies.
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