■BANGLADESH
Dhaka to eliminate begging
Dhaka said on Thursday it would seek to eliminate begging from the impoverished country within five years. Hundreds of thousands of people depend on begging for their income in a country where 40 percent of the 144 million population earn less than a US$1 a day. A.M.A Muhith, finance minister in the newly elected Awami League administration, said a government-charity partnership would set up a program to train, educate and employ beggars.
■BANGLADESH
‘Rat-killing champ’ crowned
A poor farmer from the north was crowned the country’s rat-killing champion on Thursday with a final score of 39,650 dead rodents after a year-long hunt. Binoy Kumar Karmakar, 40, used traps, poison and flooding to kill his quarry, and collected their tails to prove his success rate and claim a government prize. Karmakar collected a 14-inch Sony color TV for winning the competition. “During the year, our farmers killed around 25 million rats,” agriculture department spokesman Abdul Halim said. “Binoy Kumar Karmakar has been declared the champion for killing 39,650.”
■HONG KONG
Tang Wei returns
Ang Lee (李安) protege Tang Wei (湯唯) has landed her first role since starring in the sexually charged spy thriller Lust, Caution and her reported ban in China. Tang will costar with singer Jacky Cheung (張學友) in the upcoming Chinese-language comedy Crossing Hennessy, Hong Kong-based Irresistible Films said on Thursday. Shooting will start next month, it said in a statement. Chinese media reported last year that regulators had ordered TV stations to stop reporting on the actress and pull ads featuring her.
■THAILAND
Police raid orgy, arrest 23
Police early Thursday raided an orgy, arresting 23 people including 16 foreigners for lewd behavior. Police raided the “swinging party” at the Elizabeth Hotel in Bangkok at 12:15am on Thursday, nabbing 14 foreign men, two foreign women and seven Thai women. Police caught several of the participants having group sex in two hotel rooms and found used condoms, lubricant gel, porno books and CDs and 30 Viagra pills. The partygoers were freed after being charged 1,000 baht (US$29) for lewd behavior, but Briton Christian Richards, 54, and his Thai wife face more serious charges and a possible 10 years in prison for advertising and procurement for sex parties.
■AUSTRALIA
‘Bin Laden’ bids for job
More than 10,000 people have jumped at the chance to become the caretaker of a tropical Australian island — including a prankster identifying himself as terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. A 30-second video available on YouTube shows an actual video of the bearded al-Qaeda leader with garble dubbed over his real voice and subtitles stating why he is right for the job. “I enjoy the outdoors and sandy areas,” the subtitles read. “I’ve got experience with videos, delegating tasks and experience with large scale event coordination.” Queensland launched the “Best Job in the World” campaign on Jan. 12, calling for video applications from people interested in a A$150,000 (US$100,000) contract to relax on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef for six months while writing a blog to promote the island.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Racist doll prompts apology
Managers of one of Queen Elizabeth II’s country estates have apologized for selling a soft toy with racist connotations in their gift shop. Sandringham Estate’s management said on Thursday it did not intend to cause any offense by selling the rag dolls, which resemble black-faced minstrels and are popularly known as “golliwogs.” They were popular toys during the early part of the 20th century, but the doll and its name are now considered racist. The toys have been withdrawn from sale at the estate in Norfolk, 185km northeast of London. Earlier this week, the BBC dropped Carol Thatcher, daughter of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, from a TV show after she reportedly referred to an unidentified tennis player as a golliwog.
■CANADA
Color red boosts attention
The color red boosts attention to detail in tasks such as memorization, while blue encourages creativity, a study published online on Thursday in the journal Science shows. The findings apply to advertising, warnings on medication and especially environmental design for offices or classrooms, said Rui (Juliet) Zhu, who teaches marketing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Zhu, who wrote the study with doctoral student Ravi Mehta, recommends that marketers selling creative or innovative products use blue and brainstorming sessions be held in blue rooms. Using red in advertising would prompt consumers to pay more attention to product details, she said.
■SPAIN
Burglar robs detainees
A man who had been arrested for burgling a house robbed his fellow detainees at a police station a few hours later, police said on Thursday in the southeastern city of Alicante. The man threatened the others with a pair of scissors while all of them were waiting to be questioned, ordering them to hand over all their money. He netted 2,200 euros (US$2,800), but his victims reported him to police and he now faces a second criminal charge.
■IRAN
Be polite: Ahmadinejad
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked world powers on Thursday to be “polite” in dealing with Tehran, a day after diplomats from six countries met to discuss the nuclear standoff. “Bullying powers should learn how to speak correctly and be polite so Iran’s cultured and peace-loving people listen to them,” Ahmadinejad said in the northeastern shrine city of Mashhad. He did not single out any country but Iran has been at odds with the West over its nuclear program, which Washington and its allies suspect is a cover for a weapons drive, something Tehran strongly denies.
■UNITED STATES
Cramps co-founder dies
Lux Interior, co-founder and lead singer of the pioneering horror-punk band the Cramps, has died, the group’s publicist said. He was 62. Interior — whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser — died on Wednesday of a pre-existing heart condition at a hospital in Glendale, Arizona, publicist Aleix Martinez said in a statement. Interior met his future wife Kristy Wallace — who would later take the stage name Poison Ivy — in Sacramento in 1972. The pair moved to New York and started the Cramps with Interior on lead vocals and Ivy on guitar. The group was a part of the late 1970s early punk scene centered at Manhattan clubs alongside acts like the Ramones and Patti Smith.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema