UNITED STATES
Polanski’s request denied
A Los Angeles County judge on Monday denied a request from film director Roman Polanski that his decades-old sexual abuse case be resolved in his absence. Judge Scott Gordon of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County refused to provide Polanski, 83, the clarity he sought on how he might be detained and sentenced were he to return to the nation. Gordon found that the requests mirrored those Polanski had made before and were denied by other judges. “There is no sufficient or compelling basis for reconsideration of these issues,” he said. Polanski fled the country in 1978 when he feared a judge would withdraw a deal he struck after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. The court has ruled that Polanski, who has evaded extradition for decades while living in Switzerland, Poland and elsewhere, must return to the US to resolve the case.
ECUADOR
Julian Assange taunts Lasso
WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange is celebrating the results of the presidential runoff with a blast at the losing candidate who had pledged to evict him from the nation’s embassy in London. Assange has been holed up at the diplomatic mission since 2012, when President Rafael Correa granted him asylum. Before the election, conservative banker Guillermo Lasso had said he would evict the Australian activist, who is wanted for extradition by Sweden, within 30 days of taking office. Ruling party candidate Lenin Moreno, the apparent winner in Sunday’s tight race, said he would allow him to stay. Shortly after the results became known, Assange took a jab at Lasso’s pledge on Twitter. “I cordially invite Lasso to leave Ecuador within 30 days (with or without his tax haven millions),” he wrote, alluding to allegations that the banker had stashed money abroad.
UNITED STATES
Teen pleads guilty to plot
A New Jersey teen on Monday pleaded guilty to a plot allegedly inspired by the Islamic State group to kill Pope Francis during his 2015 visit to the country. The Department of Justice said Santos Colon, 15 years old at the time, sought to recruit a sniper to shoot the pope in Philadelphia on Sept. 27, 2015. Colon also allegedly planned to set off explosives. However, the teen unwittingly recruited an undercover FBI agent for the job and was arrested quietly 12 days before the event. Court documents said Colon sought to carry out the act in support of the Islamic State group and that he had used the adopted name Ahmad Shakoor. In a plea bargain with prosecutors, Colon, now 17, agreed to forego trial and plead guilty as an adult to one charge of providing material support to a terror group. With the deal, prosecutors dropped three other charges filed against him as a juvenile.
MEXICO
‘Norte’ closes over killings
A newspaper in the border city of Ciudad Juarez is shutting down due to the risk of violence after a string of killings of reporters around the country, the newspaper’s owner said on Monday. Norte ran a headline that said “Adios” (Goodbye) on the front page of its Sunday edition. Its owner, Oscar Cantu, said in a letter that he was shutting the newspaper down after 27 years. “No company, no business is worth more than a person’s life,” Cantu said in an interview. Cantu pointed to a string of murders of journalists, including the death of Miroslava Breach, who was shot multiple times last month in the northern state of Chihuahua. At least 16 journalists have been killed in the nation since 2015, the Committee to Project Journalists said.
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