GUAM
Church avoids abuse claims
The Catholic Church said that parishes and schools should not be sold to settle more than 200 clergy sexual abuse claims. The statement by the Archdiocese of Agana was in response to a lawsuit filed by the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors, the Pacific Daily News reported on Tuesday. The lawsuit includes a list of Catholic schools, parishes, vehicles and other assets that the creditors believe should be considered archdiocese property and liable for sale. Parishes and schools are not owned by the archdiocese, but rather held in trust, the archdiocese said, adding that the “trust relationship” is supported by statute. The Catholic Church filed for bankruptcy in January, allowing the archdiocese to avoid trial in dozens of child sexual abuse lawsuits.
AUSTRALIA
March for higher wages held
Tens of thousands yesterday marched for better work conditions and higher wages, bringing Melbourne to a standstill, ahead of national elections next month. The opposition Labor Party wants to make stagnant wages a focus of its election campaign, with its union allies claiming that “Australians have seen the largest fall in their living standards in 30 years.” Many demonstrators wore hi-visibility workwear and carried banners that read: “Change the Rules.” “People are angry. They are out in the streets. They are out in force, but they are campaigning for something very simple: ‘a fair go,’” Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters as he joined the mass rally.
JAPAN
Stealth fighter debris found
Possible debris from a F-35A stealth fighter that crashed during an exercise over the Pacific Ocean has been found at sea in what would be the costly jet’s second crash in less than a year. The aircraft and its pilot, a man in his 40s, went missing about 135km off the coast on Tuesday after departing Misawa Air Base on the northeastern corner of Honshu Island, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force said in a statement. A part of what’s believed to the the airplane’s tail was spotted floating near where it disappeared, Minister of Defense Takeshi Iwaya told reporters yesterday.
MALAYSIA
Former first lady charged
The wife of former prime minister Najib Razak was hit yesterday with a new corruption charge, the 20th since her husband’s shock election loss, and complained that she was the victim of “slander.” Rosmah Mansor — widely reviled due to her penchant for lavish overseas shopping sprees — was charged with accepting a 5 million ringgit (US$1.2 million) bribe in relation to a government solar power project. She has already been hit with a barrage of money-laundering and tax-evasion charges linked to the looting of sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd.
SUDAN
Protesters killed: opposition
Armed men wearing masks have killed 20 people in morning attacks against anti-government protesters massed outside the army headquarters in the capital Khartoum, National Umma Party leader Sadiq al-Mahdi said on Tuesday. Former prime minister and now a protest organizer against President Omar al-Bashir’s government, al-Mahdi said the attacks had been carried out every morning since Saturday last week. “There are armed men in masks attacking people at the sit-in every morning,” al-Mahdi told reporters in Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum.
UNITED STATES
Woman’s organs all wrong
Rose Marie Bentley was an avid swimmer, raised five kids, helped her husband run a feed store and lived to the ripe age of 99. It was only after she died that medical students discovered that all her internal organs — except for her heart — were in the wrong place. The discovery of the rare condition, which was presented to a conference of anatomists this week, was astounding — especially because Bentley had lived so long. People with the condition known as situs inversus with levocardia often have life-threatening cardiac ailments and other abnormalities, Oregon Health and Science University said. Cameron Walker’s class at the university in Portland was examining the heart of a cadaver last year when they noticed the blood vessels were different. When they opened the abdominal cavity, they saw that all the other organs were on the wrong side. The unusual blood vessels helped the heart compensate.
UNITED STATES
Medicare scam ring busted
Federal authorities said that they have broken up a US$1.2 billion Medicare scam that peddled unneeded orthopedic braces to hundreds of thousands of seniors via foreign call centers. The Department of Justice on Tuesday announced charges against 24 people in the country, including doctors accused of writing bogus prescriptions for unneeded back, shoulder, wrist and knee braces. Others charged include owners of telemedicine firms and medical equipment companies. The fraudulent call centers were based in the Philippines and throughout Latin America.
EL SALVADOR
Surfing connection sought
California Governor Gavin Newsom sees surfing as a way to help the Latin American country provide more economic opportunities for its people. Newsom was visiting the country and on Tuesday heard from surfing business owners and investors. He also met with president-elect Nayib Bukele, who said that he wants to join forces with California to promote the sport. Newsom said that California could provide expertise in marketing and branding to help the country attract more tourists.
UNITED STATES
Terror suspect detained
A man who police said planned to mow down pedestrians with a truck in an Islamic State-inspired “terrorist attack” was on Tuesday ordered held without bail, one day after authorities announced his arrest. A federal judge in Greenbelt, Maryland, near Washington accepted prosecutors’ recommendations that Rondell Henry be detained based on evidence found on his cellphone and a history of unspecified substance abuse. Henry, 28, was arrested on March 28 at the National Harbor casino complex south of Washington for stealing a U-Haul van. According to a court affidavit, he told investigators he wanted to create “panic and chaos.”
VENEZUELA
Country ‘ready for aid’
President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday said that the country was ready to receive international aid following a meeting in Caracas with the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. “We confirm our readiness to establish cooperation mechanisms for international assistance and support,” Maduro wrote on Twitter. The president, who denies that the current situation in the country can be described as a humanitarian crisis, reiterated after the meeting that collaboration with the Red Cross should respect “the Venezuelan legal order.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing