UNITED STATES
Alleged urinater arrested
A manager at an Arby’s fast food restaurant in Washington state has been accused of urinating into a milkshake mix that might then have been served to dozens of people. Police in Vancouver, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon, said they uncovered footage of the 29-year-old man peeing into a bag of milkshake mix as they were executing a search warrant on his phone as part of a child pornography investigation, the Columbian newspaper reported. The manager made one court appearance on Wednesday last week on child porn allegations and another on Friday, for a new allegation of second-degree assault with sexual motivation, after police said they found the 16-second urination video. The manager said he was working alone in the restaurant that night and that he did it for sexual gratification.
UNITED KINGDOM
Monkeypox cases rise
Health authorities are investigating four more cases of rare viral monkeypox infection that have been diagnosed in England, taking the total confirmed cases since May 6 to seven. The Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said investigations were under way to establish links between the latest four cases, who appear to have been infected in London and do not have known connections with the other three cases. Monkeypox is a rare viral infection similar to human smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980. Although monkeypox is much milder than smallpox, with most infected people recovering within a few weeks, it can in rare cases be fatal. All four of the new cases self-identify as gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men, the UKHSA said. They have the west African clade of the virus, which is mild compared with the Central African one, it said.
EL SALVADOR
Gang arrests hit 30,000
More than 30,000 suspected gang members have been arrested since President Nayib Bukele in March launched his “war on criminal groups” terrorizing the country, police said on Monday. Bukele announced a state of emergency in late March following a bloody weekend in which 87 people were killed in gang-related violence. Since then, the police and military have been rounding up suspected gang members using emergency powers that have done away with the need for arrest warrants. The nation has also increased sentences for gang membership five-fold, to up to 45 years. The national civil police force wrote on Twitter that “536 terrorists were arrested on Sunday May 15, the date at which we reached 50 days since the beginning of the state of emergency,” adding: “The total number captured since the beginning of the war on gangs is 30,506.”
FRANCE
Grenoble authorises ‘burkini’
Grenoble on Monday authorized the wearing of the so-called “burkini” by Muslim women in state-run swimming pools, reigniting one of France’s most contentious debates on religous dress. The all-in-one swimsuit, used by some Muslim women to cover their bodies and hair while bathing, has become a controversial talking point during the holiday season in the past few years. Seen as a symbol of creeping Islamism by its critics and an affront to France’s secular traditions, some people would like to ban it outright. It is prohibited in most state-run pools — for hygiene, not religious reasons — where strict swimwear rules apply to all, including men, who are required to wear tight-fitting trunks.
NORTH KOREA
US warns on IT staff
US officials have warned businesses against inadvertently hiring IT staff from North Korea, saying that rogue freelancers were taking advantage of remote work opportunities to hide their true identities and earn money for Pyongyang. In an advisory, the US said the effort was intended to circumvent US and UN sanctions, and bring in money for North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. “There are thousands of DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] IT workers both dispatched overseas and located within the DPRK, generating revenue that is remitted back to the North Korean government,” the advisory said. Many North Korean workers pretended to be from South Korea, Japan or other Asian nations, the advisory added.
JAPAN
Tour groups to return
The government is to allow small groups of tourists on package tours into the nation this month on an experimental basis. Travelers from the US, Australia, Thailand and Singapore who have received three COVID-19 vaccination shots and have medical insurance are to be allowed in as small groups on package tours, the Japan Tourism Agency said in a statement yesterday. Groups would need preset itineraries and must be accompanied by travel agency staff, it said. While peers such as Singapore and South Korea have opened their borders to vaccinated tourists, only about half of Japanese are in favor of plans to ease border controls, a poll conducted by Yomiuri Shimbun showed.
SAUDI ARABIA
Conjoined twin dies
One of two conjoined twins from war-torn Yemen has died after a “complicated” 15-hour operation to separate them, state media reported on Monday. The 19-month-old boys, Yussef and Yassin, were “conjoined in several organs,” and 24 doctors were involved in the operation, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said. On Monday morning the SPA hailed the procedure as a success, but a follow-up report on Monday night said that one of the twins had died. Doctors “faced great difficulties and challenges during the separation process, which made the deceased’s condition critical after the operation,” the report said, adding that the surviving twin was in a stable condition.
GUINEA-BISSAU
Parliament dissolved
President Umaro Sissoco Embalo on Monday dissolved parliament and said early elections would be held this year to resolve a long-running political crisis. Embalo cited “persistent and unresolvable differences” with parliament, which he described “a space for guerrilla politics and plotting.” “I have decided to give the floor back to Guineans so that this year they can freely choose the parliament they wish to have,” he said. A presidential decree said elections would be held on Dec. 18.
MALI
Countercoup thwarted
The government headed by a two-time coup leader on Monday announced that security forces had thwarted a countercoup attempt that it said was supported by an unnamed Western government. The news release did not name the nation it was accusing, but relations with former colonizer France have deteriorated significantly under Colonel Assimi Goita’s rule. “The government of the Republic of Mali condemns with the utmost rigor this outrageous attack on state security, the purpose of which is to hinder ... substantial efforts to secure our country and return to a constitutional order,” a statement said.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate