THAILAND
Attack kills at least 15
At least 15 people have been killed in attacks by suspected militants in violence-wracked Yala Province, an army spokesman said yesterday, the latest incident in a 15-year bloody insurgency. The region is under martial law, heavily policed by the military and sometimes staffed with trained civilian volunteers, with residents and rights groups accusing them of heavy-handed tactics. Late on Tuesday, militants struck two checkpoints crewed by civil defense volunteers, opening fire on them as a group of villagers stopped to talk, army spokesman Pramote Prom-in said. In the largest death toll in years “12 were killed at the scene, two more [died] in hospital and one died this morning,” said Pramote, adding that five others had been injured.
MALAYSIA
Cat killer handed jail term
A man who killed a pregnant cat by putting it into a clothes dryer has been sentenced to 34 months in jail and fined 40,000 ringgit (US$9,661) in a case that sparked outrage. K. Ganesh was handed the prison term on Tuesday after being found guilty of breaking animal protection laws at a self-service laundry outside Kuala Lumpur in September last year, news agency Bernama reported. He remains free on bail as he plans to appeal. The 42-year-old was the second man to be sentenced over the killing after a taxi driver was jailed for two years for the crime in January. People reacted with fury when CCTV footage went viral showing the cat being stuffed into the dryer late at night. Two men then inserted tokens into the machine to set it running and left. A female customer later found the animal’s carcass and the incident was reported to police.
UNITED STATES
Train worker hailed as ‘hero’
A transit supervisor was hailed as a hero for pulling a drunken man from the tracks an instant before a train sped into an Oakland, California, station. Bay Area Rapid Transit released surveillance video showing supervisor John O’Connor spring into action on Sunday after a man fell onto the tracks. The video shows O’Connor yanking the man up by the shoulders and back onto the platform seconds before the train arrives. O’Connor said he was helping with crowd control at Coliseum Station following an Oakland Raiders football game when he saw the man fall. “The young man just walked, I saw out of the corner of my eye, I saw him going in the trackway,” O’Connor told reporters. “He came to the side and I figured out he wasn’t going to make it. So I grabbed him, pulled him up on the platform.” O’Connor said that he was uncomfortable being called a “hero,” KPIX-TV reported. “There was really no time to make a decision. I just looked, and it just happened,” he said. “It really feels awkward to be called a hero.”
UNITED STATES
Murder suspects escape
Two inmates charged with murder broke out of a California jail over the weekend after climbing through a hole they made in a bathroom ceiling and then squeezing through a wall, before finding an escape hatch, authorities said. Santos Fonseca, 21, and Jonathan Salazar, 20, made the hole measuring about 20cm by 56cm in the guards’ blind spot and then slipped into the walls of the jail in Salinas, Captain John Thornburg said. Inside the wall, the two inmates maneuvered past ducts and pipes in a maintenance access area until they reached a hatch. They kicked it open and made it to an outdoor area that was covered in construction fencing, rather than security fencing with barbed wire, Thornburg said.
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
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
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