PHILIPPINES
Man killed in gaming row
A man has been stabbed to death in Manila following a row between two groups of men playing the popular video game Counter-Strike, police said on Wednesday. The quarrel between the men playing the game — in which gamers play either terrorists or counterterrorism officers trying to kill their opponents — erupted in an Internet cafe, police investigator Noel Ibanez said. The teams had bet 300 pesos (US$7.15) on the outcome of their competition on Monday, but when one side won, an argument broke out over the payment, Ibanez said. A member of the winning team, still angry over the dispute, later followed losing player Eric Cristobal to his home and stabbed him to death, he added. “He [Cristobal] did not start the quarrel. He just got caught up in it, but they all had long been betting on Counter-Strike,” Ibanez said.
BANGLADESH
Court orders pages blocked
A lawyer said the High Court had ordered that five Facebook pages and a Web site be blocked because their cartoons and other content are blasphemous and mock the Koran. The lawyer said a panel of two judges found the Facebook pages and the Web site had lots of disparagement not only to the Prophet Mohammed, but also Jesus Christ, Buddha and Hindu gods. Muhammad Nawshad Zamir was the barrister who petitioned the court. He said the court also asked authorities to investigate the content and find the people behind it. He refused to name the Bengali-language Web site or disclose further details.
CZECH REPUBLIC
Airport to be renamed
The government agreed on Wednesday to rename the country’s main airport in Prague in honor of late former president Vaclav Havel, Czech media reported. Havel, a former anti-communist dissident and playwright, was jailed by the country’s totalitarian rulers before the 1989 bloodless “Velvet Revolution” catapulted him to the presidency. Havel is acclaimed for his peaceful resistance to the oppressive government in the 1970s and 1980s that inspired human rights campaigners around the world and won him respect from leaders around the world. One of Havel’s close aides has protested the plan, saying the former president actually never liked flying, but the idea that Havel should be remembered by a landmark like the country’s main entry port, which served 11.8 million people last year, won widespread support across the political scene as well as from the country’s intellectual elite. Havel died on Dec. 22 last year, aged 75.
GREECE
Poets join protests
It is not often that demonstrators quote from the works of Nobel laureates, but in Athens on Wednesday Greek poets joined anti-austerity protests holding outdoor recitals at cultural sites in the city as they made their way to parliament. Several hundred people attended the rally, along with dancers on stilts and a Latin music percussion band, to mark World Poetry Day. Teenagers handed out their own poems to the public — as irritated drivers stuck in midday traffic looked on in amazement and striking hospital doctors in medical uniforms passed by in a separate protest. “For me, this is the epitome of a protest, people making their point in a civilized way,” said Manolis Polentas, a poet and radio show host. “It’s because the crisis affects everybody — poets included. Poets are usually inspired by personal misery, but that’s why they fight for a fair and more colorful world.”
UNITED STATES
Asian population soars
Asians are the fastest--growing racial group in the country, reflecting a surge in immigration from the region over the past decade, the Census Bureau said on Wednesday. As part of an ongoing analysis of the data it reaped from its 2010 census, the federal agency said those who identified themselves as Asian alone, and not mixed race, grew by 43.3 percent from a decade earlier. That was more than four times faster than the rate of growth for the overall population, which grew 9.7 percent in the same period to 308,745,538. About 14.7 million people, or 4.8 percent of the total population, identified themselves as Asian alone. Another 2.6 million said they were Asian in combination with another race group, most commonly white. New York had the biggest Asian population with 1.1 million, followed by Los Angeles with 484,000. Chinese was the largest of all Asian groups with 4 million, including 700,000 who identified themselves as mixed race.
UNITED STATES
Obama visits Roswell
A lighthearted President Barack Obama on Wednesday joked that although he had landed in Roswell he could not disclose if extra-terrestrials had done the same in a flying saucer in 1947. “I announced to people when I landed that I come in peace,” the president said. Roswell, a town of 50,000 inhabitants in the state of New Mexico, is known worldwide for being the place where a spacecraft and its alien occupants were allegedly recovered 65 years ago and then hidden by the government. “Let me tell you, there are nine and 10-year-old boys ... when I meet them they ask me: ‘Have you been to Roswell, and is it true what they say?’” Obama said. “And I tell them: ‘If I told you I’d have to kill you,’ and you know, their eyes get all big,” the president added in Maljamar, a town 80km from Roswell, where he was trumpeting his energy policy.
UNITED STATES
Pot pilot charged
A California man whose plane was intercepted by air force F-16 fighter jets last month because it entered the same Los Angeles airspace as President Barack Obama’s helicopter has been charged with possession of marijuana and transporting it for sale. Police in Long Beach, where 43-year-old Brian Choppin was forced to land his Cessna, said they found marijuana during a search of the plane. The Los Angeles Times said Choppin was arraigned on Wednesday and released on his own recognizance. It is not clear whether he entered a plea. Pilots were told that during Obama’s Feb. 16 visit they were not to come within 5km of Los Angeles International Airport. The Secret Service said Obama was never in danger.
UNITED STATES
Woman sets drugs record
Customs officials at Dulles International Airport say a Nigerian woman set an unfortunate record when she tried to smuggle 2.27kg of heroin into the country. Authorities said 52-year-old Bola Adebisi ingested 180 thumb-sized pellets filled with US$150,000 worth of heroin. She is charged with drug smuggling in federal court. Officers became suspicious on Saturday when she said she was visiting her brother, but could not describe him. A routine pat-down found her stomach to be abnormally rigid. An X-ray revealed the pellets and she was taken to the hospital. A public defender declined to comment. The previous record for an ingested drug seizure at Dulles occurred last year, when another Nigerian was discovered with 1.81kg of pellets.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS