PHILIPPINES
Manila urges calm
The government asked China to refrain from acts that could disrupt the two nations’ improving relations amid simmering tension in the South China Sea. “China should avoid performing acts that will place at risk the Filipino fishermen fishing in the disputed areas and at the same time cause irritants that will disrupt the current friendly relations,” President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman, Salvador Panelo, said in a statement late on Friday. The warning followed comments from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs earlier on Friday, when it said it hopes that “non-littoral states will refrain from stirring up trouble in the calm waters of the South China Sea.”
MALAYSIA
Vietnamese to be freed
A Vietnamese woman accused of killing the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is to walk free on May 3, her lawyer said yesterday. Following diplomatic pressure from Hanoi, prosecutors had dropped the murder charge against Doan Thi Huong on April 1. Subsequently, the 30-year-old former hair salon worker pleaded guilty to “causing injury” and was handed a 40-month jail term effective from the date of her arrest in February 2017 and later reduced for good behavior. The brazen killing of Kim Jong-nam with a toxic nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in broad daylight shocked the world.
INDONESIA
Earthquake causes panic
Some panicked residents of a quake-hit island have refused to return home after the tremor triggered a brief tsunami warning and fears that there was more to come, the National Board for Disaster Management said yesterday. Aftershocks rippled across the east coast of Sulawesi — an island where thousands were killed in a quake-tsunami last year — as officials scrambled to assess whether there were any casualties or major damage. While one resident of quake-hit Luwuk city reportedly died after falling while trying to flee, the agency has not reported any confirmed deaths or injuries. A reporter in the city said there were no signs of major property damage.
GERMANY
Golden Porsche seized
Authorities have ordered a blinged-out golden Porsche off the road for being too shiny. Hamburg’s Morgenpost on Friday reported that the 31-year-old driver was stopped in the northern city last week and told that his Porsche Panamera, sporting a reflective gold foil finish, might blind other drivers and was a danger. He was told to remove the foil and re-register the car, but police said he continued to drive it. The driver was on Wednesday stopped again and police took his keys, papers and license plate, before the vehicle was towed to a garage. He was fined an unspecified amount and would have to remove the foil to make the car street-legal again.
UNITED STATES
Chinese woman charged
A Chinese woman arrested at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club has been charged with unlawful entry of restricted buildings and making false statements. The charges against 32-year-old Zhang Yujing (張玉靜) were contained in an indictment filed in federal court in south Florida on Friday. Zhang faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a US$250,000 fine if convicted of the false statements count. If convicted of unlawful entry, she faces a maximum sentence of a year in prison and a US$1,000 fine.
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