CHINA
Teacher kills CCP official
A professor killed a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary assigned to Fudan University’s mathematics department, police and school authorities have said. Police identified the suspect in custody as a 39-year-old professor surnamed Jiang (江), saying that he used a knife in committing the crime on campus in Shanghai. The school said in a statement that the party official, Wang Yongzhen (王永珍), 49, was killed on Monday and the department had established a working group to cooperate with investigators. Party secretaries are ubiquitous on Chinese campuses, charged with maintaining ideological purity, and preventing the dissemination of Western concepts of human rights and free speech. Fudan is ranked as one of the world’s top 100 universities and has strong overseas connections, although its connections to the CCP have attracted controversy. Several thousand people last week rallied in Hungary’s capital against an agreement with the university to open a branch there.
SYRIA
Airstrikes kill eight fighters
Airstrikes by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in central Syria on Tuesday killed at least eight pro-government fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. “At least five army soldiers and three allied fighters were killed,” observatory chairman Rami Abdul Rahman said. The UK-based group said that the strikes targeted air force positions near the village of Khirbet al-Tin on the outskirts of Homs, as well as a Hezbollah arms depot. The IDF carried out overnight strikes in several parts of Syria, including the capital, Damascus, as well as Homs, Hama and Latakia provinces, the group said. The IDF, which rarely acknowledges individual strikes on Syria, declined to comment on “reports in the foreign media.”
PERU
Castillo declares victory
Presidential candidate Pedro Castillo said his party won Sunday’s election, his strongest comments yet about the result of a vote that has roiled markets in the South American country. “According to the report of our representatives, we already have the official party count of the votes where the people have imposed themselves on this feat,” Castillo told followers outside his headquarters on Tuesday evening. He asked backers “not to fall into provocation” and said the business sector was showing support for the party. Castillo has expanded his lead to about 96,000 votes with nearly 98 percent of ballots counted, according to the latest official tally. His opponent, Keiko Fujimori, said the rival party has been “distorting or delaying” the results of the election.
UNITED STATES
Chocolate cicadas a hit
Some might cringe, but at one Maryland chocolate shop, 17-year-old insects are flying off the shelves. Sarah Dwyer, of Chouquette Chocolates in Bethseda, started coating cicadas in chocolate and selling them when the periodical Brood X emerged this spring for the first time since 2004. Her chocolate shop has a 10-day backlog for cicada orders. They are delicious, she said. “When you combine the chocolate, the cinnamon and the nuttiness of the bugs, it really gives you that holiday feeling of when you’re walking around a big city and they’re roasting nuts on the sidewalk, that cinnamon smell, it’s really what it tastes like,” Dwyer said. Dwyer and her employees gather the cicadas from a copse of trees behind their chocolaterie. The bugs are so numerous, they land right on the employees. The cicadas are then put in a paper bag and placed in the freezer, where the cold temperature puts them to sleep before they die. She then boils the cicadas to clean them, and crisps them in an air fryer. Once the cicadas have been fried, Dwyer sprinkles them with either cinnamon or savory Old Bay seasoning and they are ready to be covered in chocolate.
UNITED KINGDOM
Theater defies government
Theater entrepreneur Andrew Lloyd-Webber has vowed to reopen his shows in London without social distancing restrictions later this month, even if he is arrested for it. “We are going to open, come hell or high water,” Lloyd-Webber said in an interview with the Telegraph published yesterday. Lloyd-Webber’s new show, Cinderella, is due to open for previews on June 25, four days after the earliest date for the government to lift its remaining COVID-19 restrictions in England, which include strict limits on the size of theater audiences. Asked by the Telegraph what he would do if the government postpones the June 21 reopening, Lloyd-Webber said: “We will say: ‘Come to the theater and arrest us.’” Lloyd-Webber said his theaters were suffering “acute financial stress” because of the restrictions, forcing him to remortgage his London home, and he might have to sell his six venues in the center of the capital. Asked if Lloyd-Webber should be arrested if he broke the rules, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Robert Jenrick said: “I’m sure that Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s comments are made in the heat of the moment.” “I’m sure he feels very strongly ... [but] we all have to abide by the rules,” he told Sky News, adding that a decision on the reopening would be made in the coming days.
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