PHILIPPINES
‘Gift’ explodes, kills woman
Police say a gift-wrapped grenade exploded and killed a woman when she opened the package inside her house in an upscale neighborhood of Manila yesterday. Metropolitan Manila police chief Nicanor Bartolome says police are trying to establish a motive for the blast in Manila’s Taguig city and are interviewing other members of the 31-year-old woman’s family. Unwrapping the package apparently removed the pin from the grenade, triggering the blast. Bartolome says the woman died instantly.
NORTH KOREA
Human feces up for sale
Shops selling human excrement began operating this year, as acute shortages of fertilizer in the sanctions-wracked country put a price on feces, an analyst said on Tuesday. Aid groups have said human waste has long been used on domestic crops in the impoverished communist state, but there is now a trade in the readily available commodity, a North Korea analyst told a seminar at a South Korean university. “Each household used to use human excrement as fertilizer. But because it’s hard to keep up with the amount, ‘human manure’ shops showed up at markets,” Kim Young-soo, a professor at Seoul’s Sogang University, told the seminar. Kim said other products making their way on to a limited must-have list for North Koreans this year included skinny jeans, after a ban on fashionable trousers was lifted. North Korean women have previously been told to wear only skirts or traditional attire in public places, but the interdiction on trousers was lifted this year, Kim said. Other popular items include secret imports like instant noodles and adult movies, he said.
KAZAKHSTAN
Term may be extended
The parliament yesterday backed a plan for a referendum that would extend the mandate of the Central Asian state’s long serving President Nursultan Nazarbayev to 2020. The central election commission unexpectedly announced this week it had received a petition to hold a referendum which if agreed would mean the country skips 2012 presidential polls and Nazarbayev serves for another decade. Speaker Ural Mukhamedzhanov confirmed that the referendum would be on “changes in the Constitution to prolong the mandate of the president,” according to the Interfax--Kazakhstan news agency.
SINGAPORE
ArtScience museum to open
Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands will open the world’s first ArtScience museum in February, the latest attraction at its US$5.5 billion gambling complex built by US casino giant Las Vegas Sands. With a form reminiscent of a lotus flower designed by renowned architect Moshe Safdie, the science museum is due to open on Feb. 17 at 1:18pm, “as advised by our feng shui master,” a Marina Bay Sands spokeswoman said. Dubbed “The Welcoming Hand of Singapore” by Las Vegas Sands chairman Sheldon Adelson, the museum hosts 10 “fingers” anchored by a round base in the middle. The design of each finger reveals different gallery spaces featuring skylights at the “fingertips” that illuminate the dramatically curved interior walls. The building features 21 gallery spaces totaling 6,000m2 that will deliver exhibits from art and science, media and technology to design and architecture, the statement said. The permanent exhibition includes objects representing accomplishments of art and science through the ages, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Flying Machine, a Kongming Lantern and a high-tech robotic fish.
UNITED STATES
Man chews through restraints
The King County sheriff’s office in Washington State says a 92-year-old man chewed through restraints to free himself after two men robbed his house. Sergeant John Urquhart says that on Monday two men knocked on Lester Matteson’s door in Shoreline and asked to use his phone, claiming their car had broken down. Once they entered, the men grabbed the victim’s arms and held them while they used masking tape to tape him to a chair. Urquhart says the men ransacked the house, eventually taking off with more than US$400 in cash and the victim’s 2000 Ford pickup truck. It took Matteson two hours to chew through the masking tape. Matteson told KOMO-TV he wasn’t frightened, but at his age, “you don’t wrestle two young men.” And he says he’s learned his lesson: “Watch out who you let in.” The robbers are still at large.
UNITED KINGDOM
Charity begins at ATM
The government is considering plans to ask for donations to charity each time a customer uses an ATM, or pays for items using their bank card. The Cabinet Office said yesterday the proposals are being debated as officials consider ways of boosting the amount of money donated to good causes. A study by the Charities Aid Foundation published this month found that just over half of British adults regularly give to charity, donating an estimated £10.6 billion (US$16.3 billion) each year. Ministers believe that adding a request for donations at cash points, or offering the use of landmark government buildings for charity events, could increase that total. Critics say the government hopes the public’s money can limit the impact of harsh spending cuts.
UNITED STATES
Man admits to grisly killing
Authorities say a man already on probation has admitted killing a woman whose body was found in a suitcase on a New York City street. He claimed she attacked him first. Hassan Malik was held without bail after his arraignment on Tuesday on a murder charge. Police say a passer-by found 28-year-old Betty Williams’ body in a suitcase in East Harlem last week. A court complaint says Malik told police he returned to his apartment to find Williams dead. The papers say Malik said he choked Williams with an electric cord after she wound it around his neck and hit him with a frying pan. Prosecutors say forensic evidence will contradict him. His lawyer says the 55-year-old Malik was about to start a job as a drug counselor.
UNITED STATES
New Yorkers shred bad bits
Looking forward to next year was not enough for some New Yorkers on Tuesday. First, they needed to shred the bad bits of 2010. So on annual Good Riddance Day, members of the public were invited to jot down their least favorite moments and memories, then stuff the paper into a giant shredder set up at Times Square. Big Apple resident Melissa Altman said she shredded “a name, a person I liked for a while, a person I just want to get rid of.” “It’s the guy who didn’t know I existed,” another woman said, throwing her piece of paper into a bin, which then dumped its cargo into the truck-sized shredder. One woman said she had scribbled “California” on her paper. Whether the high-tech voodoo works is one thing. But the shredder certainly shreds — and the shredded paper is recycled as toilet roll.
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