■ AUSTRALIA
Fatter `posties' allowed
The postal service has increased the maximum weight for mailmen and women by 15kg in an attempt to attract more "posties," media reported on Tuesday. Australia Post had a weight limit of 90kg for "posties" because its 110cc motorcycles had a safe working limit of 130kg -- 40kg for letters and up to 90kg for mailmen and women fully clothed. But after talks with motorcycle manufacturer Honda it was agreed the bikes could safely carry a "postie" weighing 105kg, said the Daily Telegraph newspaper. The union representing mailmen and women said the 90kg limit had caused recruitment headaches, but the company denied it had staffing problems.
■ AUSTRALIA
Pricasso aims high
A cheeky artist who uses his penis as a brush has entered a racy self-portrait for a top art prize. Tim Patch, who calls himself Pricasso, who usually exposes his talents at sex product fairs, has entered a painting for the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Patch uses his penis, not brushes, to apply paint to the canvas. "I had to use my bum to paint in the background, because you have to have the occasional break," Patch told the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday. His entry depicts himself nude, holding a blank canvas to hide his "brush." Finalists for the prize will be announced next month.
■ CHINA
Pokemon ban extended
SpongeBob SquarePants, Mickey Mouse and Pokemon are officially persona non grata on prime time. Beijing is extending a ban that virtually locks out all foreign cartoons from airing between 5pm and 9pm in a bid to protect its fledgling domestic cartoon industry. According to a ruling yesterday by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, no foreign cartoons or programs introducing foreign cartoons can be shown during "the golden hours" on all domestic cartoon channels and children channels starting on May 1. The move is intended to "spur the domestic cartoon industry," the agency said.
■ NEPAL
Police kill protester
Security forces shot dead a demonstrator during protests that have caused shortages of fuel and essential supplies and cast a shadow over upcoming elections, police said yesterday. Police opened fire late on Tuesday after anti-government protesters began throwing stones in Siraha, a town in the southern Terai plains bordering India that are home to half the country's population. The protesters are demanding greater autonomy for the Terai and its ethnic Madheshi people, who have closer linguistic and cultural links with northern India than with Nepal's hill people. It is the second death since Madheshi groups called an indefinite strike and began blockading roads last week to demand greater power and government job allocations.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Helicopter crash kills seven
An army helicopter crashed into a mountain near Seoul early yesterday, killing all seven people on board, an army official said. The UH-1H went down in Yangpyong, about 40km east of Seoul at around 1:40am, army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ko Dong-hun said. Two pilots, two medical officers and three soldiers died when the aircraft crashed while returning to base after transporting an emergency patient to a military hospital, he said. The bodies were sent to a military hospital in Seongnam, just south of Seoul, after being recovered from the mountain where the chopper was broken into two.
■ GERMANY
Man puts out relationship
A virulent anti-smoker was so angry when his girlfriend lit up he emptied a fire extinguisher to put out the cigarette, caking her and their apartment in powder. "My colleagues said it looked like a bomb had gone off in there," said a spokesman for police in the city of Bielefeld. "He managed to put the cigarette out though." After the woman ignored his request not to smoke, the 42-year-old sprayed the contents of the extinguisher all around the flat shouting abuse, police said. "He said he wasn't bothered by the damage it caused," the spokesman said. "And that he's through with his girlfriend."
■ Latvia
Urinating Briton jailed
A British man was sentenced to five days' detention on Tuesday for urinating on one of Latvia's most treasured monuments and one of the country's ministers called such people "pigs." A court official said the Briton, who denied the charges, would serve his detention in a police cell after being found guilty of urinating on the Freedom Monument. Erected in 1935, the monument is a 42m high symbol of the Baltic state's resistance to foreign rule. News agency LETA quoted Interior Minister Maris Seglins as saying: "These English people are pigs ... One filthy bunch of pigs."
■ UAE
BBC DJ jailed for four years
A Dubai court sentenced British DJ Raymond Bingham, better known as Grooverider, to four years in jail on Tuesday, three months after he was caught in possession of marijuana. The 40-year-old disc jockey was arrested at Dubai airport on Nov. 23 when customs officials found a transparent bag containing 2.16g of marijuana in his luggage. Grooverider, who co-hosts a weekly "drum and bass" music show on BBC Radio 1, was not in court for sentencing. He remains in custody and has two weeks to appeal. Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates federation, has a zero tolerance drug policy. Bingham was key to the development of "drum and bass" music in the 1990s.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Teacher outsmarts clowns
A teacher has designed a chair that is impossible to tip backwards in the hopes of getting students to sit still and prevent accidents. Tom Wates quit his teaching post to design the "Max" chair to stop students from clowning around. "You would get into the flow of the lesson, the kid would fall off the chair, everyone would laugh and you would have to start again," he said. The new chair provides more support in the lower back, forcing kids to sit up, and its rear legs are splayed outwards, preventing tilting. Wates has already received orders for 1,500 chairs from 18 schools.
■ Russia
Spokesman justifies chains
A prison service spokesman on Tuesday justified the use of bed-chains on a jailed former Yukos oil executive, who is receiving treatment for cancer and AIDS in a Moscow hospital, following a complaint from his lawyers. "Such measures are taken when his guard has to leave the room, notably during treatment," Alexander Sidorov said. "This option is provided for under Russian law." The defense team for Vasily Aleksanian complained on Monday about the presence of a round-the-clock guard in his room, the fact that he is chained to his bed and that his handcuffs are only removed before visits by his lawyers.
■ UNITED STATES
Indict Castro, lawmaker says
A Cuban-American lawmaker called on Washington to indict Cuba's ailing President Fidel Castro after his decision to step aside, over the fatal shooting down of two airplanes in 1996. "Now that Fidel has formally stepped down as head of state, it clears the path for immediate legal action to be taken by the US government," Republican Florida congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement. She said she was asking for an indictment against Castro for his alleged role in the death of four people -- two of them US citizens. They died on planes belonging to the anti-Castro group Brothers to the Rescue that were shot down by Cuban aircraft over the Florida Straits in 1996.
■ UNITED STATES
Wal-Mart sorry for comment
Wal-Mart Stores apologized to a Muslim woman who said she was mocked because of her face veil. "Please don't stick me up," a cashier told the shopper on Feb. 2, according to The Council on American-Islamic Relations. Wal-Mart apologized on Monday in a letter signed by Rolando Rodriquez, a vice president and regional general manager. It was released on Tuesday by the council's Nevada chapter. Rodriguez said employees at the Riverdale store would undergo "sensitivity training," specifically in the Islamic faith and Muslim culture.
■ UNITED STATES
Blast kills war relics seller
A man who sold Civil War relics that included munitions was killed by an explosion, and neighbors were kept out of their homes on Tuesday as experts looked for more explosives. Samuel White, 53, was found in his backyard on Monday, Chesterfield County police said. Police Captain Steve Neal said that what exploded was military ordnance, possibly dating from the Civil War. Police found unexploded ordnance at his house, and on Tuesday they were still collecting and detonating explosives. White's business, Sam White Relics, advertised relics, including Civil War artillery shells, cannon balls and bullets. His Web site also says he "will disarm, clean, and preserve your Civil War period and earlier military ordinance" for about US$35 each.
■ UNITED STATES
DVD blocks bullet
A South Carolina man is thankful for a DVD that ended up taking a bullet for him. Colleton County Fire and Rescue Director Barry McRoy says he was leaving a restaurant in the town of Walterboro on Saturday morning when two men ran in fighting over a gun. Police say a bullet hit one of the struggling men, shattered a window and then hit McRoy. The bullet hit a DVD McRoy was carrying in his pocket. He suffered a bruise, but didn't realize he had been shot. As he told a police officer what happened, he noticed a bullet hole in his jacket, the shattered DVD case and a piece of the bullet.
■ UNITED STATES
Whistleblower site closed
A Web site designed to let whistleblowers publish sensitive documents has been ordered shut down by a federal judge at the request of a Swiss bank, court documents showed on Monday. US District Judge Jeffrey White in California ordered the shutdown of Wikileaks.org. He ruled in favor of Julius Baer & Co Ltd, saying that "immediate harm will result to [the bank]." Wikileaks was launched last year with the help of Chinese dissidents to help users post sensitive documents without being traced. The suit came after the site posted documents relating to offshore activities of Julius Baer.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
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