UNITED KINGDOM
Driver hits police station
Police arrested a man on suspicion of drunk driving on Friday after he crashed his car into their police station. Officers at Frodsham police station near Liverpool did not have to go far to find their suspect after the car was left with its front end resting on the outside wall. The suspect is thought to have lost control of the vehicle in a neighboring parking lot at about 12:20am. The local Cheshire Police force tweeted about the incident. “Man arrested for #drinkdrive after losing control on a car park and crashing into Frodsham police station. #epicfail,” a first tweet said. It was followed by: “Male in Frodsham kindly handed himself in for drink driving #drivenintostationwall.” A 49-year-old man was arrested and released on bail.
GERMANY
Team avoid flock of models
Sharing a hotel with 400 Russian models apparently is not every athlete’s idea of a good time. Third-division soccer team Duisburg said they changed the hotel booking for their winter training camp in Turkey next week after learning that the hotel is hosting a pageant of Russian models. Duisburg said that the club want to “prepare calmly” for their matches and the original hotel might also have been overbooked. The team will be staying at another hotel in the Mediterranean city of Antalya’s Lara District from Thursday to Jan. 16.
LITHUANIA
Obsolete note finds niche
The nation abandoned the litas on Thursday when it became the 19th nation to adopt the euro, but at least one of the old bills is still in vogue, a gay activist said on Friday. Vladimir Simonko, cofounder of the Lithuanian Gay League, told reporters that the 10 litas note — which features two pilots in uniform — was being traded in gay circles in Western Europe for as much as £10 (US$15.30), which is about four times its value at the current exchange rate. For Simonko, the note created interest among foreigners “because it shows two handsome men in uniform. One finds oneself wondering why they are two and what their relationship is.” The aviators who lent their faces to the note are Steponas Darius and Stasys Girenas. In 1933, the pair attempted a nonstop flight from New York to Kaunas, Lithuania. They crashed 37 hours into the flight, after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and are revered in Lithuania as heroes.
UNITED KINGDOM
Applicants eager to get shot
About 10,000 people from around the world have applied to be shot at as a paintball bullet tester, the British company posting the job advert said on Friday. UKPaintball, which has more than 60 paintballing venues in Britain, said it was stunned by the response to its search for a “human bullet impact tester.” Candidates from as far away as the US, Canada and India have applied for the £40,000-a-year job testing the impact of paintballs. “This incredible response is the last thing we expected when we posted the ad,” UKPaintball owner Justin Toohig said. “We couldn’t have predicted that so many people in the UK and beyond would want to get shot for a living.” Applicants have cited a range of different skills to prove they were up to the job, including one who said he was fat, so would be easier to hit, he said. “We’ve had individuals hoping to secure the job including an ex-army soldier boasting previous experience of guns and weaponry ... and an ex-magician’s assistant who was once almost shot for real in an illusion that went horribly wrong,” Toohig added. “It’s going to be a real struggle attempting to whittle down the thousands of applicants to just one.”
EL SALVADOR
Homicides increase 57%
Authorities say homicides increased 57 percent in El Salvador last year to 3,912. National Police Commissioner Mauricio Ramirez Landaverde on Friday said that there were 412 killings last month, an average of 13 a day. That was nearly double from the same month in 2013. Ramirez Landaverde attributed the sharp increase to the dissolution of a pact among the country’s criminal gangs. In March 2012, leaders of the gangs Mara Salvatrucha MS13 and Barrio 18 agreed to reduce violence, and homicides fell to an average of five a day. The gangs are fighting over territories where they extort businesses and traffic drugs. In 2013, El Salvador reported 2,492 homicides, while it listed 2,543 in 2012.
UNITED STATES
Girl survives plane crash
A seven-year-old girl survived a plane crash that killed four people, walking away from the wreckage disoriented and reporting the crash to a local resident, authorities said. The small Piper PA-34 reported engine trouble and lost contact with air traffic controllers as it was flying over the southwestern part of Kentucky about 5:55pm on Friday, authorities said. About half an hour later, a Lyon County resident called police and told dispatchers that a girl had walked to his home and said she had been involved in a plane crash, Sergeant Dean Patterson of said. About two hours later, authorities found the crash site in a heavily wooded area near Kentucky lake. They discovered four bodies, including the pilot and the three passengers.
UNITED STATES
No new charges for gunman
The man who shot a presidential spokesman during a 1981 assassination attempt on former president Ronald Reagan will not face new murder charges, even though the victim’s death last year was ruled a homicide, prosecutors said on Friday. Prosecutors had weighed whether to charge John Hinckley in the death of White House press secretary James Brady, who died in August aged 73, more than three decades after he was shot in the head. Brady had been gravely wounded and was left wheelchair-bound and with brain damage. Hinckley, who after the shooting said he was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster and was charged with attempted assassination of the president and other crimes, was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Federal prosecutors said they could not charge Hinckley because a jury had already found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Further, before 1987, Washington courts followed a “year-and-a-day rule,” where a homicide prosecution could only be brought if a victim died in that time frame after an attack.
UNITED STATES
Man unstuck from zipline
A man stuck dangling from a zipline about 24m above a Las Vegas street for nearly an hour is back on the ground after being rescued by firefighters. Las Vegas Fire and Rescue spokesman Timothy Szymanski said firefighters rescued the rider from SlotZilla at the downtown Fremont Street Experience shortly after 3pm on Friday. He said a passer-by called at 2:34pm to report a man stuck above Fourth Street since about 2pm. He said SlotZilla workers stayed with the man while he was suspended and tried to bring him down, but eventually asked firefighters to reach him. The US$40 “zoomline” rides involve flying over Fremont Street superhero-style, facing the ground. Fremont Street Experience spokeswoman Lauren Silverstein said a team is investigating the incident.
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