UNITED STATES
DA quits amid sex scandal
A Pennsylvania district attorney (DA) accused of tipping off female drug dealers and giving them lenient treatment in exchange for sex, on Wednesday resigned after he was charged with dozens of crimes. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told at a courthouse news conference that Bedford County District Attorney Bill Higgins manipulated women for sexual favors, calling it a betrayal of the community. Higgins “thought he was above the law and that he could get away with affording special treatment in exchange for sexual favors,” Shapiro said. One woman performed oral sex on Higgins about a month after he told a state trooper not to charge her with drug delivery and another woman claims that after she performed oral sex on Higgins, he told her that her cousin could thank her for not getting arrested, court documents said.
UNITED STATES
Coach charged over abuse
A coach who ran a club affiliated with USA Water Polo has been charged with the sexual abuse of seven underage female players during one-on-one coaching sessions, prosecutors in California said on Wednesday, the latest instance of mentors of young athletes being accused of misconduct. Bahram Hojreh, 42, pleaded not guilty to charges including sexual battery, lewd acts upon a child and sexual penetration by foreign object of a minor, according to a filing this week in Orange County Superior Court. His attorney, Ricardo Nicol, said that Hojreh never had a blemish on his record after working with hundreds of children over two decades. The alleged crimes occurred between 2014 and January, the Orange County district attorney’s office said. Four of the girls were 15 or younger, prosecutors said. Hojreh is accused of touching the girls’ breasts and genitals, penetrating them with his fingers and coercing them to touch his genitals, officials said.
UNITED STATES
‘Zombie-like’ raccoons seen
Police in Youngstown, Ohio, have received more than a dozen calls in the past three weeks about raccoons acting strangely in the daytime, WKBN-TV reported. Photographer Robert Coggeshall said he was playing with his dogs outside his home last week when one such raccoon approached them. Coggeshall said the animal would stand on its hind legs, show its teeth and fall over backward. The raccoon that Coggeshall saw and 14 others police responded to were euthanized. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources said the animals were likely suffering from distemper, not rabies. The viral disease causes coughing, tremors and seizures and leads raccoons to lose their fear of humans. Authorities are asking residents to report raccoons behaving unusually to their local police.
BRAZIL
Jaguars dodge floodwater
Researches have found that jaguars, imperiled by hunters, ranchers and destruction of their habitat, have learned to survive at least one menace — flooding in the Amazon River basin. They take to the trees. Although they can be 2m long and weigh 90kg, the largest South American cats nimbly navigate treetops where they stay from April to July when the rainforest floor is under meters-deep water. “It shows that even as a large animal, the jaguar can withstand the flooding — feeding, breeding and raising its young in the treetops for three to four months,” said Emiliano Ramalho, the lead researcher for Project Lauarete, which is administered by the Instituto Mamiraua.
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