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.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
TICKING CLOCK: A path to a budget agreement was still possible, the president’s office said, as a debate on reversing an increase of the pension age carries on French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday was racing to find a new prime minister within a two-day deadline after the resignation of outgoing French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu tipped the country deeper into political crisis. The presidency late on Wednesday said that Macron would name a new prime minister within 48 hours, indicating that the appointment would come by this evening at the latest. Lecornu told French television in an interview that he expected a new prime minister to be named — rather than early legislative elections or Macron’s resignation — to resolve the crisis. The developments were the latest twists in three tumultuous
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