UNITED KINGDOM
Lawmaker fined for bar fight
A lawmaker admitted he had been lucky to avoid jail after he pleaded guilty on Friday to assaulting four people in a late-night rampage in a bar in the House of Commons. Eric Joyce, 51, a lawmaker for Falkirk in Scotland who has been suspended by the opposition Labour party, headbutted Stuart Andrew, a lawmaker from the ruling Conservative party, in the Strangers’ Bar, which is reserved for Members of Parliament and guests. Joyce, a former soldier, also admitted attacking two Conservative local councilors during the disturbance last month. He was fined £3,000 (US$4,735) and ordered to pay £1,400 to his victims. He was also banned from entering pubs or licensed premises for three months, while a weekend curfew order will last for a year.
GERMANY
Naked women off front page
Men working at the country’s biggest-selling newspaper, Bild, have decided to stop publishing front-page pictures of naked women after 28 years, the paper announced on Friday. “It is perhaps a small step from the point of view of women. But it is a big step for Bild and all men in Germany: Bild is abolishing the naked Page-One girl!” the popular paper said. “I am the last …,” said Friday’s Page-One girl, identified as Eva from Poland. The decision, which took effect yesterday, was made on Thursday when Bild’s male workforce ran the paper without their 300 female colleagues, who were given the day off to mark International Women’s Day. More than 5,000 women have appeared naked on the paper’s front page since 1984.
AUSTRALIA
Almost 2,000 homes flooded
Floods have inundated close to 2,000 homes in New South Wales, an official said yesterday, as the surging waters appeared to claim the life of a man in the state’s north. Eastern Australia has been hit by heavy downpours in recent days, causing swollen river systems to pour through towns and villages in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, damaging crops, roads and bridges. In badly-hit southern New South Wales, more homes were evacuated yesterday as the State Emergency Service said some 1,963 homes had been inundated, mostly around the major inland town of Wagga Wagga and the surrounding regions. “There’s further assessments being done at present to see whether they will crack the 2,000 mark which, sadly, I think it will do,” State Emergency Service spokesman Phil Campbell said.
PHILIPPINES
Church bells come home
Manila said yesterday it had taken back a pair of church bells believed seized by US troops as war booty during the US colonization of the archipelago in the 19th century. An inscription on a wooden link that held the bells together indicated they were taken from a church in Meycauayan, north of Manila, after the town was pounded by US artillery on March 29, 1899. An archivist found the bells at a California convent last year and they were later handed over to Manila, foreign department spokesman Raul Hernandez said. They are among religious objects believed to have been taken away by US soldiers as the US military government consolidated control of its colony after it was ceded by Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War. The foreign department gave the bells to the National Museum on Friday, Hernandez said.
YEMEN
Air strikes kill 23 people
Overnight air strikes that residents said were carried out by US warplanes killed 23 suspected al-Qaeda militants in mountains south of Sana’a, security sources said yesterday. “Twenty-three al-Qaeda fighters were killed in air raids launched late on Friday against their positions,” one security source said. A police source gave the same death toll from the air strikes in a mountainous area of al-Bayda Province. The sources said the raids hit three villages west of the provincial capital, also called al-Bayda.
UNITED STATES
Coolio arrested over ticket
Rapper Coolio was arrested on a warrant charging him with failure to appear in court on a traffic ticket almost two years ago. Coolio, 48, whose real name is Artis Leon Ivey Jr, was a passenger in a vehicle officers stopped about 2:20am several blocks east of the Las Vegas Strip, Officer Laura Meltzer said. No one else in the car was arrested. Ivey was sought on a warrant charging him with failure to appear on an illegal stop and driving without a license summons issued in June 2010. He was freed later in the day. A court date was not immediately known. Coolio is a musician, actor and record producer best known for the song Gangsta’s Paradise.
UNITED STATES
Michael Madsen arrested
Authorities said actor Michael Madsen has been arrested for investigation of cruelty to a child after a fight with his teenage son. A Los Angeles County sheriff’s statement said Madsen was arrested on Friday afternoon at his home in Malibu after deputies were called about a family disturbance. The statement said detectives from the Special Victims Bureau were investigating allegations that Madsen was under the influence of alcohol and fought with his son, who did not need medical attention. The 54-year-old Madsen is known for the Quentin Tarantino movies Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill.
UNITED STATES
‘Pink slime’ defended
The Department of Agriculture is defending the use of ammonium-treated beef, dubbed “pink slime” by detractors, in meals destined for schoolchildren as part of the national school lunch program. The Internet news source The Daily reported this week that 3.2 million kilograms of the product — beef trimmings treated partly with ammonium hydroxide to fight contamination — would appear in school lunches this spring. Fast-food chain McDonald’s stopped putting the -ammonium-treated meat into its hamburgers in August last year after a number of food activists, including celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, drew attention to the additive.
UNITED STATES
‘Prophet’ admits mistake
A preacher who spent millions last year to publicize his message of impending global destruction has for the first time said his apocalyptic prophecy was wrong. Harold Camping told his followers he has no evidence the world will end any time soon. In recent years, the organization spent millions of dollars — some of it from donations made by followers — putting up thousands of billboards plastered with the Judgement Day message. After global cataclysm did not occur on May 21 last year as he had forecast, Camping said he had been off by five months. Followers were crestfallen in May when the Rapture did not occur, particularly those who had quit their jobs or donated some of their retirement savings or college funds for the more than 5,000 billboards and 20 recreational vehicles plastered with the Judgement Day message.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not