■ The Philippines
Breast-fondler arrested
A 25-year-old man was arrested by Philippine police after three of his neighbors complained that he fondled their breasts. Policewoman Virginia Monton said Mark Mugel was arrested in Tondo district after his third victim -- who happened to be a "martial arts expert" -- kicked him several times Thursday evening, prompting bystanders in the slum area to join in. Prior to Mugel's encounter with the martial arts expert, Monton revealed that he had similarly fondled two other women that day. During interrogation, the suspect told police he had a "crush" on the women and they all had "big breasts."
■ China
Law protects Great Wall
Seeking to protect one of China's greatest landmarks from commercial encroachment, Beijing has restricted development close to the Great Wall of China and made it a crime to damage its structure. No new development will be permitted within 500m of the wall while commercial activities within three kilometers of it must undergo a special approval process, news reports said quoting a new law passed on Thursday. The law bans carving, painting, or plundering of stones or bricks from the wall and prohibits developers from setting up shops and stalls upon it.
■ The Philippines
Abducted farmers killed
Soldiers have recovered the bodies of three farmers who were abducted by suspected Muslim extremist rebels in a remote southern Philippine village. The men -- two brothers and their cousin -- were seized from their farm in the village of Sibulao outside the southern port city of Zamboanga on Tuesday. Soldiers found their bodies in nearby Calabasa village two days later, a military report said. Police believe guerrillas from the Abu Sayyaf group used the men as guides in the mountains north of Zamboanga, about 850km south of Manila. The men were found with machete wounds and their throats had been slit.
■ Thailand
Editor shot dead
A Thai newspaper editor has been shot dead in the seaside resort of Pattaya, becoming the third editor of the publication to be killed in recent years. Four gunmen travelling on two motorcycles accosted 42-year-old Pattaya Weekly editor Manop Maneechan as he was leaving a function on Friday night, and shot him 11 times, killing him instantly. Investigators said they suspected Manop was targeted because of several personal conflicts he was involved in. "He was having problems with influential figures and used his paper to launch smear campaigns against his opponents," said a police spokesman.
■ Bangladesh
Mudslides kill 23
Mudslides triggered by heavy rains in southern Bangladesh left at least 23 people dead and four missing, local officials said yesterday. The affected area, near the tribal town of Ramgarh in the southern Khagrachari hills, has been lashed by Monsoon downpours since Thursday. Rescue workers said seven people were buried alive under mud and stones rolling down the frontier hills in the worst-hit remote village of Talmonipara. Ten other deaths in the landslips were reported from rain-swept hamlets at the foot of the hills, police said. An entire family of six was crushed under the weight of falling debris in nearby Panchari valley.
■ Italy
Bacteria saves art
Art restorers in Pisa have found that a bacterium can do the job no chemical has managed to achieve: reveal part of a vast medieval fresco which was covered with a layer of glue during an unfortunate restoration attempt half a century ago. Scientists from Milan University have shown that the bacterium Pseudomonas stutzeri, applied with water on cotton wool, can eat through 80 percent of the glue in about 10 hours. Chunks of the 14th and 15th-century series of frescoes at the Camposanto cemetery were removed for repair and restoration in the 1950s.
■ United States
Bad thoughts go unpunished
A convicted child sex offender can't be banned from city parks because he thought about having sexual contact with children, a US appeals court ruled. The sex offender told his psychologist and self-help group that he had fantasies about children he observed playing at a city park in 2000 in Lafayette, Indiana. After his former probation officer was alerted, Lafayette officials banned the man from entering any city park, which includes the zoo and the golf course. The man sued, and US District Judge Allen Sharp ruled in favor of the city.
■ United States
Entrails flier stirs anger
A state senator suggested in a flier that terrorist attacks could be deterred if convicted Muslim extremists, possibly in Iraq, were buried with pig entrails -- a proposal that has angered Muslims here. The flier, which senators received from Democratic Senator Guy Glodis on Wednesday, said Muslims believe contact with pig entrails and blood bars them from paradise and dooms them to hell. Raeed Tayeh, public affairs director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation in Washington, said Islam doesn't teach that people are barred from heaven if they're buried with pig entrails.
■ United States
Man jailed for strangle offer
A man who offered to strangle a depressed woman he met through an online suicide chat room was sentenced to 10 years probation. Frank Manuel, 55, pleaded guilty to attempted murder Thursday and was sentenced by state District Judge Carol Davies, who also ordered he submit to a psychiatric evaluation and stay away from the Internet. Prosecutors said the woman alerted police after meeting Manuel through the chat group. She told authorities Manuel had offered to strangle her during sex, dig a grave for her in a state forest and bury her with a rose on her chest. Investigators arrested Manual at a Houston bus station where he was awaiting the woman's arrival. Police said they found a strangling device and yellow roses in his car.
■ Switzerland
Joke almost causes disaster
A Swiss air traffic controller jokingly put an "al-Qaeda" label on a French helicopter that strayed into restricted air space during the Group of Eight summit, nearly leading to a shootdown by the French air force, officials confirmed Friday. The unidentified controller put the tag on his radar screen during the meeting in Evian, France, said Patrick Herr, spokesman for the air traffic firm Skyguide. Herr confirmed a report on a Swiss German television news program that the French military picked up the label on its own radar and immediately scrambled Mirage fighter jets. Only at the last moment did the Mirage pilots realize that it was a French transportation helicopter.
■ Brazil
Teenagers jailed for murder
Two 19-year-olds convicted of kicking and stoning an Indian elder to death as he lay sleeping on the sidewalk in southern Brazil have been sentenced to prison. The two received sentences of 11 and 14 years. A third defendant, a 16-year-old, was ordered to serve an undisclosed period of time in a facility for young offenders, the official Agencia Brasil news service said on Friday. None of the defendants was identified. Leopoldo Crespo, 77, was killed in January in Miraguai, Rio Grande do Sul state, in January. Crespo was an elder of the Caingangue Indian tribe. The three teens claimed they only intended to wake Crespo up by kicking him and had not intended to kill him.
■ Mexico
Grenade blast sparks rescue
Authorities sped nine members of a Guatemalan family across the Mexican border for emergency surgery after a group of children accidentally detonated a live grenade, a hospital official said on Friday. Four children were playing with the explosive in their home in the mountain community of Las Palmas, 100km from the Mexican border in the Guatemalan province of Huehuetenango. The grenade eventually exploded, injuring the children and four adults in and around the house, said Bruno Ley, director of the general hospital in Comitan, near the Guatemalan border.
■ Germany
Stasi files to go public
Germany has decided, in agreement with the US, to make public former East German state police files once held by the CIA, the federal office supervising the Stasi archives said on Friday. The files were loaded onto CD-ROM discs by the CIA foreign intelligence agency at the beginning of the 1990s as part of operation "Rosewood." They reportedly contain the code names and real identities of 317,000 agents and details of some 77,000 Stasi operations. Head of the archives Marianne Birthler said the files would help explain more about the activities of former East German spies in the West.
■ Italy
Immigration laws adopted
Italy moved to douse a flaming row within its center-right coalition on Friday when the government adopted four decrees aimed at cracking down on clandestine immigrants. The question of illegal immigration has threatened to provoke a crisis within Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's coalition, just as Italy prepares to take over the rotating EU presidency for the next six months starting on Tuesday. The Northern League, the coalition's most right-wing and xenophobic party, has demanded the resignation of Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu, saying he failed to implement legislation aimed at stemming illegal immigration. The new decrees will permit implementation of the law, passed last year, which makes it possible to deport clandestine migrants before they set foot on Italian soil and restrict entry only to those with a work contract.
■ Russia
Moscow eyes Qatar deal
Moscow is hoping that Qatar will agree to extradite top radical Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev to Russia, a spokesman for the Russian foreign ministry said yesterday. "We hope that the government of Qatar will react in an appropriate manner to the UN Security Council resolution," which included the Chechen leader on a blacklist because of his alleged links to al-Qaeda and the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan, said Alexander Yakovenkox. Yanderbiyev was placed on the UN list on Thursday.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
RSS