■UNITED KINGDOM
Birth rate highest since 1973
Women are having more children than at any time in the past 35 years, according to figures released on Thursday by the country’s Office of National Statistics (ONS). The birth rate in England and Wales, which reached a low point of 1.63 children per woman in 2001, now appears to be on a sustained upward trend. The latest ONS figures, for last year, show that it has reached 1.95 — the highest fertility level since 1973. Over the past decade the number of births to mothers aged 40 and above has nearly doubled from 13,555 in 1998 to 26,419 last year. The average age of women giving birth remained unchanged, however, at 29.3.
■IRAN
Woman, three men hanged
A woman and three men have been hanged in the southern city of Shiraz, a newspaper reported yesterday. The woman, identified only by her first name Afsaneh, was executed on Wednesday for killing her husband with the help of her lover, the Etemad newspaper said. The other convicts hanged on Wednesday were an Afghan man found guilty of raping a 50-year-old woman, a drug trafficker and a murderer, the report said. The latest hangings bring to at least 116 the number of people executed so far this year, according to a count based on news reports. Last year, the country executed 246 people. The human rights group Amnesty International has said that in 2007 the country applied the death penalty more than any other country apart from China, executing 335 people.
■SERBIA
Angry businessman detained
A judge on Friday ordered a 30-day detention for a man who threatened to blow himself up in the presidential building in downtown Belgrade a day earlier. The man was originally placed under a 48-hour detention pending an investigation, but the investigative judge later ordered the month-long detention “because of the danger that he could again commit a crime.” The bankrupted businessman allegedly entered the presidential building in downtown Belgrade on Thursday carrying two hand grenades and threatening to kill himself.
■LEBANON
Leader calls for killing spies
The leader of the Hezbollah movement, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, urged on Friday that prosecutors seek capital punishment against recently captured Israel-linked espionage ring members. In a televised address commemorating the ninth anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from the south, Nasrallah said: “I call for capital punishment for all arrested agents and beginning with the Shiite agents first.” Authorities are holding up to 30 suspects in what was described by security sources as a “wide-scale investigation into espionage” by Israel. A woman and a 70-year-old man were arrested in the past 24 hours. At least 18 suspects have already been charged.
■GREECE
Five injured at mosque
Unknown assailants tried to burn down a makeshift mosque in Athens yesterday, injuring five Bangladeshi migrants who suffered burns and respiratory problems in the attack, police said. The attackers broke the windows of a basement flat used as a mosque early yesterday morning and threw gasoline inside before lighting it, a police source said. Four Bangladeshi men suffered respiratory problems and a fifth was burned, police said. All were initially taken to hospital but later discharged.
■UNITED STATES
Ex-astronaut may lead NASA
US President Barack Obama will name black former astronaut Charles Bolden as NASA administrator, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. Citing three unnamed congressional sources, the newspaper said that if confirmed by the Senate, the retired Marine Corps general would be the first black American to head the agency. The announcement will be timed to the landing of the shuttle Atlantis, which remained in orbit on Friday because of bad weather but was scheduled to return to Earth yesterday or today, the report said.
■BRAZIL
Man filmed women in loo
A man accused of illicitly filming more than 2,000 women in his workplace toilet with his cellphone has been ordered by a judge to pay damages of US$14,700 in the first of six cases brought against him by victims. Frederico Freire Lemos was charged with photographing the women in compromising positions with his phone at the offices of the Brazil Union of Composers, where he was executive director. He was caught when one worker glimpsed a red light while on the toilet and discovered that it was a hidden camera phone.
■UNITED STATES
Freed reporter arrives in US
Iranian-American reporter Roxana Saberi said on Friday she was “happy to be back in the United States” after spending four months in an Iranian jail. Saberi, who left Iran one week ago and first traveled with her mother, father, brother and a family friend to Vienna, Austria, arrived on Friday at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. “I am so happy to be back in the United States,” Saberi told a friend while flanked by two police officers. “One thing that kept me alive was singing the national anthem to myself,” she told dozens of reporters. The 32-year-old US-born journalist walked free from the notorious Evin prison in Tehran on May 11 after a court reduced her prison term for spying to a two-year suspended sentence, ending a four-month ordeal.
■CANADA
Terror plotter sentenced
A young man was sentenced on Friday to two-and-a-half years in jail for participating in a major jihadist terror plot in 2006, a justice official said. The young man, who was 17 years old when he was arrested in 2006 in a police sting along with 17 other suspects in the case, was found guilty in September of “terrorist activity.” A spokesman for the Public Prosecution Service of Canada said “he was sentenced today as an adult to two-and-a-half years, but is also immediately eligible for release” as he was detained for three years while awaiting trial. He was also put on three years probation, prohibited from possessing a firearm and required to provide a DNA sample to police, the official said.
■UNITED STATES
Dad gets jail for poison
A father was sentenced to 100 years in prison for poisoning his two children to extort money from Campbell Soup Co. William Cunningham was sentenced on Thursday after a jury found him guilty of five counts of cruelty to children and two counts of aggravated assault, said Kellie Perry, a clerk at the Clayton County Superior Court in Georgia. The girl and boy, then 18 months old and three years old, were hospitalized after Cunningham fed them soup tainted with prescription drugs and lighter fluid. On one occasion, authorities said he used the prescription drugs Prozac and Amitriptyline to poison the children. Cunningham was arrested in March 2006.
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.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
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
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
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