■ 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.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
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