RUSSIA
DiCaprio a ‘real man’: Putin
Not everyone gets to be called a “real man” by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin himself, but the tough guy awarded that honor late on Tuesday on Hollywood heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio, whose plane caught fire on the way to a summit on tigers in St Petersburg. “I would like to thank you for coming despite all the obstacles,” Putin told a smiling DiCaprio, who pledged US$1 million to the tiger cause. “A person with less stable nerves could have decided against coming, could have read it as a sign that it was not worth going,” Putin said. He said the Titanic star had “literally tore his way through to Saint Petersburg,” calling him “a real man” for his persistence. DiCaprio was among the passengers on a Delta Airline jet that made an emergency landing in New York on Monday after losing an engine. His second plane faced strong headwinds and had to make an unscheduled refueling stop in Helsinki, Putin told the audience.
FRANCE
Binge drinking affects heart
Binge drinking, long known as a cause of liver damage, is also linked to heart disease, according to a 10-year study in Northern Ireland and France published yesterday by the British Medical Journal. Researchers from Britain and France contrasted the drinking patterns among more than 9,700 middle-aged men in Lille, Strasbourg, Toulouse and Belfast. The volunteers, aged 50-59, were free from heart disease at the start of the study in 1991. Over the course of a week, the volume of alcohol they consumed was roughly the same. In France, though, the drinking was spread out quite evenly over a week and mainly involved wine. In Belfast, the men usually consumed beer, followed by spirits, and heavily concentrated their drinking at weekends. Men who were “binge” drinkers were nearly twice as likely as regular drinkers, during the 10-year course of the study, to have a heart attack or die from heart disease.
ISRAEL
Facebook foils draft dodgers
About a 1,000 women who tried to avoid military service by pretending to be religious have been caught out through their Facebook accounts, an army spokesman said on Tuesday. The military has managed to track down hundreds of women who lied about being religiously observant, Captain Arye Shalicar said. One woman was caught out after she posted a photograph in which she is seen eating in a non-kosher restaurant, while others were caught wearing revealing clothing, he said. Others were caught out by accepting invitations to parties on a Friday night — which were sent out as bait by firms of private investigators paid to sniff out the fakers. “If you see someone updating their account on Shabbat, it tells you she is using a computer, and probably talking on the phone and watching TV, which is forbidden,” he said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Mystery blast unexplained
An explosion that rocked a remote corner of Scottish woodland remained unexplained on Tuesday, even as police wrapped up their search of the site. Police in the Strathclyde area have said they’re ending their examination of Garadbhan Forest following what they described as a systematic search of the area. Police offered no detail on the nature or circumstances of the blast, which hit the forest at noon on Nov. 17. A statement referred to “items” discovered at the scene, but did not say if these were thought to be explosives or other clues. A police spokeswoman last week said details were being kept secret for unspecified “operational reasons.”
ZIMBABWE
Prisoner shows real guts
A man awaiting trial for stealing motor cycles was locked up in remand prison for months with his intestines hanging out after being shot in a police raid. The accused appeared in court for a bail application this week holding his protruding intestines in a plastic bag, local media reported yesterday. A shocked judge ordered prison authorities to immediately take the man to hospital. The man told the court he had not had medical help since his arrest in September. A prison spokesman said the man had been taken back to hospital at least twice, but there was no doctor on those occasions, and he was receiving painkillers.
MEXICO
Ultra-pricey tequila debuts
A distiller has presented what it hopes will become the world’s most expensive tequila, a platinum and diamond-studded bottle of seven-year-old liquor. Hacienda La Capilla’s 1.3 liter bottle is made of ceramic, with a 2.3kg layer of platinum and more than 4,000 diamonds totaling 328 carats. Hacienda La Capilla already holds the Guinness record for the most expensive tequila with a bottle that sold for US$225,000 in 1996. An official with the company said they hoped the new creation would fetch US$3.5 million.
CANADA
Quaid says Canada saved life
Randy Quaid said on Tuesday if it weren’t for Canada’s refugee system, he and his wife would be dead. The actor made the comment on Tuesday as he entered his immigration and refugee board hearing in Vancouver, where he and his wife, Evi, were picked up last month on an outstanding warrant in the US. The pair claimed refugee status and their hearings have been conducted amid their bizarre claims of being hunted by what they call “Hollywood star whackers.” They say many of their friends have died under mysterious circumstances and believe they could be next on the hit list. Quaid is hoping to convince Canada’s Immigration and Refugee board that he and his wife are targeted by Hollywood killers and thereby accomplish what no other American has ever done in Canada: Gain refugee status. “I feel good. If it wasn’t for Canada’s refugee laws my wife and I would be dead,” Quaid said before he entered court. Quaid and his wife remain fugitives from a California court after the couple failed to appear last week for their arraignment on felony vandalism charges for the fourth time.
HUNGARY
Dictator asked for priest
The nation’s communist dictator Janos Kadar met a priest at his own request shortly before he died, former Hungarian prime minister Miklos Nemeth revealed on Tuesday. “Aunt Mariska [Kadar’s wife] called me: ‘My husband wants a priest,’ she said,” said Nemeth, who headed the country’s last Communist-era government from 1988 to 1990. “I still remember the Catholic priest whom I found, he was a short man called Biro, I think,” he said. “I don’t know whether Kadar atoned to him or what he told him, you can’t ask a priest about such things. There is no way to find out now — everybody has died since.” Nemeth said this happened in late May or early June, 1989. Kadar died on July 6, 1989, the day that Hungary’s Supreme Court rehabilitated Imre Nagy, Hungary’s prime minister under the 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union, who was hanged in 1958 after Kadar restored the country’s communist regime. Former Soviet bloc regimes were hostile to religion. “This [Kadar’s request] struck all of us as a complete surprise,” Nemeth said.
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
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
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