SOUTH KOREA
Gay parade to go ahead
Organizers of the annual gay pride festival vowed yesterday to push ahead with a planned parade in downtown Seoul, despite a police ban and protests from conservative Christian groups. More than 20,000 people had been expected to take part in the street parade on June 28 at the end of the Korea Queer Festival which begins on Tuesday next week, but there was fervent and vocal opposition from conservative Christian groups and police last week banned the march, citing concerns over public safety and traffic disruption. Gay rights activists say the police ban on the parade is the first since the annual Queer Festival began 15 years ago. Woo Ji-young, executive director of the festival’s organizing committee, accused the police of caving in to pressure from conservative Christians. “The police should protect the rights of free expression, rather than siding with those trying to suppress it,” Woo said. “The parade will go on whether the police ban it or not.”
PAKISTAN
Model’s bail plea rejected
A government lawyer says a court has rejected a bail plea from top model Ayaan Ali, who has been held since March after being caught trying to fly to Dubai with half a million US dollars in cash stashed in her luggage. Lawyer Farhat Lodhi said Judge Rana Aftab rejected Ali’s bail request on Wednesday. Ali has been the focus of media attention since police captured her as she waited in a VIP airport lounge in Islamabad. Under the law, no one can carry more than US$10,000 on a flight, but authorities found US$506,800 in Ali’s luggage. Ali has maintained the money was solely hers, though rumors abound she was part of a money-laundering ring of A-list celebrities carrying illicit cash for politicians and businessmen.
SERBIA
Schoolboys arrested for raid
Police have arrested two schoolboys they accuse of having stormed a Belgrade classroom masked and armed with a plastic pistol and making off with their teacher’s grade book. Police said in a statement on Wednesday they had apprehended two unidentified Grade 7 pupils and seized a replica handgun, a knife, a balaclava and a pair of sunglasses after the incident on Tuesday during school hours in the Belgrade suburb of Kotez. School crime and violence have soared since the war years of the 1990s. Authorities have responded by installing video surveillance and deploying police at some schools. “It appears that a third boy agreed with two friends that they would grab the grade book because of his poor grades,” said a police officer, who asked not to be named.
ITALY
Educator in pageant row
Some of the nation’s top female academics are demanding an apology from the president of the University of Rome for participating on the jury of a “Miss University” pageant to select the “most beautiful and wise” university student. Eugenio Gaudio headed the pageant jury, in which participants submitted information about their majors and grades — along with their height, bust and waist size. A dozen female professors lead by economist Mariana Mazzucato of the University of Sussex wrote an open letter to Gaudio over the weekend saying his participation represented a “scandalous stain” on the university and “demonstrates how backward our society is.” Gaudio refused to apologize, noting that his two predecessors also participated in the pageant and that, regardless, the contestants “were not in bathing suits, but in evening dresses.”
ARGENTINA
Domestic violence protested
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the nation on Wednesday to condemn violence against women after a series of brutal murders. Carrying signs with slogans such as “Machismo kills” and “Enough deaths,” Argentines flooded the streets of Buenos Aires and more than 100 other cities. Marches were also held in Chile, Uruguay and Mexico. Argentina has been shocked by the slayings of a kindergarten teacher whose estranged husband allegedly slit her throat in front of her class.
UNITED STATES
Pizza factors in home sale
In Portland, Oregon’s hot real-estate market, where some homes are getting dozens of offers and bidding wars have sent prices skyrocketing, one buyer found a way to stand out among the rest: Offer free pizza every month for life. Donna DiNicola, owner of DiNicola’s Italian Restaurant in southeast Portland, might have been joking when she offered the pizza, but it worked. Her offer for a 83.6m2 house in southeast Portland for her 23-year-old son was accepted. “It was really a joke,” she said. “I swear to you I did not know that made it into the paperwork.” DiNicola, who has been in business for 38 years, saw the Portland market heating up and encouraged her two sons to start looking. “Donna’s offer was just so compelling and the fact that she offered 60 days of rent back for free,” home seller Holly Marsh said. “And then the pizza part was just hilarious.”
UNITED STATES
School charges cheerers
A Mississippi school superintendent has pressed charges of disturbing the peace against several people who cheered during a recent high-school graduation despite being asked to hold their celebrations until the end. Senatobia Municipal School District superintendent Jay Foster said he told spectators at the Senatobia High School graduation last month not to applaud for family members until all graduates’ names had been called, to keep the ceremony “dignified.” “We did not tell them they could not cheer. We just asked them to wait until the end, so everyone has an opportunity to hear their graduate’s name,” he said on Wednesday. Four people did not comply and were asked to leave, Foster said. The superintendent later went to the police to pursue charges against the three people he has been able to identify. Ursula Miller is among those facing charges after she shouted out for her niece, she said. She and the others are expected to appear in court on Tuesday.
UNITED STATES
Student rents family with ad
A Colorado college student who grew up in foster care is set to get her birthday wish — a family to help her celebrate the occasion, local media outlets reported on Wednesday. Natalie Carson, 19, gained national attention after posting an ad on Craigslist.com saying that she had never had a happy birthday and wanted to rent a family to make the one coming up this month special. KMGH-TV in Denver on Wednesday reported that she had found a fill-in family. Carson’s Craigslist ad last month said she had been taken from her abusive parents as a child and grown up in foster care. She was never adopted and then aged out of the foster system. Carson said she was willing to pay a family US$8 an hour to celebrate the birthday with her. Carson told KMGH that she had been flooded with offers, including some from people in other states willing to fly her out for the day. She told the station she had decided on a Colorado family to help her celebrate.
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
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the