JAPAN
Typhoon kills one person
Typhoon Nanmadol yesterday brought ferocious winds and record rainfall to parts of the nation, killing at least one person, disrupting transport and forcing some manufacturers to suspend operations. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida delayed his departure to New York, where he is due to deliver a speech at the UN General Assembly, to tomorrow to monitor the impact of the storm, media reported. State broadcaster NHK said one man was killed when his car was submerged by a flooded river and firefighters were trying to determine if a man in his 40s was inside a hut that was buried by a landslide. At least 69 people were injured, it added. About 340,000 households, most of them in Kyushu, were without electricity early yesterday, the trade ministry said.
RUSSIA
Cosmonaut Polyakov dies
Valery Polyakov, the Soviet cosmonaut who set the record for the longest single stay in space, has died at age 80, space agency Roscosmos announced yesterday. Polyakov’s record of 437 days in space began on Jan. 8, 1994, when he and two others blasted off on a two-day flight to the Soviet space station Mir. While aboard Mir, he orbited the Earth more than 7,000 times, before returning on March 22, 1995. Upon landing, he declined to be carried out of the Soyuz capsule, as is common practice to allow readjustment to the pull of gravity. He was helped to climb out himself and he walked to a nearby transport vehicle. Polyakov had trained as a physician and wanted to demonstrate that the human body could endure extended periods in space.
SWITZERLAND
IS attacker gets nine years
A Swiss woman was yesterday given a nine-year jail term for slashing two people in the name of the Islamic State (IS) group, but her sentence was suspended so she can undergo psychiatric treatment. The criminal court judges found the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, guilty of two counts of attempted murder. She was also found guilty of terrorism-linked charges. The 29-year-old woman’s mental state has been at the heart of the trial at the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona, in the Italian-speaking Ticino region where the attack occurred. The attack, in which no one died, took place on Nov. 24, 2020, in the plush Manor department store in Lugano. The woman had suddenly lunged at two random women shopping at the store, attempting to slit their throats. One of the two victims suffered a serious neck injury, while the second sustained wounds on one hand and managed, with others, to control the assailant until the police arrived.
SOUTH KOREA
Stalker’s name revealed
Police yesterday unveiled the identity of a man accused of murdering a colleague ahead of a court ruling on whether he had stalked her, a case that sparked a public demand for tougher measures to stamp out such crimes. Jeon Joo-hwan, 31, was arrested on charges of murder over the stabbing death on Wednesday last week of a 28-year-old woman in a subway restroom while she was on duty, officials said. Both were employees of Seoul Metro, the operator of subway lines in the capital, though Jeon was relieved of his duties in October last year after police began investigating the stalking accusation. A court on Thursday last week had been set to decide on Jeon’s indictment for the stalking accusation, a police officer said, but that hearing has since been postponed to Thursday next week.
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