SOUTH KOREA
Screwdriver wreaks havoc
Operators of a nuclear power plant on Thursday said that a stray screwdriver was most likely to blame after a reactor had to be shut down for three days. The reactor in Yeonggwang, about 260km south of Seoul, stopped working on Feb. 4. It was restarted after engineers carried out repairs to the cooling pump, a company spokesman said. “A 30cm-long screwdriver was found in the cooling pump’s motor and we believe this might have caused the trouble,” he said.
AUSTRALIA
Bats served eviction notice
A colony of 22,000 bats may be coming to a neighborhood near you after a court served the flying foxes with an eviction notice and allowed the government to chase them away with loud industrial noise. The court ruled that the gray-headed flying foxes could be driven out of the Royal Botanical Gardens in the heart of Sydney as the colony has grown too big and is threatening hundreds of rare and protected trees. However, conservation groups say the gardens are a critical roosting habitat for the bats and if chased away, they have few places to go other than the city. “They will likely drift into suburban parks and suburban streets,” said Storm Stanford at Bat Advocacy NSW, a group that fought in the courts for the bats.
UNITED STATES
Leering men caught out
Footage that two New Zealand women shot using a hidden camera to catch men leering at their behinds has gone viral on the Internet, attracting more than 1 million hits in three days. Jessie Gurunathan and Reanin Johannink rigged up a camera to covertly record men’s reactions as they walked the streets of Los Angeles, posting the resulting footage on video-sharing site YouTube. “If you’ve ever wondered what goes on behind your back, we’ve we figured out a way to bust people, so checkout ass-cam,” Johannink says in the clip. The video, titled Rear View Girls, shows some men making blatant double takes to ogle the women. Even a man dressed as Jesus sneaks a look.
PHILIPPINES
Funeral gambling takes a hit
A priest has threatened to deny burial rights in cases where mourners at funerals are caught gambling, a tradition exploited by gaming syndicates who mount “fake” wakes. Father Valentine Dimoc of the Saint Mary Magdalene Parish said authorities in the northern town of Lagawe had already passed an ordinance banning gambling at funeral wakes, but officials and police were failing to enforce it. Gambling on cards at funerals is a tradition used to help family members pay for the cost of the burial. However with few opportunities for legitimate gambling due to strict limits, syndicates have been known to use phoney wakes — complete with a rented corpse — to hold gaming sessions.
NEW ZEALAND
Horse semen put on menu
Long renowned for pioneering extreme sports such as bungee-jumping and heli--skiing, the country’s residents are now pushing culinary boundaries by serving up shots of horse semen to iron-stomached food lovers. The equine delicacy will be on the menu at the annual Wildfoods Festival in the South Island town of Hokitika next month, along with other gastronomic delights such as raw scorpions and chocolate-covered beetles. “The idea is you’ll have as much zizz as a stallion for a week afterwards,” said Christchurch racehorse breeder Lindsay Kerslake, who came up with the semen surprise.
CANADA
Harper slams US fee
Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Thursday slammed a proposed US$5.50 fee on North American travelers entering the US by air or sea, saying it would hurt the economy. “In terms of the economic recovery, we want to ensure that trade and travel between our countries is easier, not more difficult, and we don’t need additional taxes on that kind of economic activity,” Harper told reporters. “The United States has a budgetary situation that is horrendous ... I think it’s clear that the US government is looking around for ways to raise revenue ... [but] I think that this is not a useful way to do that.” Such a fee is already charged to most international travelers, but Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean were exempted. According to the US Department of Homeland Security, which supports the rule change, it could bring in nearly US$110 million in additional revenues, but Canadian travelers would end up paying the bulk of this, Canadian media said.
BRAZIL
Congress clown misvotes
A clown who won a seat in Congress by a landslide has stayed true to his former profession by accidentally messing up his first vote. Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, better known by his clown name Tiririca, had pledged to back the government’s austerity proposal for a new national minimum wage in a crucial vote on Wednesday night. When the time came, however, Tiririca pressed the wrong button on the computerized system and accidentally voted for an opposition proposal for a much bigger increase in the wage than the government wants, according to reporters who spoke to his office. The leader of the opposition PSDB party in Congress’ lower house, Duarte Nogueira, said he was grateful for the unexpected support, although the government still won the vote.
BRAZIL
Kidnapping allegedly faked
A 25-year-old woman is under arrest on suspicion of faking her own kidnapping to pocket a US$360 “ransom” from her family, police told the news Web site G1 on Thursday. The woman, who was not named, allegedly needed the money to repay her aunt, after using the aunt’s credit card without her knowledge, officers said. The claimed abduction occurred on Wednesday, G1 said. The woman left a note in her bedroom saying she had been kidnapped, and afterward used her cellphone to call her family and claim she was being held by two men threatening to kill her if the ransom was not paid. Police said the woman telephoned later to say she had escaped her captors. However, investigators were skeptical of her story. The woman was being held on charges of falsely declaring a crime.
MEXICO
Wedding sparks hunger strike
A 19-year-old Mexican woman was in the ninth day of a hunger strike in front of the British embassy on Thursday to demand an invitation to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. “I have been a fan of Lady Di since I was a little girl,” said Estibalis Chavez, who set up a tent outside the embassy in Mexico City. “My mother was also a fan ... I promised myself I would go to the next royal wedding. I intend to fight until the very end ... there is no turning back.” She also said an invitation could make up for a characterization on the BBC Top Gear program of Mexicans as “lazy,” “feckless” and “flatulent.”
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the