PHILIPPINES
Sense of humor tops looks
Ugly people with a sense of humor appear to trump their good-looking, but dull peers in the dating game, according to a pre-Valentine’s Day poll published yesterday. Given a choice, nine in 10 adult Filipinos told survey group Social Weather Stations they would pick “a man/woman who has a sense of humor.” Ten percent preferred “a man/woman who is good-looking, but has no sense of humor.” “It’s more interesting to be with someone who has a good personality because good looks will fade over time,” said Josefina Natividad, director for the University of the Philippines Population Institute. While the nation has produced many winners in international beauty pageants, Natividad said physical beauty is not that important in Filipino culture. “As a culture we’re not that obsessed with beauty, but we are bombarded with advertising trying to convince us that good looks matter,” she said.
CHINA
Romantic couples thwarted
Couples looking to enjoy a romantic Valentine’s Day at one movie theater will be out of luck today, thwarted by singles who bought up all the odd-numbered seats. According to the Shanghai Morning Post, a group of Internet users reserved every other seat at a Valentine’s night showing of Beijing Love Story at a movie theater in the city’s Xintiandi shopping complex. A graphic published by the paper shows how the group accomplished their mission, with every other ticket successfully purchased by the singles so that no two adjacent seats are available. “Want to see a movie on Valentine’s Day?” reads an online message by the stunt organizer, known by the initials U.P., according to the newspaper. “Sorry, you’ll have to sit separately. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Give us singles a chance.”
JAPAN
Dumpling chain says thanks
A dumpling restaurant chain whose president was gunned down late last year in a reported gangland killing is to give customers food coupons in gratitude for their support. Takayuki Ohigashi, 72, the boss of the Gyoza no Ohsho (King of Dumplings) chain, was shot dead in December last year outside the company’s headquarters in Kyoto. A spokesman for the company said sales were up 20 percent in the weeks after the bloody killing, as customer numbers swelled. The company will give coupons for dumplings and other dishes to everyone who visits between yesterday and tomorrow, it said. “It is meant to show the company’s gratitude to customers who supported us after the president’s death,” a company spokesman said.
SOUTH KOREA
Woman lives with corpse
A woman has been found living with the apparently embalmed body of her husband seven years after he died of cancer, police and media reports said on Wednesday. The woman, a 47-year-old pharmacist identified by her surname Cho, had managed to keep her late husband’s corpse in their apartment in Seoul following his death in 2007, local police said. The body showed little sign of decomposition when it was discovered following an anonymous tip, a Seoul police official said. “It was fairly clean and maintained well ... we don’t know how it was possible,” the official said. The body was found in December last year, but the case only came to light after it was reported on Wednesday by the YTN news channel. YTN said Cho, who owns her own drug store, had used her pharmaceutical training to embalm the body.
NORWAY
Boy claims he is a dwarf
A 10-year-old boy came up with a novel excuse after he drove his parents’ car into a snowy ditch on Wednesday morning: He told police he was a dwarf who forgot his driving license. The boy lives near Dokka, a town about 110km north of Oslo. Sometime before 6am, he loaded his 18-month old sister into the car and headed for their grandparents in Valdres, about 60km away, local police said. He drove more than 10km before he veered off the road. A snowplow driver found him and alerted the police. “The parents woke up and discovered that the children were missing and that someone had taken off with their car. They were pretty upset, as you can imagine,” Vest Oppland police district spokesman Baard Christiansen said. Police said no charges would be filed and the case was closed. The children were not injured and the car was not damaged, they said.
DENMARK
Zoo may kill giraffe
The Jyllands Park Zoo on Wednesday said it might put down one of its giraffes, which by coincidence is also named Marius, just after the Copenhagen Zoo slaughtered one on Sunday to the disgust of animal lovers around the world, news agency Ritzau reported. Staff at Copenhagen Zoo have received death treats after the zoo killed an 18-month-old healthy male giraffe because the animal’s genes were already well represented in an international breeding program that aims to maintain a healthy giraffe population in European zoos. Jyllands Park Zoo might put down its seven-year-old Marius if the zoo manages to acquire a female giraffe, which is most likely, zoo keeper Janni Lojtved Poulsen told Ritzau. The zoo also has a younger male called Elmer. “We can’t have two males and one female. Then there will be fights,” Poulsen said.
UNITED STATES
Biker taunts police
The fight is on between San Antonio police and a motorcycle rider who posted a video on Facebook that shows him zooming through interstate traffic at speeds up to 160kph with a message: “Catch me if you can.” The police, who are calling the biker a high-priority suspect, have posted clips on their own Facebook site showing him weaving in and out among cars on a busy San Antonio highway. “When we catch him, he has a lot more to answer to, but we want to get him off the street,” police spokesman Sergeant Javier Salazar said. He said police believe the motorcyclist is a man facing two felony warrants and a misdemeanor warrant for family violence. The video, apparently taken by a helmet-mounted camera, shows the motorcyclist on Interstate 35, zipping close to oncoming cars and nearly sideswiping others. The posting on the police’s page has unleashed a flood of comments, including one that said: “Run fool, run.” “When you call negative attention to yourself, bad things happen,” Salazar said.
UNITED STATES
Sinkhole swallows Corvettes
A massive sinkhole opened up inside the National Corvette Museum and swallowed eight cars on Wednesday in Kentucky. Museum officials said they got a call at 5:44am from their security company because the motion detectors had gone off. “Upon arrival, it was discovered that a sinkhole had collapsed within the museum,” the museum said in a statement. The Bowling Green fire department came to secure the area and estimated the size of the hole at 12m across and 8m to 9m deep. Two of the lost Corvettes were on loan from General Motors, while the other six belonged to the museum.
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