■POLAND
Cat causes fur to fly
A cat living at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz has caused fur to fly between an animal care group and authorities refusing to allow a shelter to be built for it. The gray and white cat, known variously as Rudolf or Bruno despite being female, can often be seen sitting near the entrance to the camp. She has seemed unperturbed by an unusually cold winter that has seen night temperatures dip as low as minus 34°C. The museum that runs the camp has rejected a call from the group For Animals to build a cat shelter, saying other animals also live at the site and that visitors are its main priority.
■SWEDEN
Police arrest sign suspect
Police have arrested a man accused of masterminding the theft of the “Work sets you free” sign from above the entrance to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, a prosecutor said on Thursday. Anders Hoegstroem, 34, was seized on a European arrest warrant issued by Poland, prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnstrom said. “He was arrested in Stockholm this afternoon,” she told reporters, adding that authorities planned to turn the suspect over to Poland, which will charge him. The theft of the sign — Arbeit macht frei in German — became an enduring symbol of the Holocaust, caused international outrage. The metal sign is now being repaired.
■RUSSIA
Trans-Siberian online
Experience the vast taiga, the deep blue of Lake Baikal and the Siberian steppes — all without leaving your couch. A site launched by Google and Russian Railways on Thursday allows armchair travelers to view the whole length of the Trans-Siberian railway via Webcam. “All you need is a simple Internet connection and you can travel half-way across the continent ... seven time zones, 12 regions, 87 villages,” Russian Railways, Google’s partner in the project. The Trans-Siberian rail route, leading from Moscow to the Far Eastern city of Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, can be tracked with maps and YouTube videos at www.google.ru/transsib.
■RUSSIA
Customs seizes meteorite
Amid a huge bounty of contraband goods seized recently at a Russian airport, one far-out find floored customs officials: chunks of meteorite. The two smugglers were initially charged with making a false declaration on their customs form. Only after a three-month investigation did officials discover the mystery lumps were fragments from outer space and the men part of a larger crime ring including experts and scientists, Larisa Ledovskikh, a spokeswoman for customs at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, said on Thursday.
■RUSSIA
Serious gardener convicted
A man who was so fiercely protective of his garden that he planted landmines to defend it from intruders has been convicted on weapons charges, prosecutors said yesterday. Alexander Skopintsev, a resident of the Primorye region, built three explosive traps in his garage last July and planted them around his garden, prosecutors said. “During the court hearings, Skopintsev testified that he had prepared the explosive devices to protect his garden against thieves,” they said. Police arrested the bomb-building gardener after a trespasser set off one of the landmines in August and was injured in the blast. A court in the town of Ussuriisk convicted Skopintsev of the unlawful construction and storage of weapons and gave him a two-and-a-half year suspended sentence.
■UNITED STATES
Condom finalists announced
A top hat, a suggestive train tunnel and even a sewer manhole cover feature in the finals of New York’s condom wrapper design contest. The city has received some 600 entries since the competition opened on Dec. 15 for a wrapper that would “capture the city’s distinctive culture, while promoting safer sex.” The five design finalists include the symbol for computer “on” buttons, a circle of multi-colored bubbles reading “together, we can protect NYC,” and a picture of a train disappearing into a tunnel. There’s also a white wrapper featuring a black top hat. “Safe sex and good manners go hand in hand, and nothing symbolizes chivalry quite like a top hat,” designer Russell Greenberg said. Less romantic, but certainly functional, is Virgil Alderson’s submission — a picture of a city manhole cover. The design “reflects strength, protection and hygiene,” a city press release said. Lovers would also benefit from being reminded “of the critical role sewers have played in promoting public health in the city.” The winner will see the design adorn millions of NYC Condom packages distributed free in the city.
■MEXICO
Satellite falls back to Earth
A loud explosion and a ball of fire that people reported seeing in the sky was actually a Russian satellite plunging back to Earth, experts said on Thursday. “We think it was the space wreckage of a Russian satellite that was catalogued by the Department of Defense of the United States and which we knew could pass over Mexican territory,” said Fernando de la Peno, an engineer who is also a chief proponent of establishing a Mexican space agency. Reports of a large meteorite reached Mexican media and police on Wednesday from Hidalgo and Puebla states. Many said they felt the ground shake with the blast and some reported seeing a huge crater on the ground blown out by the fiery object, but nothing was found after a through search of the area on Thursday. De la Pena said the space debris was likely the Cosmos 2421 reconnaissance satellite launched by the Russian Navy in June 2006 that malfunctioned and broke apart two years later.
■FRANCE
Bardot threatens to sue
Brigitte Bardot has threatened a close friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy with a lawsuit if he does not stop boasting he once had an affair with the screen goddess, her lawyer said. “I am beginning to get fed up hearing Mr [Patrick] Balkany boasting that he had an affair with me, which I have already formally denied,” Bardot said in a statement released on Wednesday by her lawyer. Balkany, a right-wing politician who is a close political ally and personal friend of the president, claimed in a book he published last month that he had a fling with Bardot when he was 18 years old in the late 1960s. Bardot would have been in her mid-30s at the time. She insists she met Balkany for the first time in 2004. Balkany repeated the claim in a television show last weekend.
■AFGHANISTAN
Suicide bomber wounds five
A suicide bomber wearing a border policeman’s uniform blew himself up on Thursday at a US base near the Pakistani frontier, wounding five Americans, an Afghan official said. The spokesman for Paktia Province, Roullah Samoun, said the attack occurred after sundown in a barracks at a US facility in the Dand aw Patan district. He did not identify the base by name. A US statement said “several” US service members were injured in an explosion at a joint US-Afghan outpost in Paktia, but gave no further details.
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