■ GERMANY
Farmer attacks police cars
A farmer angry with police for trying to confiscate his tractor wrecked three patrol cars and evaded capture for seven hours before an elite unit managed to arrest him, a police spokesman said on Wednesday. The farmer was pulled over for driving his tractor without a license, despite previous warnings. The officers called in three patrol cars before asking the farmer to get out of his vehicle. He refused and proceeded to ram the cars with his tractor, making full use of its attached muck spreader and hydraulic fork. Officers were only just able to scramble out of harm's way. The farmer then drove into a forest, where he eluded a manhunt involving two helicopters and an armored car for seven hours.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Superman replaces 4Real
A couple is looking to call their newborn son Superman -- but only because their chosen name of 4Real has been rejected by the government registry. Pat and Sheena Wheaton say they will get around the decision by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages by officially naming their son Superman but referring to him as 4Real, the New Zealand Herald newspaper has reported. The Wheatons decided on the name after seeing the baby for the first time in an ultrasound scan and realizing their baby was "for real."
■ MAURITANIA
Slavery criminalized
The national assembly late on Wednesday adopted a law criminalizing slavery for the first time. The practice has persisted in certain parts of the north African country despite its official abolition in 1981. Under the new law, voted for unanimously, people convicted of acts of slavery will risk between five and 10 years in prison. Slavery in its original form has become rare in the country but still exists in many communities, especially in the countryside. No official statistics exist on the number of people reduced to slavery in the country.
■ RUSSIA
South Pole journey planned
The explorer who made an epic descent to the North Pole seabed last week hopes to make an expedition to the South Pole around the end of this year, a member of his staff said on Wednesday. Artur Chilingarov, a 67-year-old explorer and member of parliament, hopes to go to the South Pole "sometime in the period from December to February," an adviser to Chilingarov, Konstantin Zaitsev, said. Although it was too early to provide details of the expedition, Zaitsev said it was unlikely to be organized by the main state body behind last week's North Pole descent, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute.
■ UKRAINE
Man officially tallest
A giant veterinary surgeon from the northwest has been declared the tallest living human by Guinness World Records, the book's publisher said on Wednesday. "Guinness World Records has announced the new tallest man in the world as ... Leonid Stadnyk of Ukraine who was found to be 2.57m in 2006," spokeswoman Amarilis Espinoza said. In next year's edition of the book Stadnyk will replace Bao Xishun, a native of Inner Mongolia, China, who is 2.36m tall, she said. Stadnyk is believed to suffer from a rare condition caused by a tumor on the gland that stimulates the release of growth hormones.
■ UNITED STATES
Man hides monkey in hat
A man smuggled a monkey onto an airplane, stashing the fist-size primate under his hat until passengers spotted it perched on his ponytail, an airline official in New York said. On a flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to New York's LaGuardia airport, people around the man noticed that a marmoset had emerged from underneath his hat, Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Alison Russell said. The man's journey had begun in Lima, Peru. "Other passengers asked the man if he knew he had a monkey on him," Russell said. The monkey spent the remainder of the flight in the man's seat and behaved well, Russell said. LaGuardia airport police were waiting for the man and his monkey when the plane landed, and he was taken for questioning. It was unclear if he would face any criminal charges.
■ COLOMBIA
Cross-dressing killer caught
A cross-dressing suspected Colombian hitman just wasn't feminine enough to pull it off. Police said the 27-year-old suspect, identified only as "Chucho," was a killer for Colombia's Norte del Valle cocaine cartel and in order to lie low disguised himself as a woman. The suspect -- wanted for the killing of a salesman in May -- operated in southwest Narino province in a wig and dress "planning terrorist acts against the security forces," police said in a statement released on Wednesday. The suspect was nabbed when he and his male partner checked into a posh hotel, posing as a couple on a holiday. But locals weren't convinced and tipped off police about the strange couple. "It was the way he moved, the shape of the hair he was using, all of this prompted suspicions," regional police chief Colonel Fernando Jimenez said.
■ UNITED STATES
Skull shocks auction buyer
A woman who bought a box sight-unseen at an unclaimed property auction in Phoenix, Arizona, got a shock when she opened it and found a human skull, police said. The woman turned the skull over to police, who said it was relatively clean and do not believe foul play was involved. Phoenix police spokesman Sergeant Joel Tranter said officials were investigating where it came from. "There's no indication the skull is connected to a crime," Tranter said. "It's possible it was part of a medical display."
■ COLOMBIA
Navy finds drug submarine
The navy seized a 20m submarine that likely was used to haul tonnes of cocaine on part of its journey to the US, officials said on Tuesday. No drugs were found or arrests made when the fiberglass submarine was discovered on Sunday in a swampy mangrove about 10km off the northernmost point of Colombia's Caribbean coast. The blue-colored, diesel-powered vessel had sophisticated communications systems and was capable of carrying up to 10 tonnes of cocaine, said Rear Admiral Roberto Garcia Marquez, head of the navy's Caribbean fleet.
■ UNITED STATES
Nude jogging priest nabbed
A Catholic priest faces an indecent exposure charge after jogging in the nude about an hour before sunrise. The Reverend Robert Whipkey told police he had been running naked at a high school track in Frederick, Colorado, and did not think anyone would be around at that time of day, a police report said. He told officers he sweats profusely if he wears clothing while jogging. "I know what I did was wrong," he said in the report.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of