■AUSTRALIA
Airline fights flight fright
People scared of flying can now press a button on their iPhone to help them deal with their panic. Long-haul airline Virgin Atlantic Airways has launched an application for its Flying Without Fear course, which boasts a success rate of more than 98 percent. “Apps” are a source of information, games and other novelty ideas for users of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices. The airline said the app was designed to help people overcome fear. “Our first iPhone app will bring the benefits of our successful Flying Without Fear course to millions of people around the world,” Virgin president Richard Branson said in a statement. The airline developed the app with Mental Workout, a company developing software to help people resolve issues. Mental Workout said an estimated one in three adults is scared of flying. The app has an introduction by Branson, a video-based, in-flight explanation of a flight, frequently asked questions, relaxation exercises and a fear attack button for emergencies with breathing exercises.
■SOUTH KOREA
Ex-Doosan CEO found dead
The ousted chairman of the country’s oldest conglomerate, the Doosan Group, was found dead in an apparent suicide, a news report said yesterday. Park Yong-oh was found dead at his Seoul home in what appeared to be a suicide, Yonhap news agency said, citing police. Police said they were trying to determine whether Park committed suicide. Doosan officials said they could not immediately confirm the report that Park killed himself. Park, 72, was chief executive of Doosan until a family feud prompted his ouster in 2005. His younger brother, Park Yong-sung, took over as chairman. In 2006, however, they and two other brothers were convicted of embezzling company funds and received suspended prison terms.
■JAPAN
Surgery frustrates manhunt
The only suspect in the murder of a 22-year-old British woman more than two years ago is reported to have undergone plastic surgery, a news report said yesterday. Tatsuya Ichihashi, 30, is wanted in connection with the killing of Lindsay Ann Hawker, an English teacher who was found dead in a sand-filled bathtub on the balcony of his apartment near Tokyo in March 2007. Photos of Ichihashi have been plastered on walls in police and train stations, but police have failed to catch him. The Asahi Shimbun said Ichihashi visited a hospital in Osaka last month for cosmetic surgery. Police have examined photographs provided by the hospital and believe the patient was Ichihashi.
■PHILIPPINES
Abduction syndicate caught
Police have busted a drug syndicate that allegedly abducted people and forced them to swallow capsules packed with heroin to transport the narcotics abroad, an official said yesterday. Police Deputy Director General Jefferson Soriano said two suspects were arrested on Monday while forcing a victim to take the capsules, each containing 11g of heroin, in a taxi outside Manila airport. The victim, Jayson Ordinario, 22, said “he was forced to swallow 34 tubes of heroin and that at the time of his rescue, he was about to board a plane to Macau to transport the substances,” Soriano said. The value of the seized heroin was more than US$64,000. Police found Ordinario after his parents reported him missing. Ordinario said he was about to attend mass in downtown Manila when he was seized by two men on Sunday.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Stormtroopers back in court
The George Lucas empire struck back on Tuesday against a British prop designer who sold replicas of the iconic Stormtrooper uniforms from the Star Wars movies. Designer Andrew Ainsworth has fought a long legal battle against Lucasfilm Ltd, which sued him over the replica suits and helmets he sold through a Web site. Ainsworth sculpted the Stormtrooper helmets for the first Star Wars movie in 1977 and later sold replicas of the molded white uniforms, worn in the films by warriors of the evil Galactic Empire. The case ended ambiguously at London’s High Court last year. A judge ruled that Ainsworth had violated Lucas’ US copyright, but rejected a copyright claim against him under British law, saying the costumes were not works of art. Now lawyers for Lucas want the Court of Appeal to rule that the suits are sculptures and therefore works of art covered by British copyright law.
■GERMANY
Obese man refuses X-ray
A man weighing 230kg has died after refusing to go to the zoo for an x-ray because he was too heavy for machines designed for humans, daily Bild reported on Tuesday. “It sounded like they were trying to wind us up,” Thomas Lessmann’s widow, Petra, told the paper. Complaining he was feeling ill and frequently losing consciousness, Lessmann, 51, went to a clinic in Eppendorf, near Hamburg, which referred him to the nearby Hagenbeck Zoo. His pride wounded, he refused to go and died 13 days later, the paper said. The cause of death was unclear.
■LATVIA
Man bites after dog show
A man is alleged to have bitten two people following a dog show in the capital Riga on Sunday, the Baltic News Service reported on Tuesday. Police were called after a 27-year-old dog handler from Slovenia reacted in canine fashion when his dog failed to win a prize. So upset was he that he attacked one of the judges and the owner of the winning dog, biting a security guard in the leg in the process, police spokesman Edgars Dudko said. He then bit a police officer on the hand while in custody at a police station. The man was fined US$500.
■YEMEN
Officials killed in ambush
Two of the top security officials in the eastern province of Wadi Hadramut were killed in an ambush on Tuesday that also took the lives of three other security men, an official said. “Brigadier General Ali Salem al-Ameri, security chief in Wadi Hadramut, and Ahmed Bawazeir, the head of state security in the area, and three security men were killed in an ambush,” the official said. The attack took place at 3pm in the area of Khashm al-Ein, in the district of Al-Abr, in the northwest of Hadramut. The five were traveling in a single car when they came under a hail of bullets, a witness in a car behind them said. Ameri, who was driving, swerved and collided with a truck. The official said he “would not rule out the possibility that al-Qaeda might be behind the attack.”
■IRAN
Earthquake injures 269
A moderate earthquake has shaken the south, injuring 269 people and cutting power and telephone lines. State radio says residents of the southern port city of Bandar Abbas poured into the streets after the 4.9-magnitude quake hit at 2:56am yesterday. The broadcast says there are no reports of deaths in the quake, which hit 1,367km south of the capital.
■UNITED STATES
Man jailed over laser beam
A California man who aimed a laser beam at two aircraft as they approached an airport has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in federal prison for disrupting the flights. The US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said Dana Christian Welch, 37, of Orange, who was sentenced on Monday, was the first person in the US to be convicted at trial of interfering with pilots by aiming lasers at their planes. Authorities said Welch aimed a handheld laser at two Boeing jets as the passenger planes were about to land at John Wayne Airport on the night of May 21 last year. The laser beam struck one pilot in the eye, causing “flash blindness,” and interfered with the pilots’ ability to land the other plane.
■UNITED STATES
Maine rejects gay wedding
Maine voters have torpedoed a state law that would have allowed gay couples to marry. With 84 percent of the precincts reporting, gay marriage foes had 53 percent of the vote on Tuesday. The outcome amounts to a defeat for the gay rights movement — particularly since it occurred in a northeastern New England state, the corner of the country most supportive of gay marriage. At issue was a law passed by the Maine legislature last spring that would have legalized same-sex marriage. The law was put on hold after conservatives launched a petition drive to repeal it in a referendum. Gay marriage has now lost in all 31 states in which it has been put to a popular vote.
■UNITED STATES
No bids for ‘Monroe’ crypt
An auction for the crypt above the final resting place of Marilyn Monroe has ended without receiving a single offer. The unusual item at the Westwood Village Memorial Park was offered for sale on auction site eBay for a minimum of US$500,000. But the listing ended over the weekend without a single bid, in sharp contrast to an earlier auction, which closed for US$4.6 million before the winner pulled out. The crypt had been owned by Monroe’s ex-husband Joe DiMaggio, who later sold it to entrepreneur Richard Poncher.
■UNITED STATES
Mom, daughter admit theft
In exchange for jail time, a woman and her daughter agreed to stand outside a courthouse for four-and-a-half hours on Tuesday holding signs saying they stole a gift card from a nine-year-old girl on her birthday. Because Evelyn Border, 56, and Tina Griekspoor, 35, agreed to hold the signs, Bedford County District Attorney Bill Higgins said he would ask for probation instead of jail when they plead guilty to the theft.
■GUATEMALA
Horse race turns rowdy
Despite a drinking ban, mayhem erupted at a traditional Mayan horse race on Sunday, with riders falling off their horses and drunken spectators stumbling through the mountain village. Hundreds of tourists and locals gathered for the annual spectacle in Todo Santos Cuchumatan to cheer the dozens of riders charging back and forth along a 100m length of road for up to seven hours. But the macho test of stamina was marred, as it has been in the past, by the copious amount of homemade spirits the riders consume. At least two Mayan riders fell off their horses during this year’s race, and one was carried away by bystanders after being trampled in the mud. Another man walked away from the track with a bloody face. “People here aren’t able to hold their drink, if they have one drink, they just continue until they’re so drunk they want to hit someone,” village Mayor Modesto Mendez said.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
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,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
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