■ PHILIPPINES
Store bombs kill two
Bombs ripped through two department stores in the southern city of Iligan yesterday, killing two people and injuring at least 36, police and hospital officials said. Police swarmed the bloodied, upturned baggage check-in counters of the Unity store and the neighboring Gerry’s Shoppers’ Plaza in downtown Iligan to collect evidence shortly after the early afternoon blasts. Local police investigators and witnesses said the bombs went off within 15 minutes of each other.
■SWEDEN
Latvians invite invasion
An online petition in favor of a Swedish invasion of Latvia is proving a seasonal hit — among Latvians. Fed up with a government that failed to prevent the Baltic state lurching into a serious recession and unimpressed by belated efforts to get out of it, Latvian Roberts Safonovs took the matter into his own hands and set up an online petition calling on Sweden to take over. “We, people of Latvia would like to ask Sweden to occupy Latvia. We consider the Latvian state has no reason to exist. We would like to become Swedish citizens and promise that we will comply with Swedish laws; in exchange we would like to get Swedish citizenship and share the same rights that Swedish people have,” the petition says. Word of mouth and local media reports have spread awareness of the petition, attracting more than 10,000 signatures by Wednesday.
■GERMANY
Budgie birds rule roost
Berlin city officials, summoned by complaints over the noise, found a 60-year-old man sharing his two-room flat with 1,700 budgerigars. The budgies were living on perches installed along the walls, while the floors were saturated with droppings, veterinary services said on Wednesday. The pensioner told officials he had adopted two birds because he felt lonely and that nature had done the rest. About 1,000 of the birds were evacuated on Tuesday. The tenant was also having to move as the flat was deemed no longer fit for human habitation.
■JAPAN
Man dies at retirement party
A 60-year-old man who was thrown into the air in celebration at his retirement party died after his colleagues failed to catch him and he fell to the floor, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. The case came to light after the man’s wife filed a police complaint against colleagues who threw the man up into the air, accusing them of gross negligence, the Mainichi Shimbun paper reported on its Web site.
■EGYPT
Shoe-thrower offered bride
An Egyptian man said on Wednesday he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush in Baghdad on Sunday. The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. “This is something that would honor me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero,” she said by telephone.
■FRANCE
Nude models protest pay
Artists’ models in Paris stripped naked on Monday, braving freezing temperatures to protest against a ban on tips and to demand better pay and recognition. More than 20 male and female models, some posing nude while others were draped in a colorful array of shawls, sheets and fur coats, took part in the protest that had the backing of two of France’s biggest labor unions.
■UNITED STATES
Father admits to rape
A man accused of raping his daughter and posting the film on the Internet before later fleeing to China pleaded guilty at hearings in Washington state, justice officials said. Kenneth Freeman, a former policeman and bodybuilder, admitted counts of producing child pornography and transportation of a minor across state lines for sex at a Federal Court hearing in Spokane. He later pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree rape at a state court hearing on Wednesday. Freeman, 46, was extradited to the US from Hong Kong in September last year after more than a year on the run which saw him becoming one of the US’ most wanted fugitives. The former reserve sheriff’s deputy faces life in prison at a sentencing hearing on March 25.
■UNITED STATES
NY state mulls MP3 tax
New Yorkers who download music to their MP3 players may soon see the cost rise, after New York Governor David Paterson on Wednesday proposed a 4 percent tax on the practice as part of a plan to ease a massive state budget crisis. The charge, nicknamed “the iPod tax,” will also cover e-books and other “digitally delivered entertainment services,” such as videos and photographs. It is one of 137 additional fees the state aims to exact from residents in its budget for next year if approved by the state legislature.
■UNITED STATES
Women prefer Web to sex
A new survey sponsored by computer chip giant Intel has found that about half of US women would prefer to go without sex for two weeks than manage without the Internet for the same period of time. Titled “Internet Reliance in Today’s Economy,” the poll found that 49 percent of women aged 18 to 34 would opt to forgo sex for two weeks rather than do without the Internet, while 52 percent of women ages 35 to 44 made the same choice. The results among men were less tech-friendly. Among males ages 18 to 34, about 39 percent selected Internet time over sex, while just 23 percent of those between 35 and 44 preferred the Internet.
■UNITED STATES
Teen punished in public
Dennis Baltimore’s punishment for vandalizing his school was to take his confession to the streets. His father made the 16-year-old walk the streets of Long Beach, California, for five hours on Tuesday wearing a sandwich board that said: “I am a juvenile delinquent who should be punished. I have wasted your tax money with dumb acts of vandalism in the public schools.” The 10th-grader painted graffiti from a fictitious gang on property at Wilson Classical High School. His father, Dennis Baltimore Sr, got a telephone call on Monday from the school and was told his son had caused US$875 in damage. “In a time of this uncertain economy, I’m sure the public is not going to like it,” the father said.
■PERU
Cocaine hidden in dung
Traffickers hid 2.8 tonnes of cocaine in thousands of kilograms of smelly bird droppings, police said on Monday after uncovering the latest ruse to conceal drug shipments. Cocaine exporters in the world’s No. 2 producer after neighboring Colombia counted on the stench of the dung, which is sold as a high-end organic fertilizer, to trick dogs trained to find drugs at ports of entry.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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