Japan to ramp up defense spending
Reuters, Tokyo
Japan aims to boost defense spending over the next five years to help pay for new stealth fighters and other advanced U.S. military equipment, a source with knowledge of the plan said on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Defence will this month present a plan to spend 27 trillion yen ($239.5 billion) on its military over five years starting from April 2019, said the government source who declined to identified.
Thai junta lifts ban on political campaigning
AFP, Bangkok
Thailand’s junta has lifted a ban on political campaigning ahead of 2019 elections, an order published by the Royal Gazette said Tuesday, more than four years after it was introduced following the kingdom’s latest coup.
One of the military’s first acts after seizing power in May 2014 was to outlaw political activity of all kinds as it headed off opposition in a country notorious for its rowdy – and often deadly – street politics.
US returns war trophy bells to Philippines
Reuters, Manila
Church bells taken as war trophies by U.S. forces more than a century ago arrived in the Philippines on Tuesday, ending Manila’s decades-long quest for the return of some of the most famous symbols of resistance to U.S. colonialism.
The “Bells of Balangiga” landed in a military cargo plane at a Manila air base ahead of their return on Saturday to a church in Samar, the central island where U.S. troops in 1901 massacred hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Filipinos to avenge an ambush that killed 48 of their comrades.
Palestinian shot dead in West Bank
AFP, Hebron
A Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces on Tuesday near the flashpoint city of Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials said.
Palestinian official news agency Wafa identified the dead man as Omar Awwad, 27, and said he was shot by Israeli forces near Hebron. The health ministry confirmed he had died after being taken to hospital. Israeli police said a man was shot after his car “drove towards border police” at a checkpoint.
3 Indian cops killed in Kashmir
AP, Srinagar
Rebels fighting against Indian rule in disputed Kashmir attacked a police post on Tuesday, killing three officers and injuring another, police said. Militants opened gunfire at the post in the southern Shopian area, police said. Three policemen were killed on the spot and another was critically wounded in the attack.
The attackers took away four automatic rifles from the post, police said. Reinforcements of counterinsurgency police and soldiers launched search operations in the area to nab attackers. No rebel group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
