FRANCE
Khashoggi suspect arrested
A suspected killer of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi was arrested at Roissy airport near Paris on Tuesday as he was about to board a flight to Riyadh, sources said. A police source named the man as Khaled Aedh al-Otaibi, a former Royal Guard of Saudi Arabia, who is mentioned in US and British sanctions lists as one of the killers, and was also on wanted lists in France.
UNITED STATES
Napoleon’s sword auctioned
The dress sword carried by Napoleon Bonaparte when he staged a coup in France in 1799 and five of his firearms sold at auction for US$2.87 million, auctioneers said on Tuesday. The lot, which was put up for sale by Illinois-based Rock Island Auction Co, was sold on Friday last week via telephone to a buyer who has remained anonymous, Rock Island Auction president Kevin Hogan told reporters. The sword and five ornamented pistols had initially been valued at US$1.5 million to US$3.5 million. With the sale, “the buyer of the Napoleon Garniture is taking home a very rare piece of history,” Hogan said. The sword, with its scabbard, was the “crown jewel” of the collection, the auctioneers said. The weapon was made by Nicolas-Noel Boutet, who was director of the state arms factory in Versailles. After being crowned emperor, Napoleon is believed to have presented the sword to French general Jean-Andoche Junot, but the general’s wife later sold it to pay off debts. It was then recovered by a London museum. A US collector was its last owner, but the man recently died, the auction house said.
UNITED STATES
Saule Omarova withdraws
President Joe Biden on Tuesday said that Saule Omarova’s nomination to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency would be withdrawn, as her candidacy faced resistance, with senators criticizing her vision for banking regulation and her birthplace in the former Soviet Union. Biden said in a statement that he accepted a withdrawal request from Omarova, a law professor at Cornell University who was born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Union and immigrated to the US in 1991. In Senate committee hearings last month, she addressed questions about greater government oversight of the financial sector. That led Senator Pat Toomey to say that her ideas were a “socialist manifesto,” while Senator John Kennedy said: “I don’t know whether to call you ‘professor’ or ‘comrade.’”
UNITED NATIONS
Report warns over piracy
The surge of maritime piracy in Africa’s Gulf of Guinea is not just a threat to foreign ship and cargo owners, but also carries significant costs for the coastal nations, a new UN report said on Tuesday. The newest hot spot for piracy saw 106 incidents last year, with 623 seafarers affected by kidnapping, the Pirates of the Gulf of Guinea: A Cost Analysis for Coastal States report said. Most of the direct costs of the kidnappings and ship seizures would be borne by foreigners, with about US$5 million paid last year for kidnappings of mostly non-African ship crew members, said the report, which the Stable Seas research group contributed to. The countries along the Gulf of Guinea coast would pay far more than that to deal with the rise in piracy, from expanded patrols to rescue missions to greater security costs in ports, it said. Those costs could be more than US$1.9 billion annually, diverting important resources from other crucial needs, it 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
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