SPACE
Astronauts arrive at ISS
Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, carrying a European, a Russian and an American astronaut for a four-month mission. “Capture confirmed,” said a NASA commentator as the spacecraft docked at the ISS at 4:58pm, live NASA television images showed. The trio — Frenchman Thomas Pesquet, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and US astronaut Peggy Whitson — were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday.
UNITED STATES
Lewis records found
Officials in Nashville, Tennessee, have discovered never-before-published photographs and records detailing the early arrests of Representative John Lewis, a civil rights icon. Nashville Mayor Megan Barry on Saturday surprised Lewis with the records while he was receiving a literary award for March, a graphic novel about his life in the civil rights movement. Lewis, now 76 and a congressman from Georgia, said he was surprised and nearly cried upon seeing the records. He said he plans to place copies in his Washington office to inspire visitors. Lewis said he had been arrested 45 times for his activism, but his first arrest was in Nashville. City officials plan to display copies of the records in the Nashville Public Library.
MEXICO
Alleged assassin arrested
Authorities say federal forces have arrested an alleged leader of a band of assassins in Acapulco. The government has identified the man only as “Benito N” and it says he was responsible for a significant amount of the bloodshed in the city. A statement released late on Friday said his arrest was one of the state’s top security priorities. Local media says the suspect was the head of assassins for the Beltran Lleyva cartel. Killings are up 5 percent in Acapulco this year over a very bloody last year despite tightened security. Authorities say 790 homicides were recorded between January and last month.
UNITED STATES
Family upset by booing
The father of a California soldier killed in Afghanistan says he felt disrespected and hurt by passengers who booed him and his family when they were getting off a flight while headed to pick up his son’s remains. Stewart Perry, his wife and daughter were on an American Airlines flight on Monday from Sacramento to Philadelphia with a transfer in Phoenix, the Stockton Record reported on Saturday. Perry said the flight arrived in Phoenix 45 minutes late and the crew, fearing the family could miss their connecting flight, asked the rest of the passengers to remain seated to let a “special military family” deplane first. Perry said several passengers in first class booed, complaining that it was “baloney” and that they paid first-class fares. “It was just disgusting behavior from people in first class; it was terrible to see,’’ Perry said. He said his son, Sergeant John Perry, 30, died of injuries caused by an improvised explosive device on Nov. 12 at Bagram Airfield.
UNITED STATES
Call to scrap bar curtains
A group of Utah restaurants wants to scrap a law requiring so-called “Zion curtains” that wall off customers from bartenders preparing drinks. The Salt Lake Area Restaurant Association plans to hire a lobbyist to push the change during the legislative session that starts in January. Association president Tamara Gibo told the Salt Lake Tribune that the 2009 law affects new businesses more than others that were grandfathered in.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
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