GUATEMALA
Soldier gets 5,160-year term
A court on Wednesday sentenced a former soldier to 5,160 years in prison for the massacre of 171 people in what is considered one of the worst atrocities in the country’s 36-year civil war. Prosecutors said Santos Lopez participated in the 1982 mass killings of nearly all of the men, women and children in the farming village of Dos Erres. Lopez was accused of being part of an elite unit that was sent to Dos Erres to find members of a guerrilla group that had ambushed a military convoy. When the patrol failed to find the guerrillas or guns, they pulled villagers from their homes and raped many of the young girls, prosecutors said, adding that to cover up the rapes, they killed nearly everyone living there.
PANAMA
Martinelli’s sons arrested
Two sons of former president Ricardo Martinelli, who is accused of collecting bribes worth millions in the wide-ranging Odebrecht scandal, have been arrested in the US, officials said on Wednesday. “US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested unlawfully present Panamanian nationals Luis Martinelli-Linares and Ricardo Martinelli-Linares during a targeted enforcement operation ... on Nov. 20,” a statement issued to the media said. “Both men lawfully entered the US; however, their visas were revoked in 2017 and they have been unlawfully present in the US since that time.” Brazilian construction company Odebrecht has agreed to pay the government fines totaling US$220 million and cooperate with authorities. Andre Campos Rabello, Odebrecht’s former chief in Panama, had told a court that both sons took bribes amounting to US$6 million from 2009 to 2010.
RUSSIA
Nuke use review requested
A group of lawmakers on Wednesday asked the Kremlin to review the nation’s rules for the use of nuclear weapons, amid tensions with the West. Participants in the hearings organized by the Federation Council’s Committee on Defense and Security suggested that the Security Council should draft a new version of the nuclear doctrine. Media reports cited the proposals as saying that the revised doctrine should in particular spell out a response to an attack on the country with hypersonic and other strategic nonnuclear weapons. The current military doctrine stipulates that Russia can use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack on it or its allies, or an aggression involving conventional weapons that threatens “the very existence of the state.”
UNITED STATES
Amtrak train cars separate
A New York City-bound Amtrak train became disabled on the night before Thanksgiving, one of the busiest travel days of the year, when two of its cars separated. Train 68 was heading from Montreal when the train experienced what Amtrak called a “mechanical issue” just before 7:30pm near Albany, New York. Chuck Reeves, a software engineer from Troy, New York, was on his way to his parents’ home on New York’s Long Island and had boarded the first car behind the locomotive in Albany. Shortly after the train pulled away, he said that he and other passengers heard a pop and a hiss, smelled electrical burning and felt a rush of cold air. “Everyone started turning around,” only to see there was no more train behind them, he said. The train soon slowed to a stop and a conductor left the detached cars behind and boarded his car, he added. Another train was brought in to take passengers on the rest of their journey.
CHINA
Car rams into schoolchildren
A car at about noon yesterday rammed into a group of schoolchildren crossing a street in front of an elementary school in Huludao, Liaoning Province, killing five people and injuring 18, state media said. Police took the driver into custody and are investigating the cause of the incident, China Central Television said on Sina Weibo. Unverified videos circulating social media show a car veering onto the wrong side of the road and plowing through the line of students. Other footage shows at least two small children lying unconscious and bleeding on the street. Victims of the crash are undergoing medical treatment, the broadcaster said.
INDIA
Man killed by isolated tribe
Authorities yesterday said that it might take “some days” to recover the body of an American man killed in a hail of arrows shot by a tribe untouched by modern civilization. John Allen Chau, 27, was attacked as he set foot last week on the remote North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal that is off-limits to visitors, police said. Regional police chief Dependra Pathak said that authorities sent a helicopter to the area and then a ship to identify where the incident took place. “We maintained a distance from the island and have not yet been able to spot the body. It may take some more days and ... [reconnaissance] of the area,” Pathak added. North Sentinel is home to the Sentinelese people, believed to number only about 150. “We have to take care that we must not disturb them or their habitat by any means. It is a highly sensitive zone and it will take some time,” Pathak said. Police said a murder case had been registered against “unknown” tribespeople and that six fishers and one other person who allegedly helped Chau get to the island were arrested.
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