BRAZIL
Automatic rifles found
Police on Thursday confiscated 60 automatic rifles found in a cargo shipment at Rio de Janeiro’s Galeao International Airport, authorities said. The weapons were discovered in a container along with pool heaters in the cargo section of the airport. Four people were arrested and a Brazilian citizen is being investigated in Miami, where the shipment originated, officials said. Rio de Janeiro Secretary of Security Roberto Sa said 250 automatic rifles have been confiscated in the past five months in the state and called the latest seizure “the biggest in 10 years.” Police representatives said they planned to use the seized weapons, adding that Rio state is struggling under budgetary constraints.
MEXICO
Storm hits Pacific coast
Tropical Storm Beatriz on Thursday approached Mexico’s Pacific coast, the US National Hurricane Center said, dumping heavy rains that resulted in at least three deaths, caused landslides, and forced road closures and flight cancellations. The emergency services in the southwestern state of Oaxaca said a landslide in the village of San Marcial Ozolotepec buried some houses and rescuers found the bodies of two girls. Another woman was killed by a landslide in the village of San Carlos Yautepec, the emergency services added. The center said the storm was about 24km south of the town of Puerto Angel, on the nation’s southwestern Pacific coast, blowing maximum sustained winds of 72kph, moving northeast at 8kph. Beatriz was expected to weaken once it hit land in the southwest on Thursday evening and peter out over the mountainous region yesterday, it said. However, the center also expected it to produce “life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.”
UNITED STATES
ICE denounces fake fliers
Washington officials and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency are denouncing fake fliers distributed in the capital warning against helping people who are in the US illegally. The fliers were found on Thursday on cars and lampposts around Washington. They bear the logos of ICE and Homeland Security, and say residents should report people in the US illegally. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser on Twitter and Facebook said the flier is meant to scare and divide residents. “DC remains a sanctuary city,” she said. ICE spokeswoman Carissa Cutrell said in a statement that the fliers are dangerous and irresponsible, while the Washington Post reported that Washington police have been instructed not to cooperate with federal authorities working to deport immigrants.
UNITED STATES
Court considers emoji advice
A judge is to sentence an Illinois man who used emojis to offer advice on how to kill a wealthy Chicago woman vacationing in Indonesia. Government filings before the sentencing yesterday described Robert Bibbs texting “high-five” symbols from Chicago, approving plans by his cousin and the cousin’s girlfriend to kill Sheila von Wiese-Mack at a Bali resort in 2014. Prosecutors want a sentence of nine to 11 years. They say Bibbs offered advice on killing the mother of his cousin’s girlfriend for an inheritance cut. The cousin, Tommy Schaefer, is serving 18 years in jail in Indonesia, while Heather Mack is serving 10 for bludgeoning von Wiese-Mack to death with a fruit-stand handle and stuffing her body in a suitcase. Defense attorneys said Bibbs had a lesser role and should not receive a similar sentence.
CHINA
Jiang Tianyong detained
The wife and father of prominent human rights campaigner Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) say police have told the family that he has been formally arrested and has dismissed his lawyers. Jiang disappeared in November last year, after publicizing the plights of the families of lawyers who had been detained in a crackdown on rights campaigners. State media later said he was accused of inciting subversion of state power, a common charge against those viewed as challenging the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly on power. Jiang’s wife, Jin Bianling (金變玲), yesterday said that police officials in Changsha handed over a statement from Jiang dismissing his family-appointed lawyers. Jin said she believes the statement was written by Jiang under duress.
CHINA
Angry driver kills 13
Police say a disgruntled driver started a fire aboard his school bus last month that killed 13 people, including 11 children from China and South Korea. A statement from the city government of Weihai (威海) says the driver, who caused an incident on May 9, had apparently been angered by the halting of his overtime bonus and night work pay.
NEW ZEALAND
Premier’s guard keeps job
A police officer assigned to protect the prime minister has managed to keep his job despite leaving his gun in a public bathroom at the nation’s parliament, and then enlisting a colleague to drive back and retrieve it. Police yesterday released the results of their yearlong investigation into the incident in June last year. In their report, they said the officer made a genuine mistake by leaving his Glock service pistol in the bathroom, but should have dealt with it differently.
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