■JAPAN
Man arrested over exports
Police yesterday arrested a businessman for allegedly trying to export to North Korea two large vehicles that could be put to military use in its missile program, police officials said. Tei Rinsai — a 50-year-old trading house president of unknown nationality also using the name Tadao Morita — allegedly tried to export two tanker trucks to North Korea via South Korea. Media reports said the two vehicles, second-hand tanker trucks, could be used to carry missiles and fuel and serve as launching pads.
■AUSTRALIA
Conservation zone created
The government yesterday announced a new conservation zone off the northeast coast, but rejected environmentalists’ demands for a fishing ban in the Coral Sea. Environment Minister Peter Garrett said fishing boats and cruise ships would continue to have access to the 972,000km² of waters east of the protected Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. But no increase in fishing or cruise ship traffic would be allowed, he said.
■AUSTRALIA
Woman arrested in Phuket
An Australian woman said yesterday she had been wrongfully locked up in a Thai prison for allegedly stealing a bar mat. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Melbourne mother of four Annice Smoel would receive consular assistance as she fights charges over the incident on the island of Phuket, which could lead to a five-year jail term. Smoel, 36, said she spent four nights in a cramped cell with three other inmates and had her passport confiscated after undercover police arrested her as she left a bar on May 3. Smoel, who was released on bail after being charged with theft, said the mat was jokingly placed in her bag by a friend and security footage would show she was innocent. The bar’s owner, Australian Steve Wood, said police initially intended only to chastise Smoel but the situation escalated when she began to abuse them and tried to flee.
■HONG KONG
Teacher convicted over sex
A primary school teacher was facing a jail term yesterday after being convicted of having sex with a girl pupil 280 times starting when she was 12 years old. Chu Chi-wah, 39, was found guilty of 11 counts of having sex with a minor over a two-year period. He will be sentenced on June 8. The girl told police they had sex 10 times a month on average. Chu, who taught her at primary school, began giving her private tutorials when she graduated to high school. They would have sex after the tutorials and her mother allowed her to sleep at his home, the court was told.
■UKRAINE
Tatars mark deportation
About 20,000 ethnic Tatars gathered in the Crimea peninsula on Monday to mark the 65th anniversary of their people’s mass deportation by Josef Stalin and renew demands for greater rights. Protesters rallied in the center of Simferopol, Crimea’s main town, to hear leaders urge the authorities to honor their claims to land and improve living conditions for the descendants of those who returned to their home region. Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko issued a statement expressing sympathy at the suffering of the deportees and saying that Tatar returnees could help build a new Ukraine. Within days of Crimea’s recapture by Soviet Red Army forces, Stalin ordered the deportation of the entire Tatar population of more than 180,000 on May 18, 1944, on grounds that they collaborated with the Nazis.
■IRAN
Ex-PM cleared to run
Former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi has been cleared by the Guardians Council, the powerful constitutional watchdog, to stand in presidential elections on June 12, his media adviser Abolfazl Fateh said yesterday. Mousavi was the last serving prime minister before the post was scrapped in 1989. He is seeking to make a comeback after two decades in the political wilderness. The conservative electoral and constitutional watchdog screens prospective candidates and gives a final ruling on those who can run for the election. It will release the list of approved candidates tomorrow and on Friday.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Prince honored for garden
Prince Charles, an avid gardener and environmentalist, on Monday received the nation’s top gardening award from his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. The Victoria Medal of Honor is the highest accolade the Royal Horticultural Society bestows. Only 63 horticulturists can hold it at any time — a tribute to the 63 years of Queen Victoria’s reign. The society said the heir to the throne was given the medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in London in recognition of his “passion for plants, sustainable gardening and the environment.”
■UNITED STATES
Mockingbirds know threat
Mockingbirds can remember people who have threatened them and even start dive-bombing them if they see the person again, a study has found. An urban population of the songbirds ignored most passers-by, but took to the air when they recognized people who had approached their nest days before. When the birds spotted a previous offender, they screeched and set off to harass the person with swooping dives, at times grazing the tops of their heads. The extraordinary behavior, reported in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is thought to be the first published account of wild animals in their natural setting recognizing individuals of another species.
■DR CONGO
Condemn war crimes: HRW
The Security Council should condemn war crimes committed by UN-backed Congolese soldiers as a delegation visited the country yesterday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. “The Congolese army is responsible for widespread and vicious abuses against its own people that amount to war crimes,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher in HRW’s Africa division. HWR also demanded that the Security Council force the removal from military duty of Bosco Ntaganda, a former Tutsi rebel indicted by the International Criminal Court, which is now working with the Congolese army.
■UNITED STATES
Firefighters rescue ducks
Firefighters plucked four baby ducks from a storm drain on Monday after the rescuers heard the mother squawking for her hatchlings in a bustling Washington neighborhood known more for nightlife than wildlife. Firefighters at Engine Company 9 noticed a duck “screaming at a storm drain” in an alley, fire department spokesman Alan Etter said. When they took the cover off the drain, they found four ducklings swimming about 1.8m down, he said. The firefighters took all the ducks, including a fifth duckling that had stayed by its mother’s side, to a nearby police station, Etter said. Animal control officials said the ducks would be released into the wild once they are healthy enough.
■UNITED STATES
Man shot at Harvard
A man has been shot near a Harvard University dormitory. The man was wounded in his stomach on Monday outside an entrance to Kirkland House, one of a dozen dorms on the university’s campus in the Boston suburb of Cambridge. He was hospitalized in stable condition. Police said it was unclear if he was a student. House Master Tom Conley told the Harvard Crimson daily student newspaper the man didn’t live in the undergraduate dorm. A witness told the paper the victim was “college-aged” and was bleeding but conscious. No arrest has been made. Harvard said the shooting appears to be an “isolated” incident.
■UNITED STATES
Rapper Dolla shot dead
Up-and-coming rap artist Dolla, whose legal name is Roderick Anthony Burton II, was shot dead outside a landmark Los Angeles shopping mall on Monday, friends and family of the slain musician were reported as saying. The Atlanta-based musician was gunned down at the entrance to the Beverly Center, a popular shopping haunt for tourists, at around 3pm, the Los Angeles Times quoted Dolla’s publicist as saying. Los Angeles police have refused to confirm the identity of the 21-year-old victim, who died at Cedars Sinai Medical Center after being shot. LAPD officer Karen Rayner said a person of interest had been detained at Los Angeles International Airport later on Monday and was being questioned.
■BRAZIL
Ten arrested over child porn
Authorities arrested 10 people on Monday as part of a broad nationwide crackdown on child pornography on the popular Google-run Orkut social networking Web site. Some 400 federal agents were mobilized in Brasilia and 20 other states across the country seizing hundreds of CDs, DVDs and computers containing pornographic material, police said. Police said they accessed the private data of 3,267 Internet users suspected of possessing or distributing child pornography.
■COLOMBIA
Defense minister resigns
The nation’s defense minister resigned on Monday, saying he will launch a presidential bid if President Alvaro Uribe decides not to seek a third term. Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who has received credit for some of the military’s biggest successes against leftist rebels, said he is stepping down on Saturday after nearly three years in the post. Public officials have to step down a year ahead of the election to seek the presidency. Santos said he will support Uribe if the president runs for a third term next May, but if Uribe isn’t on the ballot, Santos said, “I will be a candidate.” Uribe has not said publicly whether he will seek a third term, something that would require a constitutional change.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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