UNITED KINGDOM
Ad riles North Koreans
Staff at a London hair salon say they had a close shave with North Korean officials after using the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to promote a discount. M&M Hair Academy says it was visited by two men from the nearby North Korean embassy after putting up a poster last week featuring a picture of Kim and the slogan “Bad Hair Day?” Barber Karim Nabbach said the manager refused to remove the poster and reported the incident to police. Metropolitan Police said on Tuesday that officers had spoken to both sides of the dispute and concluded “there were no offenses for us to investigate.”
UNITED STATES
Court to hear campaign case
Negative campaigning and mudslinging may be a fact of life in politics, but can false accusations made in the heat of an election be punished as a crime? That debate makes its way to the Supreme Court next week as the justices consider a challenge to an Ohio law that bars false statements about political candidates during a campaign. Groups across the political spectrum have criticized the law as a restriction on the First Amendment right to free speech. The court is not expected to rule directly on the constitutional issue, but will focus on whether the law can be challenged before it is actually enforced.
URUGUAY
‘Poorest’ leader lists worth
President Jose Mujica has declared US$322,883 in wealth. Mujica’s insistence on living simply has earned him the nickname “the poorest president in the world,” but his sworn declaration this year shows a 74 percent increase in wealth since 2012. He said that is because he did not put his money, about US$104,000, into bank accounts until recently. He still lives on a ramshackle flower farm with his wife, Senator Lucia Topolansky, and he reported the farm’s value at about US$108,000. The couple share ownership in two other properties. He also reported that he has three tractors and two 1987 VW Beetles. Meanwhile, Vice President Daniel Astori says he is worth US$389,000.
UNITED KINGDOM
Musicians lose appeal
Musicians who performed in the London production of War Horse have lost a legal bid to stop the National Theatre from replacing them with a recorded soundtrack. The five performers, laid off last month, asked the High Court for an injunction so they could keep their jobs pending a legal challenge. Judge Ross Cranston refused on Tuesday, saying reinstating the musicians would cause “not insignificant practical difficulty” for the company. However, he said the five had a strong case to argue for breach of contract. War Horse is one of the theater’s most successful shows, with productions running elsewhere in the county and in the US and Germany.
AUSTRALia
Pemier quits over wine
New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell quit yesterday amid mounting evidence that he failed to declare a A$3,000 (US$2,800) bottle of wine that arrived as a gift on his Sydney doorstep. O’Farrell told a corruption inquiry on Tuesday that he never received a bottle of 1959 Penfolds Grange Hermitage as a gift from businessman Nick Di Girolamo congratulating him weeks after his 2011 election win. Grange is an iconic label and is synonymous with expensive wine. Grange vintages are consistently rated among the nation’s best shiraz. O’Farrell, who described himself as “no wine aficionado,” was supposed to add such a valuable gift to a public register aimed at deterring political donors from buying influence.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number