IN BRIEF (Page 12)

Yemen

Rebels launch drone attack on Saudi airport

Yemen's Houthi rebels said they launched a drone attack on an arms depot at the airport in the Saudi Arabia's border city of Najran, the group's TV al-Masirah reported on Tuesday. "The attack was carried out by Kasif-K2 drone which caused a fire to break out in the facility," it said. Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition's spokesman Colonel Turkie al-Maleki said a vital civilian facility in Najran was targeted with a drone-carrying explosives, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television reported. The spokesman did not mention casualties. The attack came a day after Riyadh said its forces had intercepted and destroyed "ballistic missiles" above the Saudi western cities of Jeddah and Taif. Houthis have been targeting Saudi border cities since the beginning of the war in Yemen.

Australia

Election triggers suicide attempts

At least four refugees in Australia's offshore Pacific camps have attempted suicide since the conservative government's re-election on Saturday, according to refugees, advocates and police. Around 800 would-be refugees who tried to reach Australia had been sent to live in severe conditions on the remote islands of Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus under a hard-line policy from Canberra. Many had prayed for a more lenient policy from the Australian Labor Party, which had been strongly tipped to win. But an unexpected victory by incumbent Scott Morrison's center-right coalition dashed hopes and set off a wave of self-harming that led to several hospitalizations. Manus Provincial Police Commander David Yapu said that he was aware of at least 10 suicide attempts including four over the weekend. "It's an issue we are faced with right now," he said.

New Zealand

Mosque shooter charged with terrorism

New Zealand police on Tuesday filed a terrorism charge against the man accused of killing 51 people at two Christchurch mosques. Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28, was already facing murder and attempted murder charges from the March 15 shootings. The new charge came with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment upon conviction and will be a test case for New Zealand's terrorism law, which came onto the books in 2002 following the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept 11, 2001. The New Zealand law defines terrorism as including acts that are carried out to advance an ideological, political, or religious cause with the intention of inducing terror in a civilian population.

Japan

FM puzzles followers with 'bacon' tweet

Bemused followers of Japan's foreign minister were left scratching their heads on Tuesday after a bizarre tweet about bacon, sparking tongue-in-cheek speculation he could be tweeting classified information in code. "Ah, bacon is in fact^%$+*.!%...." Taro Kono tweeted in Japanese from his verified account to his 513,000 followers. The tweet prompted confusion and many more retweets and 'likes' that he usually gets from conventional tweets about diplomatic meetings. On Sunday, he tweeted his son had greeted him by "screaming bacon with all his might" when he returned home in the early hours. "What does he want to do?" he tweeted, uploading an image of a sheet of paper on which someone had handwritten the word "bacon" in Japanese. There was no further comment on the bacon affair and ministry officials declined to comment.

Xinhua - Afp - Ap - Reuters

(China Daily 05/22/2019 page12)