NEW ZEALAND
X-files released
The military released hundreds of previously classified reports yesterday detailing claims of UFO sightings and alien encounters. The reports, dating from 1954 to last year, were released under freedom of information laws after the Defence Force removed names and other identifying material. In about 2,000 pages of documents, members of the public, military personnel and commercial pilots outline close encounters, mostly involving moving lights in the sky. Some of the accounts include drawings of flying saucers, descriptions of aliens wearing “pharaoh masks” and alleged examples of extraterrestrial writing.
SOUTH KOREA
Gamer allegedly kills child
A mother has been arrested for allegedly killing her three-year-old son while she was tired from Internet game-playing, police said yesterday. The death is the latest of several cases related to computer game addiction in one of the world’s most wired societies. Kim, 27, played online games for about 10 hours a day, police said, adding her neighbors described her house as “like a trash site” where her two children were left crying for hours. Police in the city of Cheonan said Kim, who also has a one-year-old son, beat the three-year-old and strangled him after he disturbed her by urinating on the floor and crying.
NEW ZEALAND
US critical of ‘flap’
US diplomats disparaged Wellington’s reaction to a suspected Israeli spy ring as a “flap” and accused the government of grandstanding in order to sell more lamb to Arab countries, according to cables released on WikiLeaks. The arrest and conviction in 2004 of two Israeli citizens, who were caught using the identity of a cerebral palsy sufferer to apply for passport, caused a serious rift with Israel, with allegations that the two men and others involved were Mossad agents. “The New Zealand government views the act carried out by the Israeli intelligence agents as not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law,” then-prime minister Helen Clark said after the arrests. However, a confidential US cable written in July 2004, after high-level diplomatic sanctions were imposed against Israel, commented: “The GoNZ [government of New Zealand] has little to lose by such stringent action, with limited contact and trade with Israel, and possibly something to gain in the Arab world, as the GoNZ is establishing an embassy in Egypt and actively pursuing trade with Arab states.”
RUSSIA
Seductive spy to lead youth
A pro-Kremlin youth group was yesterday expected to elect seductive spy Anna Chapman to a top role in the organization. Chapman, booted out of the US along with nine other spies in July, will likely become head of the social council of the Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard), a source in the group told RIA Novosti. The Molodaya Gvardiya, which is now part of the structure of the ruling party, United Russia, was to choose its new leaders at its fourth congress yesterday. “What function she is going to perform will be determined just before the congress. But most likely she will head the social council,” the source said. The position would provide yet another role for the increasingly busy Chapman, who posed virtually nude for a local men’s magazine, met Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and attended a space launch since returning home.
AUSTRIA
Likud member visits rightist
An Israeli lawmaker has met with the leader of Austria’s far right amid protests from the Jewish community. Ayoob Kara, a deputy minister and a member of Israel’s ruling Likud Party, told reporters on Tuesday that he considered Heinz-Christian Strache and his Freedom Party as partners in the fight against terrorism and that there was nothing in the group’s program that “isn’t kosher.” Austria’s Jewish community criticized the get-together and called for Kara’s resignation. Strache’s anti-immigration party recently saw a surge in support in local elections in Vienna following a campaign laced with anti-Islamic rhetoric. Kara said he would do all he could to “legitimize” Strache in Israel and around the world.
UNITED KINGDOM
Zara to wed rugby player
Prince William and Kate Middleton will soon have company on the royal wedding calendar. Buckingham Palace announced on Tuesday that Zara Phillips, Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest granddaughter, is engaged. Phillips, an accomplished equestrian, said she was shocked but “very happy” that her rugby-playing boyfriend Mike Tindall had proposed. No date has been set yet. The 32-year-old Tindall has played 66 times for England and was in the team that won the 2003 World Cup. It was during the tournament that he first met Phillips in a Sydney bar. Phillips, the daughter of Princess Anne, has won medals in world equestrian championships and was once voted BBC sports personality of the year. Phillips, 29, is 12th in line to the throne. The palace said in a statement that the couple got engaged on Monday evening at their home in western England.
UNITED STATES
Poison plan considered
The Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) considered poisoning food supplies at US hotels and restaurants with ricin and cyanide, intelligence officials told CNN on Tuesday. However, the Department of Homeland Security emphasized the threat was akin to the plots discussed in numerous online jihadist publications, where militants and their sympathizers routinely consider ways to attack Western interests. An anonymous source in the US intelligence community told CBS News earlier this week that the threat was “credible.” Authorities have met with representatives in the hotel and restaurant industry to discuss the threat and “best practices” for ensuring food safety, according to CNN.
NORWAY
Reindeer given reflectors
Reindeer owners here have a Christmas safety tip for Santa — put reflectors on his fleet-footed animals so they won’t get hit by cars. About 2,000 reindeer have been fitted this month with reflective yellow collars or small antler tags to cut down on the car crashes that now kill 500 reindeer a year and pose a danger to motorists across Arctic Norway. “It really works,” Kristian Oevernes, the leader of the project at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, said of the project in Finnmark, where the sun does not rise in mid-winter. About 200,000 reindeer live in Norway, mostly owned by Sami Aborigines, who raise them for meat, skins and antlers, according to the International Center for Reindeer Husbandry.
UNITED NATIONS
Sewage forces evacuation
Sewage from an unusually high tide caused a stink that forced the emergency evacuation of the Security Council on Tuesday, a spokesman said. The Security Council chamber in a basement of the headquarters in New York, which overlooks the East River, was hurriedly emptied as a mounting sulfurous smell engulfed the area, diplomats said. “We were about to start the debate, but there was a very strong smell of gas,” said one diplomat who had been in the chamber. Ambassadors and other top diplomats were all ushered out and 150 children who were to take part in the special debate were taken to the US mission across the street.
UNITED STATES
‘Prince’ Frederic glues eye
The husband of ailing Hollywood socialite and actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was hospitalized on Tuesday after accidentally gluing one of his own eyes shut. Gabor, 93, has been in and out of hospital in recent months, but this time it was self-proclaimed Prince Frederic Von Anhalt who was rushed to hospital after he mistakenly picked up a bottle of nail glue he mistook for eye drops and sealed his eye shut, according to celebrity Web site TMZ.com. The colorful 66-year-old German socialite underwent a procedure at a Beverly Hills clinic to unstick his eye. One of his representatives told TMZ he was in good spirits. Just two months ago, von Anhalt — who says he was adopted as an adult by a German princess — was hospitalized for swallowing a bee while sunbathing and eating Kaiserschmarrn pancake in his backyard. He has claimed to have fathered the daughter of late Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith after her death in February 2007. Earlier this year, he launched a bid to become the next governor of California. Von Anhalt is Gabor’s ninth husband.
UNITED STATES
Gunwoman stops news
A gun-wielding woman burst into a North Carolina TV station on Tuesday, forcing the evening newscast off the air, although no one was injured, the station said. After a brief standoff with a police SWAT team that surrounded the building of ABC Charlotte affiliate WSOC-TV, the woman was taken into custody. ABC News said she had pulled out a gun and put it to her head, though police later learned the gun was not loaded. A CBS affiliate in Charlotte, WBTV, identified the woman as Wendy Naidas. The station went black during the incident, which interrupted its 5pm broadcast, but was back on air an hour later. Employees were evacuated to the back section of a parking lot during the incident. Police chief Rodney Monroe told WBTV that Naidas threatened the receptionist and herself while they were barricaded in the building. Although police initially said Naidas had fired at least one shot, Monroe later said no shots had been fired.
GLORY FACADE: Residents are fighting the church’s plan to build a large flight of steps and a square that would entail destroying up to two blocks of homes Barcelona’s eternally unfinished Basilica de la Sagrada Familia has grown to become the world’s tallest church, but a conflict with residents threatens to delay the finish date for the monument designed more than 140 years ago. Swathed in scaffolding on a platform 54m above the ground, an enormous stone slab is being prepared to complete the cross of the central Jesus Christ tower. A huge yellow crane is to bring it up to the summit, which will stand at 172.5m and has snatched the record as the world’s tallest church from Germany’s Ulm Minster. The basilica’s peak will deliberately fall short of the
FRAYED: Strains between the US-European ties have ruptured allies’ trust in Washington, but with time, that could be rebuilt, the Michigan governor said China is providing crucial support for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and could end the war with a phone call, US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said. “China could call [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and end this war tomorrow and cut off his dual-purpose technologies that they’re selling,” Whitaker said during a Friday panel at the Munich Security Conference. “China could stop buying Russian oil and gas.” “You know, this war is being completely enabled by China,” the US envoy added. Beijing and Moscow have forged an even tighter partnership since the start of the war, and Russia relies on China for critical parts
Two sitting Philippine senators have been identified as “coperpetrators” in former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes against humanity trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), documents released by prosecutors showed. Philippine senators Ronald Dela Rosa and Christopher Go are among eight current and former officials named in a document dated Feb. 13 and posted to the court’s Web site. ICC prosecutors have charged Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, alleging his involvement in at least 76 murders as part of his “war on drugs.” “Duterte and his coperpetrators shared a common plan or agreement to ‘neutralize’ alleged criminals in the Philippines
Venezuelan Nobel peace laureate Maria Corina Machado yesterday said that armed men “kidnapped” a close ally shortly after his release by authorities, following former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s capture. The country’s Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed later yesterday that former National Assembly vice president Juan Pablo Guanipa, 61, was again taken into custody and was to be put under house arrest, arguing that he violated the conditions of his release. Guanipa would be placed under house arrest “in order to safeguard the criminal process,” the office said in a statement. The conditions of Guanipa’s release have yet to be made public. Machado claimed that
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