GUATEMALA
US protests vehicle use
The US Department of Defense has scaled back the transfer of equipment and military training it provides to Guatemala to protest the “misuse” of vehicles it donated to the country, a US embassy spokesman said on Thursday. “Guatemala’s government is an ally and a partner in US security efforts in the region, but the repeated misuse of military vehicles provided by the United States has prompted a review of support for security cooperation programs,” the spokesman said. “For now the Defense Department has ceased the transfer of equipment and training for military forces,” he said. The embassy did not say how Guatemala had misused the vehicles, but said it had been doing so since Aug. 31 last year. That is the date that President Jimmy Morales decided not to renew the mandate of the UN-backed anti-graft commission, which helped to bring down his predecessor and also tried to have Morales impeached. Morales sent gun-mounted military jeeps to patrol around the headquarters of the commission, known as the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala and diplomatic offices, including the US embassy.
MEXICO
Police rescue migrants
Federal police on Thursday rescued 79 Central Americans in the city of Reynosa in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, a day after authorities freed another 34 people in the same state, the Ministry of Security said in a statement. The federal police exchanged fire with an armed group, who fled the scene in a van, after which the police rescued 35 Guatemalans, 27 Salvadoreans and 17 Hondurans, the ministry said. Four Mexicans were also rescued with the group of Central American migrants. “Personnel from the National Immigration Institute were called in and they verified that the persons did not have legal permission to be in the country,” the statement added.
UNITED STATES
‘Milkman’ wins fiction prize
Anna Burns’ Milkman, winner last fall of the Man Booker Prize, was on Thursday awarded the National Book Critics Circle prize for fiction. Zadie Smith won the criticism prize for her essay collection Feel Free. Steve Coll’s book on the CIA, Directorate S, was the nonfiction winner, and Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home received the award for autobiography. Others winners included Ada Limon’s The Carrying for poetry and Christopher Bonanos’ Flash, about photographer Weegee, for biography. Honorary prizes were presented to NPR critic Maureen Corrigan and Latino publisher Arte Publico. Tommy Orange’s acclaimed novel There There was named best debut book. The critics circle was founded in 1974 and includes around 800 reviewers, authors, bloggers and others in the books community.
UNITED STATES
Giudice awaits decision
The husband of one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey reality TV stars has been released from federal prison and is waiting to see if he will be deported back to Italy. Joe Giudice was moved this week to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in McElhattan, Pennsylvania, attorney Jerard Gonzalez said. In October last year, a judge in York, Pennsylvania, ruled that Giudice would be deported to his native country upon completion of his sentence for financial fraud and failing to pay income taxes. Giudice has appealed the ruling.
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