■ Japan
Clothing fetish man indicted
Police found more than 8,000 pieces of women's clothing and lingerie in the home of a Japanese man who stole the items so he could sleep buried in them. Maeyasu Kawamura, 60, was indicted for theft on Friday, police in Osaka Prefecture, western Japan, said. Police found 2,400 pieces of lingerie, 600 kimonos and 5,200 items of other clothing all piled up high in his small apartment room. Kawamura has confessed to stealing the items, which included a wedding dress. "He seemed to get a thrill out of sleeping covered in women's clothes," a police spokesman said. "He seemed to like the smell."
■ Nepal
Diplomats want protection
The government must ensure security for foreign diplomats, and political activists should not obstruct their work, Kathmandu-based diplomats said, after an attack on a car carrying the US envoy. Ambassador James Moriarty was unhurt in the incident in southeast Nepal last week when members of a Maoist young wing threw stones at his car. The US has been critical of the Maoists, who signed a peace deal with the government in November and joined an interim administration last month. The former rebels, who have also taken seats in an interim parliament, still figure on a US list of terrorist organizations.
■ China
Realistic toy guns seized
Quality watchdogs have seized 46 toy guns from a Wal-Mart store in Shanghai because they looked "too realistic," state media reported on Thursday. Five types of toy guns, including pistols and a machine gun, seized from the US retailing giant's outlet in Pudong, violated color standards, the Shanghai Daily said, citing the local bureau of quality and technical supervision. "All of the guns are black or metallic, which is against a law that states at least half of toy guns should be bright colors such as red or green to differentiate them from real weapons," the paper quoted an unnamed quality official as saying.
■ Philippines
Drunken man kills 10
A man armed with a long knife killed 10 people, including five children, and wounded 14 more, on a drunken rampage early yesterday in a central province, police said. The man first attacked and wounded six members of his own family in the remote village outside Calbayog City in central Samar Province around 2am, police desk officer Jessie Gianan said by telephone. The man then barged into two neighboring homes where he stabbed and hacked at the sleeping occupants, Gianan said. Eight victims died on the spot and two died later at a hospital, Gianan said. Another 14 were wounded. The man then surrendered to another villager who turned him over to the authorities.
■ India
Boy, 8, arrested over deaths
Police have arrested an eight-year-old boy for allegedly killing three infants, two of them his own cousins, a police officer said on Friday. The killings in Mushari village in Begusarai district shocked and angered its residents and forced the parents of the boy to flee the village. The boy allegedly committed his first murder a year ago, strangling his six-month-old cousin, said Amit Lodha, the police chief of Begusarai, 50km northeast of Patna, capital of Bihar state. The second killing came months later, when he smashed the head of another cousin. Those incidents came to light after police probed a complaint from the boy's neighbors that he had killed their infant daughter on Tuesday, Lodha said.
■ Germany
Man falls in spitting contest
A 43-year-old man was taken to the hospital in critical condition after he fell off a second story balcony during a spitting contest with his 12-year-old son, police said on Friday. A spokesman for the police in the eastern town of Cottbus said the man had apparently lost his balance after thrusting too far forward in his attempt to outspit his son. He tumbled over the ledge and landed on a balcony of the ground floor apartment, police said. He was taken to hospital in a rescue helicopter.
■ Ukraine
Circus crocodile escapes
An animal trainer who brought a crocodile to the beach to drum up interest in a circus got some unwelcome publicity when it broke free and made off into the Azov Sea. The 1m crocodile named Godzi escaped from its handler in the city of Mariupol on Thursday, said Mykola Ranga, a spokesman for the regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry. He said ministry workers were searching for the crocodile, whose mouth was taped shut and that it has been seen swimming in the sea, which lies north of the Black Sea between Ukraine and Russia.
■ Russia
Nuclear waste may explode
A Russian nuclear waste storage facility on the Kola Peninsula runs the risk of exploding soon due to severe corrosion on three tanks, the Norwegian environmental organization Bellona warned on Friday. "The risk of an uncontrolled chain reaction in the storage facility is imminent," Bellona, which works with nuclear contamination on the Kola Peninsula in northern Russia, said in a statement. Salt water has corroded and seeped through the three tanks. They are located in Andreyev Bay, some 45km from the Norwegian border. Bellona based its statement on an investigation conducted by the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom.
■ Iran
Temporary vows backed
An Iranian Cabinet minister said young people should be encouraged to get temporarily married, a practice unique to Shiite Islam to avoid illicit extramarital sex, newspapers reported yesterday. "We should expect violations and repercussions if we do not practically respond to young people's sexual needs," the centrist Kargozaran daily quoted Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi as saying. "Islam has solutions for all human problems and temporary marriage is a solution to this kind of problem," the minister, who is himself a cleric, was quoted as telling a conference in Iran's clerical capital of Qom. Temporary marriage, known in Farsi as sigheh, is a contract that allows a man and a woman to be married for any period of time from just an hour to 99 years.
■ United Kingdom
A skull's best friend
Damien Hirst, former art bad boy whose works infuriate and inspire in equal measure, did it again on Friday with a diamond-encrusted platinum cast of a human skull priced at a cool £50 million (US$98 million). The skull, cast from a 35-year-old 18th century European male, is coated with 8,601 diamonds, including a large pink diamond worth more than £4 million pounds in the center of its forehead. "It shows we are not going to live forever. But it also has a feeling of victory over death," Hirst said.
■ Mexico
Tropical storm nears land
Tropical Storm Barbara steamed toward the southern Pacific coast and was expected to make landfall yesterday near the Mexico-Guatemala border, an area notorious for its vulnerability to flooding. A tropical storm warning was in force from Sipacate, Guatemala, to Barra de Tonala, Mexico, and the US Hurricane Center in Miami warned that Barbara could unleash life-threatening flooding and mudslides. With maximum winds of nearly 80kph, the storm was centered about 330km southeast of Salina Cruz, Mexico, close to the Mexico-Guatemala border.
■ Venezuela
Banned channel on YouTube
Forced off the air by President Hugo Chavez, an opposition-aligned TV channel has begun taking its news shows to popular video-sharing Web site YouTube. Since it went off the airwaves last Sunday, Radio Caracas Television has kept taping programs and is uploading its news show The Observer each day to YouTube, RCTV vice president Maribel Morales said on Friday. YouTube listed the program as its most-subscribed feed of the week. Chavez refused to renew the channel's license, accusing it of inciting a failed coup in 2002 and violating various broadcast laws.
■ United States
Tongan royals' trial begins
A teenage girl involved in a highway crash that killed two members of the Tongan royal family often drove fast and recklessly and should be convicted of vehicular manslaughter, a prosecutor said during opening statements of her trial. Edith Delgado, 19, was racing another car in July when her car sideswiped a car carrying Tongan Prince Tu'ipelehake, 55; his wife, Princess Kaimana Aleamotu'a Tuku'aho, 46; and their driver, Vinisia Hefa, 36, San Mateo prosecutors said on Friday. Investigators said Delgado was driving between 137kph and 160kph when she crashed into their car, which flipped over, killing everyone inside.
■ Brazil
US pilots indicted
A federal judge on Friday indicted two US pilots and four local air traffic controllers for contributing to Brazil's worst air crash, which killed 154 people last year. The prosecutor's office in western Mato Grosso State, where a Boeing 737 operated by Brazilian carrier Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes crashed after clipping wings with a Legacy business jet on Sept. 29, said Judge Murilo Mendes accepted its case and the accused will stand trial. Lenita Violato, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office, said the Legacy pilots, Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino, and three controllers are accused of unintentional crime of exposing aircraft to peril.
■ United States
Arnie's cigar sparks row
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger lit a cigar during his trip to Canada this week, but did he break US law? The celebrity governor was in Ottawa on Wednesday on his way to the airport when his motorcade made a detour to a hotel. There, he picked up a Cuban Partagas cigar in a shop, with the bill paid by an aide, the Ottawa Citizen reported. US citizens are prohibited from buying Cuban cigars anywhere in the world. His office would not confirm or deny that the governor indulged in a forbidden smoke while in Canada, where he was on a trade mission. "He stopped and bought a cigar and smoked it on the way to the airport," spokesman Aaron McLear said. "There's no way of telling now because he smoked it." Americans convicted of violating trade regulations can be sentenced to fines or prison.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
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