GERMANY
Town bans fireworks
Refugees in a town in the west of the nation have been banned from setting off fireworks to mark the New Year, partly out of concern that loud blasts could traumatize people who have fled war zones. The town of Arnsberg in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia has issued directives in several languages banning the sale of rockets and firecrackers to residents of refugee shelters, a spokesman told the Neue Westfaelische daily. The Arnsberg fire brigade also recommended that townspeople consider not launching any fireworks “to avoid reawakening memories in people who have fled war and conflict of the horrors that threatened them.”
GERMANY
Crime ring member arrested
Authorities say they have arrested a member of an Italian organized crime group following an investigation of a cocaine-smuggling operation. Investigators in North Rhine-Westphalia state on Tuesday said a 40-year-old Italian man, who was not named, was arrested on Wednesday last week in Gelsenkirchen as he left his hiding place. Investigators say he was a member of the Sacra Corona Unita group, based in southeastern Italy, and will soon be extradited to Italy. The arrest followed an investigation by police in the Italian town of Francavilla Fontana into a group accused of smuggling cocaine and weapons.
ARGENTINA
River reveals armadillo shell
A passer-by on Christmas Day found a 1m-long shell on a riverbank in Argentina which might be from a glyptodont, a giant armadillo, experts said on Tuesday. Jose Antonio Nievas thought the black scaly shell was a dinosaur egg when he saw it lying in the mud, his wife, Reina Coronel, told reporters. Her husband found the shell beside a stream on their farm in Carlos Spegazzini, about 40km south of Buenos Aires. “My husband went out to the car and when he came back he said: ‘Hey, I just found an egg that looks like it came from a dinosaur,’” she said. “We all laughed because we thought it was a joke.” Nievas told television channel Todo Noticias that he found the shell partly covered in mud and started to dig around it. Various experts who saw television pictures of the object said it was likely to be a glyptodont shell. Glyptodonts had big round armored shells and weighed up to a tonne.
BRAZIL
Hot Santas ditch beards
After more than a month sweating in the tropical heat, dozens of Santa Clauses celebrated the end of the season on Monday by shaving or trimming their thick white beards. Dressed in T-shirts and drinking beer or cola, the exhausted men gathered at an Italian restaurant in Rio de Janeiro to ditch their beards after a season of temporary work at shopping malls and hospitals. The men were graduates of the Rio Santa Claus School, which trains aspiring Saint Nicks looking to make some extra cash as the nation struggles through a recession. Scarfing down plates of spaghetti, the Santas sang some final Christmas carols. “They’re getting their strength up by eating some pasta before heading back to the North Pole,” school director Limachen Cherem said. The academy, which Cherem founded 22 years ago, has trained 400 Santas with free classes in singing, theater, diction, body language, gymnastics and make-up. The Santas, who can earn more than US$3,500 in 40 days, then give a percentage of their earnings to the school.
JAPAN
Lottery tickets left to victims
A mystery benefactor has left about 2,000 lottery tickets in an elevator and asked that flood victims get the proceeds from any winning stub, Japanese police said on Tuesday. An elderly woman found the tickets — which would have cost about ¥600,000 (US$4,980) to buy — and notes from the anonymous donor stuffed in a paper bag at the city hall car park elevator in Tochigi, north of Tokyo. This summer the area was devastated by massive floods, which killed seven people and destroyed thousands of homes. “Please give the money to people suffering from the rain disaster if any of these tickets win,” one of the notes said, according to police. The top prize in this year’s annual New Year’s Eve lottery to be drawn today could be about ¥1 billion. Authorities plan to keep the tickets for the next five months to see if anyone steps forward to claim ownership. It was unclear what would happen after that if any of the tickets prove to be a winner.
INDIA
Infosys contractors arrested
Police said on Tuesday that they had arrested two contract workers accused of raping a woman at the premises of technology giant Infosys, in the latest incident of sexual violence to rock the nation. The men, aged in their 20s, filmed the alleged assault, which occurred on Sunday at one of the IT firm’s offices in Pune, Maharashtra state, officers said. “The woman works as a cashier at the canteen and had gone to the washroom in the evening when one of the men assaulted her while the other filmed it,” police spokesman Suresh Bhonsle said. The men also worked in the canteen, as a cleaner and a waiter.
PAKISTAN
Landowner mutilates teen
Police have arrested a powerful landowner and two accomplices for allegedly chopping off the hands of a 17-year-old farmhand whose family had failed to repay a loan of 15,000 rupees (US$150). The incident took place about two months ago in the agricultural district of Hafizabad, about 80km northwest of Lahore. It was only reported to police on Monday after the victim’s family decided to speak out. Landowners wield considerable power in rural Pakistan, practicing a form of feudalism over the farmers in their employ. “Asad Israr-ul-Haq and his two accomplices have chopped off hand of Akram Abu Bakar, 17 years old,” a copy of the police report said. “The victim’s family had borrowed 15,000 rupees from the landlord and they were not able to return it.” Local police station chief Mahmood Butt said the attackers had used a feed chopper to mutilate the teenager.
SPAIN
Man kept in roofless room
Police said on Tuesday that they had detained two people who kept their 59-year-old brother locked up in “inhuman conditions” in a tiny, roofless room adjoining their home. The man, who suffers from mental problems, was discovered naked in a tiny room without a roof in the southern town of Dos Hermanas, on a filthy mattress next to which bottles and buckets were laid out for him to go to the toilet, police said in a statement. Police in the town near Seville made the grisly discovery when they brought his 76-year-old drunk brother back to his home following complaints of disorderly behavior. The man’s 61-year-old sister also lived in the house and said she kept him fed and cleaned, and looked after his 1,000 euro (US$1,100) monthly pension. The man was taken to hospital, while his two siblings were detained, police said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.