UNITED KINGDOM
Sweaty brokers more ethical
If you want to know how ethical your broker is, give them a moral dilemma and see how much they sweat before deciding what to do. It is quite a jump from the laboratory to real-world decisions about asset management, but British researchers have found that gut feeling can override rational thought when people are faced with financial offers that look unfair. Even when we could benefit, a physical response like sweating can make people reject a financial proposition they consider to be unjust. The key is how tuned in they are to their own bodies. Researchers gave 51 people a series of offers based on dividing £10 (US$16) between two people. They found that although an offer to split the money 50-50 was mostly accepted, an offer of less than a “fair share” was often rejected, even though rejecting it left them with nothing. The game showed gut reactions, especially made under time pressure with incomplete information, can lead to decisions that are irrational from a purely economic perspective. The researchers measured how much participants sweated and how much their heart rate changed.
GERMANY
Armed schoolboy in standoff
A 14-year-old schoolboy armed with two weapons was locked in a tense standoff with police on Tuesday after firing a shot at his school, authorities said. The boy, who has not been named, has already fired several more shots after being tracked down to a sports ground in the town of Memmingen near Munich. There are no reports of injuries, but the boy has reportedly threatened to take his own life. Police said the shots fired at the sports ground were not deliberately aimed at them. Police negotiators were on the scene, trying to calm the situation and persuade him to give himself up. Media reports said he may have been involved in a dispute with a fellow pupil or a former girlfriend.
LATVIA
Popcorn row shooter jailed
A lawyer who shot another man dead in a Riga cinema over an argument about munching too loudly on popcorn was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Tuesday. Nikolajs Zikovs was convicted of aggravated murder for shooting banker Aigars Egle, who was with his young daughter, after telling the victim to be quiet during a screening of the film Black Swan on Feb. 19 last year. Zikovs, 29, told Riga District Court that he was acting in self-defense when he shot the unarmed Egle three times. Witnesses said Zikovs had himself made several disruptions during the film, then took issue with Egle over how loudly the victim had been eating popcorn, even though the film’s credits were rolling. The killer described himself as a reasonable man and said Egle should have been more polite.
CROATIA
Priest arrested for murder
Police on Tuesday arrested a Catholic priest on suspicion of beating to death a local politician in a row over a cemetery, media reports said. Officials said they had detained a 43-year-old man at a church property in the village of Banici, near the southern Adriatic town of Dubrovnik, where the battered body of a 49-year-old man was found following an attack in the early hours. A police spokeswoman did not elaborate on the identity of the detained man, but national television identified him as priest Ivan Sinanovic and the victim as local town hall head Marko Kraljevic. Local media reported that the alleged murder occurred after a dispute between the priest and the local authority over unauthorized enlargement of the town’s cemetery.
UNITED STATES
Police seek ‘prank’ parents
Authorities said a father’s prank at a southern New Jersey laundry facility nearly turned tragic when his toddler son briefly got stuck inside an active washing machine. They are hoping to identify and locate the family, to ensure the child was not harmed. The May 11 incident at the Camden business was captured on a surveillance video, which drew millions of hits after being posted on YouTube and other Internet sites. The clip shows the father putting the child in the machine — apparently as part of a “peek-a-boo” game. He then shut the door, which locked and started an automatic cycle with the child inside. The parents frantically pulled on the door for a few seconds as the child continued to spin, then ran to get help. An employee quickly unplugged the machine, and the child — who did not appear to be hurt — was pulled to safety.
UNITED STATES
X-men get gay married
Marvel comic book crime fighters the X-Men have put down their weapons and picked up wedding rings for the first same-sex marriage in the superhero world, set for next month. Marvel on Tuesday said Jean-Paul Beaubier, aka Northstar, a Canadian with piercing blue eyes and silver-streaked black hair who can move and fly at superhuman speeds, proposes to his longtime boyfriend Kyle Jinadu in the issue, Astonishing X-Men No. 50, which went on sale yesterday. “The Marvel Universe has always reflected the world outside your window, so we strive to make sure our characters, relationships and stories are grounded in that reality,” Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso said in a statement. The pair will marry in Astonishing X-Men No. 51, which goes on sale on June 20, and some comic book retailers will be hosting wedding parties on that day, Marvel said.
UNITED STATES
Drugs found off west coast
The coast guard has recovered more than 4 tonnes of marijuana — 160 bales — floating off the coast of California police said on Monday. The drug haul, worth more than US$3 million on the street, was spotted on Sunday off the coast of Dana Point, about 96km south of Los Angeles, sheriff’s office spokesman Joe Balicki said. A drug smuggling accident would be an obvious explanation, though the amount involved would have required a larger vessel than a small craft typically used to smuggle drugs around the nearby Mexican-US border. “It kind of makes you wonder how it got there,” Balicki said, adding: “We did not have any reports of vessels in distress.” The bales, wrapped in plastic, were found bobbing in the sea about 24km from shore.
BRAZIL
Sexist passenger removed
An airline said one of its female pilots removed a passenger from a flight because he was making sexist comments about women flying planes. Trip Airlines said in a statement on Tuesday that the pilot ejected the man before takeoff because he made loud, sexist comments after learning the pilot was a woman. The jet continued on to the state of Goias after a one-hour delay. The passenger involved in Friday’s incident has not been identified. He was met by police at the plane and escorted out of Belo Horizonte airport. Police at the airport have not responded to calls and it is not known if the man was charged with anything. Trip said it would not tolerate disparaging remarks made about any of the 1,400 women working for the airline.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese