■ HONG KONG
Jackie Chan fights piracy
Jackie Chan (成龍) is taking the fight against movie piracy to your home refrigerator. Two movie industry groups will issue 200,000 refrigerator magnets bearing Chan's image and an anti-piracy message to buyers of authentic DVDs in China. The message says: ``Thank you for purchasing legitimate DVDs. Your action determines the future of the film industry,'' Hollywood industry group MPA said in a statement on Tuesday. MPA is organizing the campaign with the China Film Copyright Protection Association.
■ JAPAN
Beef soup stunt sours
How many scoops of stewed beef can you pile onto a bowl of rice? Two video-savvy cooks who tried to find out could find themselves out of jobs after the beef bowl chain Yoshinoya suspended them for posting a clip of their experiment on YouTube. The three-minute clip, posted on Nov. 30, had been viewed almost 480,000 times on the video-sharing site as of Tuesday. It shows a man in a Yoshinoya uniform heap ladle after ladle of steaming stewed beef onto a bowl of rice. By the sixth scoop, the mound of stewed beef is twice as high as the porcelain bowl.
■ PHILIPPINES
Santa tackles crime
More than 1,000 police officers wearing Santa hats have fanned out across Manila in time for the Christmas holidays -- traditionally the busiest period for thieves in the city. "We are wearing this to show the people that during this Christmas season our hearts and minds are on serving the ... people," Manila police officer Giovanni Valera said on Tuesday. Metropolitan Manila police chief Geary Barias said 1,000 officers and 700 police recruits have traded their blue caps for Santa hats while conducting more patrols of Manila's crime-ridden streets.
■ ITALY
Tweety Bird sues pirate
A court in Naples included the cartoon characters Tweety Bird, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in a summons as the damaged parties in a trial. The court summons cites "Titty, Paperino, Paperina, Topolino" -- the Italian names for the characters -- in the criminal trial of a Chinese man accused of counterfeiting products of Disney and Warner Bros instead of naming only the companies and their legal representatives, officials said. "Unfortunately they cannot show up, as they are residents of Disneyland," said Fiorenza Sorotto, vice president of Disney Co Italia. The summons will have to be rewritten, though this will probably delay the trial, Disney lawyer Cristina Ravelli said.
■ FRANCE
Rewards offered for tips
Police have been handing out leaflets in the Paris suburb hit by three nights of riots last week, promising hefty cash rewards for tip-offs about gunmen who opened fire on the security forces. The violence in Villiers le Bel left more than 120 police wounded, several dozen by lead shot fired from shotguns. The leaflet urges people to contact police anonymously via a toll-free number. "This is no longer just urban violence, this is guerilla warfare. We observed tactical movements on the youths' behalf to attract the police. This was anything but spontaneous," said Jean Espitalier, the police chief in charge of the investigation.
■ ITALY
Dialing up a saint
If you are a Catholic looking for a saint in Heaven to protect you, you no longer have to carry a small "holy card," you can get the image as wallpaper for your cellphone. "We found a need and filled it," said Barbara Labate, who came up with the idea with her business partner in a cellphone services firm in Milan. "We are merely catching up with the times. I think this will appeal to young people as well as grandmothers." The downloading service, done by sending a text message to a phone number, costs 3 euros (US$4.42). Some Catholic Church leaders, however, think the idea is crass and commercial. "This is in really bad taste," Bishop Lucio Soravito De Franceschi told the Turin paper La Stampa. "It is a distortion of sacred things."
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Xmas message opened
Fifty years after Britain's Queen Elizabeth delivered her first Christmas message on TV, it's time for her subjects to have their say online. The British have been invited to compile their own nation-to-nation message by computer chip manufacturer Intel. People can submit their own video comments to www.intel.co.uk/thepeoplesspeech. The speech will then be compiled for online viewing from Dec. 18.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Dominatrix sues minister
A dominatrix has cracked her whip against a pastor by filing a claim for 350,000 rand (US$51,000) in damages after he tried to have her evicted from a church-owned home, a report said on Tuesday. Marianne Ellis is suing Pastor Johann Ernst, claiming loss of reputation after he allegedly sent text messages painting her and her husband as liars and sinners, the Pretoria News said. The couple had been churchgoers in the Pretoria suburb of Doringkloofuntil falling out with Ernst when she gave an interview alleging that some members of his congregation were clients, the paper said.
■ CANADA
Man probed for sex crimes
A man convicted of sex crimes against young boys in Cambodia and also sought by Thai police is being investigated in Canada on various charges, his lawyer said on Monday. Defense lawyer Brian Coleman said Orville Mader, who was arrested at Vancouver International Airport last month after being convicted in absentia of sex crimes against children in Cambodia three yeas ago, is being investigated for "a bunch of other charges." Coleman did not elaborate. Thai police had been looking for Mader after they issued an arrest warrant for him Oct. 31 after an eight-year-old Thai boy said a Thai man took him to Mader's hotel room in Thailand's beach resort town of Pattaya.
■ UNITED STATES
Skeleton found in home
Police found the skeletal remains of a woman in her home in Brooklyn, New York, on Monday. How long ago she died was unknown, but neighbors said they had not seen her for about two years. There was no evidence of foul play, investigators said. An autopsy was planned. Neighbors said the woman was Christine Copeman, believed to be in her 60s. They described her as a retired bank worker who was widowed. Mail had piled up behind the storm door at her brick row house on East 92nd Street in Brownsville, and deliveries of bottled water had accumulated on her porch.
■ UNITED STATES
Detective files lawsuit
A counterterrorism detective who says his failed drug test came because his wife had spiked his meatballs with marijuana has filed a lawsuit to get his job back. Anthony Chiofalo asked the court to declare that his firing in August from the New York Police Department was unreasonable and unconstitutional, to declare that a damning hair sample was improperly taken and to order his rehiring with back pay plus interest, seniority and all benefits. Chiofalo, a 22-year veteran assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, was suspended without pay in November 2005 after a random drug test found marijuana in his system. He denied using drugs and demanded a hearing.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
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