SOUTH KOREA
US trying to persuade North
The US is “very actively” trying to persuade North Korea to come back to negotiations, the national security adviser said yesterday, as a year-end North Korean deadline for US flexibility approaches. Seoul was taking the deadline “very seriously,” Chung Eui-yong told reporters, at a time when efforts to improve inter-Korean relations have stalled. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in April gave the US a year-end deadline to show more flexibility, and North Korean officials have warned the US not to ignore the date.
RUSSIA
Man found carrying arms
Saint Petersburg police on Saturday arrested a prominent historian on suspicion of murdering a former student after he was hauled out of a river with a backpack containing a woman’s arms, authorities said. Local media reported that university professor Oleg Sokolov was drunk and fell into the river as he tried to dispose of body parts. Police then went to Sokolov’s home, where they reportedly discovered the decapitated body of Anastasia Yeshchenko, 24, with whom he had coauthored a number of works. The historian is the author of books on Napoleon Bonaparte and had acted as a historical consultant on several films.
EL SALVADOR
Body of advocate found
The body of a transgender advocate missing since Tuesday has been found in the northeast, authorities said. Jade Camila Diaz, 27, is the second transgender woman killed in the country in the past 15 days, said advocacy group Comcavis Trans, which told local media that there have been at least seven LGBT-related murders this year. “We regret to inform you that Jade Diaz’s body was found in the waters of the Torola River,” the Attorney General’s Office said on Twitter on Saturday. Diaz had been dead for three or four days, it said. Diaz’s body was found with her “hands tied and weighted with a bag of stones,” Comcavis Trans president Bianka Rodriguez said.
ITALY
Man admits to deadly scam
A heavily indebted man seeking to make a false insurance claim has confessed to setting off explosions at a farmhouse he owned that killed three firefighters, a prosecutor said on Saturday. Giovanni Vincenti told investigators that he meant to blow up his farmhouse in the northwestern region of Piedmont by setting off gas canisters, but he made a mistake with a timer connected to the canisters and triggered two explosions, Prosecutor Enrico Cieri said. Firefighters went to the farmhouse after the initial explosion early on Tuesday and were then struck by a second, stronger blast.
UNITED STATES
Inmate’s ‘death’ claim denied
An Iowa prisoner serving a life sentence has argued he had paid his debt to society after “dying” momentarily in hospital. Benjamin Schreiber was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1996. In March 2015, he developed severe complications from kidney stones and went into septic shock. He lost consciousness in his cell and was taken to hospital. Once there, he momentarily “died” in doctors’ care before being revived. According to his attorneys, his momentary “death” meant he had completed his life sentence and his return to prison was therefore illegal. A lower court found the argument “unpersuasive and without merit.” Schreiber took the matter further, but appeals court judges were also not convinced.
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