CANADA
S Korean climbers die
Five veteran South Korean climbers fell to their deaths from a snow ledge that gave way near Vancouver, police said on Sunday. A hiker on Saturday afternoon contacted authorities about the collapse of the cornice on the peak of Mount Harvey, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Squamish, British Columbia, said in a statement. “The hiker stated there were footprints leading to the summit and was concerned for the safety [of] anyone who was in the area. The Squamish Search and Rescue were notified and “it was determined that there were five hikers unaccounted for and believed to be in the area where the avalanche had occurred,” the RCMP said. On Sunday, the bodies were found about 500m from the mountain’s peak.
UNITED STATES
Judge to rule on executions
Arkansas is preparing to execute seven death row inmates in 11 days because it wants to carry out the sentences before its supply of an execution drug expires on May 1. Eastern District of Arkansas Court Judge Kristine Baker is this week to consider the legality of the aggressive plan. She must rule whether the plan to execute seven prisoners from Monday next week through April 27 would violate their rights to meaningful counsel and access to the courts.
MEXICO
Fugitive ex-official nabbed
Italian authorities on Sunday captured a fugitive former governor charged with drug smuggling, bank fraud, racketeering and money laundering, and are expected to extradite him in the next few days. Former Tamaulipas governor Tomas Yarrington was accused in 2013 by a US federal grand jury in Texas of taking millions of US dollars in bribes from the Gulf cartel and other traffickers. The attorney general’s office on Sunday said Yarrington’s arrest was made possible by an Interpol red notice. According to US authorities, beginning in 1998, Yarrington began taking bribes from the Gulf cartel and other traffickers, when he was mayor of Matamoros. Yarrington is one of several former politicians in President Enrique Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party accused of corruption.
UNITED KINGDOM
Honor for slain officer
Queen Elizabeth II gave permission for the coffin of police constable Keith Palmer, killed in last month’s attack in London, to lie in a chapel at parliament overnight on Sunday, an honor usually reserved for former government leaders. Palmer was stabbed to death by Khalid Masood inside the gates of parliament on March 22, shortly after Masood had plowed a vehicle into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four. Palmer’s coffin, draped in a police flag, was brought to the 13th-century crypt Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, accompanied by police officers and family members. A funeral was scheduled for yesterday at Southwark Cathedral.
MACEDONIA
Dog poisonings protested
Hundreds of people gathered in the capital of Skopje on Sunday to protest a spate of stray dog poisonings in several cities around the nation. The sight of dozens of stray dogs dying in Skopje last month alone alarmed conservationists and animal welfare groups. Radmila Pesheva from the Anima Mundi protection group on Saturday called on authorities regulate the sale of poison and punish those poisoning stray dogs. The poisonings began about a month ago after a four-year-old boy died after being attacked by stray dogs near the town of Kicevo.
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