INDONESIA
‘No sex’ signs mulled
Officials on the island of Bali are considering putting up “no sex” signs at Hindu temples besides the usual “no eating” and “no smoking” warnings after a lusty Estonian couple were caught in the act. Police took the pair in for questioning after they were found by youth leaders who had gone to check up on repairs at the temple in the village of Saraseda. “They said they really did not know that sex at temples was prohibited in Bali, so we just let them go and left it up to the village heads to decide how to handle the case,” Gianyar district police chief Hadi Purnomo said yesterday. “In the end, the village decided they wanted to hold a cleansing ceremony and ordered the couple to pay 20 million rupiah [US$2,063] to fund the ritual.” The couple admitted they had also used the temple’s outdoor shower before having sex, Purnomo said, and apologized.
SOUTH KOREA
‘Little Psy’ aims for fame
The impish boy who showed off his dance moves alongside Psy in Gangnam Style is hoping to go viral, too. The seven-year-old, nicknamed “Little Psy,” is releasing an electro-pop song next week through iTunes. The boy, whose real name is Hwang Min-woo, says he wants to gain global fame like his “big brother,” Psy. Sporting a black suit and a sleek haircut, Min-woo performed at a news conference on Wednesday. He is the latest recruit in the increasingly global K-pop industry. Min-woo is a second-grader and his mother comes from Vietnam. Meanwhile, the big Psy has released a Gangnam Style remix and is continuing his worldwide tour. The video released on YouTube in July last year has a record 1.39 billion views.
ZIMBABWE
Lions kill third victim
Lions claimed a third victim in the resort town of Kariba after a man’s head, ribs and pelvis were found on Thursday, the country’s parks authority said. Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and the Civil Protection Unit in Kariba have asked professional hunters to help kill the cats after efforts to trap them failed, spokeswoman Caroline Washaya-Moyo said in a telephone interview yesterday from the capital, Harare. Hunters have shot and killed a zebra that will be used to bait the lions, she said. Two earlier victims were discovered on Tuesday, the state-controlled Herald reported. Kariba town, in the north of the country, sits on the shores of a man-made lake of the same name. The town is a popular tourist destination. A plan to poison the lions was rejected by National Parks as dangerous to other wildlife in the area. Elephant, hippo and antelope are commonly seen in Kariba, though lions rarely venture close to human habitation.
BRAZIL
Skulls cause bewilderment
Police in Sao Paulo are baffled by a macabre puzzle: someone has been leaving gift-wrapped human skulls around town. Investigator Paul Henry Bozon Verduraz described the case to the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper in a story published on Thursday. The first skull in cherry-red wrapping was found on Feb. 20 in a planter near a residential building downtown. Since then, seven others have been found near Mormon temples or consulates, including those for Russia, the Czech Republic and South Africa. The skulls are old, with traces of dirt. Verduraz says security cameras captured images of a woman in an ankle-length skirt leaving the skulls. He thinks this may be part of some sort of ritual.
UNITED STATES
Man charged over fatal crash
A man arrested in connection with a New York car crash that killed a rabbinical college student, his pregnant wife and their baby has been charged with vehicular manslaughter and other offenses. Julio Acevedo was arraigned on Thursday in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn and was ordered held without bail. He arrived in the city earlier on Thursday after agreeing to be returned from Pennsylvania, where he had surrendered on Wednesday. Police in New York say Acevedo left the scene of Sunday’s fatal crash. He is accused of speeding down a Brooklyn street and crashing into a car carrying 21-year-olds Nachman and Raizy Glauber. Acevedo has told the Daily News he was fleeing someone who was trying to shoot at him.
UNITED KINGDOM
Bieber faints during show
Justin Bieber is recovering after fainting backstage at a concert in London. A spokeswoman for Bieber said late on Thursday that the 19-year-old pop star was given oxygen and took a 20-minute reprieve after fainting backstage at London’s O2 Arena. “Getting better,” Bieber later posted on Twitter. “Thanks for everyone pulling me thru tonight. Best fans in the world. Figuring out what happened. Thanks for the love.” Jazz Chappell, a 20-year-old concertgoer who brought her younger sister and her friend to the show, said a backup dancer helped Bieber off stage after he announced he could not breathe and needed water. She said many fans in the audience were gasping and crying, while others kept cheering for him to return. “I thought, ‘Give the guy a break. He just fainted. He’s not a performing horse. Let him rest a second,’” Chappell said. In a video of the concert posted online, Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, appeared on stage and told the crowd that the singer was feeling “very low of breath,” but would come back to finish the show. Chappell said Bieber, who is in London to perform four concerts at the O2, later returned and performed low-energy renditions of his hits Boyfriend and Baby.
RUSSIA
Female heading for space
Russia will send a female cosmonaut into space for the first time in two decades next year, an official at the space training center said on Wednesday. Yelena Serova, 36 and a professional cosmonaut, “is getting ready for a space flight in the second half of 2014,” said Alexei Temerov, an official at Russia’s Star City space training center. Russia will this year celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first woman’s trip to space. The feat was accomplished by Valentina Tereshkova on June 16, 1963. However, only one Russian woman has flown to space since the early 1980s.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema