■SOUTH KOREA
Robot actress seeks roles
A robot that played to acclaim in Robot Princess and the Seven Dwarfs is set for more roles this year, a scientist said yesterday. EveR-3 (Eve Robot 3) starred in several dramas last year, including the government-funded Dwarfs, said Lee Ho-gil, of the state-run Korea Institute of Industrial Technology. The lifelike EveR-3 is 157cm tall, can communicate in Korean and English, and can express a total of 16 facial expressions. Lee said robot actresses tend to bump into props and fellow (human) actors. But he said a thespian android was useful in promoting the cutting-edge industry.
■CHINA
Singles seek holiday help
Single people worried about pleasing pushy parents during the Lunar New Year holiday are renting fake dates. Ads posted by people seeking to pay young men or women to come home with them for Spring Festival are scattered all over popular Web portals. “500 yuan [US$73] a day, you don’t have to sleep with me, I can sleep on the floor in the same room, but you have to be a good actress,” wrote one man yesterday on baidu.com, under the heading “Looking to rent a girlfriend.” The state-run Global Times reported a female student at Peking University placed an ad offering 10,000 yuan a day to a man willing to go home with her for Spring Festival. She said in the posting that her parents had told her to bring a man home or “you can forget about coming home for the holiday.”
■AUSTRALIA
Mass dine-out protest set
Thousands of people have signed up for “Vindaloo Against Violence,” a mass dining event to protest attacks against Indians. The brainchild of Melbourne digital media designer Mia Northrop, the grassroots campaign started as a humble event on Facebook but has exploded to more than 10,000 registered participants. “We were looking for an idea that was the opposite of a boycott essentially, where you can go and embrace community, and this idea popped in my head,” said Northrop, 24. “It was a small gesture of going and dining at an Indian restaurant, but made powerful by the sheer number of people who would do it simultaneously.” Attacks against Indians have been on the rise, threatening to damage diplomatic ties and the country’s US$15.4 billion education export industry. “Vindaloo Against Violence” will be held on Feb. 24.
■HONG KONG
Freak accident kills widow
A widow who lost her husband in a construction accident three years ago was killed when an elderly neighbor plunged from her high-rise apartment and landed on top of her, police said yesterday. Both women were killed on Tuesday after the 74-year-old slipped while collecting clothes from a drying rack outside her 27th-floor apartment and landed directly on top of Chan Kwai-mui, 51. Chan was left a widow in 2007 when a crane collapsed at a construction site, killing her husband and another worker.
■HONG KONG
Golden bowl man dies
A flamboyant lawyer who owned the territory’s first golden toilet and traveled around with his wife in a pink Rolls Royce has died at 75, his son said yesterday. Chau Kai-bong lived in a mansion draped in gold from the windows to bathroom fixtures. Chau and his wife, Brenda, often appeared at balls with matching outlandish outfits. “Some reporters criticize the way we dress. They know nothing about fashion,” Chau was quoted as saying in a 2007 magazine article.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Burglars turn to mugging
An influx of cheap electronic goods from the Far East has prompted burglars to turn to other crimes such as robberies and muggings, according to research published yesterday. Criminology lecturer James Treadwell said the fall in the cost of traditional household goods had made burglars “redundant.” In the last decade, domestic burglaries have fallen by more than 50 percent according to the British Crime Survey. Treadwell said that criminals used to be able to make a profit by breaking into homes to steal video recorders. But cheap labor had changed all that. “The prices of such goods has fallen so low as to they almost have no resale value. If you can buy a DVD player for £19.99 (US$31.40), it’s simply not worth stealing,” he said. Crooks were now looking to steal smaller items such as cell phones and ipods, which people carry about with them.
■SAUDI ARABIA
Sex braggart gets no relief
An appeals court has upheld a sentence of five years in jail and 1,000 lashes for a man who bragged about his sexual exploits on television, newspapers reported on Tuesday. The court in Jeddah also confirmed a five-year travel ban for Mazen Abdul-Jawad, who appeared on the show aired by Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation. Abdul-Jawad was arrested in August after discussing his premarital sexual encounters on a program.
■GERMANY
Thief robs arcade with coffee
A thief in the town of Hamelin robbed an amusement arcade by threatening the attendant with a cup of coffee, authorities said on Tuesday. “He wasn’t going to pour coffee over her, he was going to hit her with the cup,” a spokesman for local police said. Brandishing the steaming cup he had just ordered, the thief forced the 26-year-old to open the till and fled with cash.
■SERBIA
Mrs Einstein may be re-buried
A cousin of Albert Einstein’s first wife is campaigning to have her remains repatriated to Serbia from Switzerland, a daily reported on Tuesday. Mathematician and physicist Mileva Maric, married Einstein in 1903 but the couple divorced in 1919 three years after Einstein formulated the theory of relativity. Maric died in 1948 in Zurich, Switzerland, and was buried in a communal grave. Her cousin Dragisa Maric told Vecernje Novosti daily that Serbia should bring back her remains. “The remains of Mileva should be buried along with her parents Milos and Marija in Novi Sad or Titel,” her native town, Maric said. She said that by repatriating her remains Serbia could contribute correcting injustice towards Mileva, who has often been mentioned only as Einstein’s spouse and not as his collaborator.
■FRANCE
Intellectual left red-faced
Celebrity intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy has been caught red-faced quoting a philosopher who, it turns out, was invented as a joke by a journalist. In his new book, De la guerre en philosophie, Levy cites the insights of Jean-Baptiste Botul to show that German philosopher Immanuel Kant was not the bright light that some believe. He has since discovered, however, that Botul is a fictional character, created as a literary satire by journalist Frederic Pages, who writes for the tongue in cheek Le Canard Enchaine. “It was a truly brilliant and very believable hoax from the mind of a Le Canard Enchaine journalist,” Levy said. “The only thing left to say, with no hard feelings, is kudos to the artist!”
■UNITED STATES
Levi Johnston poses nude
The teen father of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s grandson is featured on the cover of the upcoming print version of Playgirl magazine — sporting nothing but a sultry gaze. The photos of Levi Johnston — the 19-year-old former fiance of Palin’s daughter — were a huge hit last fall on the magazine’s Web site. The publisher expects the same results with other photos from the same shoot running in the newly resurrected print version. Johnston fathered a son with his former fiance, Bristol Palin, the 19-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin. The couple broke up after the birth of their son, Tripp, in late 2008. Johnston is strategically posed in the Playgirl cover photo, revealing only his backside.
■BOLIVIA
Politician serves sentence
A governing party candidate is making 1,000 adobe bricks as part of a drunk-driving sentence handed down under the community justice system backed by the country’s pro-indigenous government. Felix Patzi, an Aymara Indian who was running for governor of La Paz, made 300 bricks by Tuesday afternoon. Patzi has acknowledged he drove drunk and he gave up his candidacy at the request of President Evo Morales. He apologized to Bolivia’s first Indian president on Monday. He says he would like to resume his candidacy, but will leave that decision to his community.
■CUBA
Woman may be oldest
Relatives claim to have held a 125th birthday party for a woman named Juana Bautista de la Candelaria Rodriguez, but it is not clear if she is really that old. The state-run news agency Prensa Latina reported on the party last weekend in the city of Bayamo in Granma province, attended by Rodriguez’s family, including 15 great-grand children and four great-great-grandchildren. Prensa Latina said Rodriguez, known affectionately as “Candulia,” is “presumably the oldest person on the planet, although that has not been confirmed.” In a phone interview with media, Rodriguez said she was happy and looking forward to many great years ahead. The agency said civil registry documents confirm she was born on Feb. 2, 1885, in the village of Santa Rosa, where she continues to live. Guinness World Records representatives said they had never heard of the case. The longest authenticated lifespan was 122 years, 164 days, by Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997 in Arles, France.
■VENEZUELA
Chavez ‘suddenly’ on radio
The government has launched a new radio show, Suddenly Chavez, the latest effort by the country’s loquacious president to talk to voters, whether they want to listen or not. “When you hear the pluck of a harp on the radio, maybe Chavez is coming,” he said on the inaugural show on Monday. “It’s suddenly, at any time, maybe midnight, maybe early morning.” Chavez seems to have calculated that ambushes will catch a wider audience that may have tuned into the state-run Venezuelan National Radio for a baseball game or salsa music. The public is already accustomed to him interrupting scheduled programs through a law that forces all radio and TV stations to transmit live any speeches he deems important. Cable channels used to be exempt — prompting a surge in demand from viewers seeking respite — but the government has moved to close that loophole.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in