■ UNITED KINGDOM
Prisoners turn pagan
The number of prisoners who describe themselves as pagan has more than doubled in England and Wales since 2003, new government figures showed. Prison service guidelines say pagan prisoners may keep artifacts such as a hoodless robe and a flexible twig for use as a wand among their personal possessions. Naked worship, known as “skyclad,” is not allowed. The figures showed that 328 inmates listed themselves as pagan last year, up from 133 four years ago. The figures were released ahead of Halloween, a festival on which pagan prisoners will be allowed to choose not to work or attend education. Inmates are allowed to select two dates from a list of eight annual festivals when they are excused from work.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Military official resigns
The head of the country’s special forces in Afghanistan has resigned, reportedly in disgust at equipment failures that he believes led to the death of four of his troops. Major Sebastian Morley, commander of Special Air Service troops in Afghanistan, accused the government of “chronic underinvestment” in equipment in his resignation letter, the Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday. He had repeatedly warned that people would be killed if military commanders and government officials continued to allow troops to be transported in the lightly armored Snatch Land Rover vehicles, it said. Four of his soldiers died in June when their Snatch Land Rover hit a land mine in Helmand Province. Morley believes they died needlessly, the newspaper said.
■ GERMANY
TV station for gays launches
The country’s first television station for gay men will go on air this week offering entertainment and news with homosexual themes via satellite and cable, the new TIMM channel said on Friday. The line-up will include popular series such as Queer as Folk, The L-Word and Absolutely Fabulous dubbed into German, as well as documentaries on gay stars or celebrities who are big in the gay community, such as Rupert Everett, Susan Sarandon and Liza Minnelli, the station said in a statement. With the slogan “We love men,” TIMM said it was aimed at the country’s estimated 3.6 million gay men and hoped to draw their family and friends, lesbians and a few “metrosexuals.” “TIMM enriches the existing television landscape with programming from and by the target group — simply for everyone who loves men,” it said.
■ EL SALVADOR
Presidents leave summit
Eight presidents left the Iberian American Summit in San Salvador before it closed on Friday, in a mass escape that made the gathering’s last day lackluster. Between midday Thursday and early Friday, the leaders of Brazil, Nicaragua, Argentina, Panama, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and the Dominican Republic left San Salvador. The presidents of Venezuela, Cuba and Uruguay directly skipped the summit. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva missed the opening ceremony late on Wednesday and left after the first session of debate, at midday on Thursday. He traveled to Cuba for a visit of less than 24 hours. On Thursday, the countries meeting in San Salvador demanded a greater presence in global financial decisions at a time of crisis. Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, among other countries, called for a fairer multilateral world order that would take into account the views of emerging countries.
■ MEXICO
Policemen killed in Toluca
Authorities in Toluca say eight police officers have been killed in less than 24 hours in a state near the capital. Mexico state attorney general’s office spokesman Octavio Campos says the police chief and a commander in the town of Teoloyucan were found shot to death on Friday inside a patrol car. Campos says six state officers were gunned down in three separate attacks late on Thursday. Seven other people were also killed in the state during the same period. Mexico state is one of several that have suffered a wave of homicides. Officials blame the violence on warring drug gangs.
■ OUTER SPACE
US astronauts to vote
Two US astronauts who are soaring in orbit hundreds of kilometers from Earth will be able to vote in the US election on Nov. 4, the US space agency NASA said. Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff, who are working aboard the International Space Station, are to vote by secure electronic ballot uplinked by Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, NASA said. Their votes will be submitted by secure link back to Earth, and recorded by local voting officials in Texas. Astronauts can vote from space due to a 1997 bill passed by Texas legislators which set up the process. Nearly all US astronauts live in Houston, NASA said.
■ UNITED STATES
Trick-or-treater shot to death
A 12-year-old boy trick-or-treating with his family in Sumter, South Carolina, was shot from inside a home on Friday and killed, and his father and brother were wounded by the gunfire, authorities said. The shooting suspect, Quentin Patrick, was in custody, a jail official said. Patrick, 22, has been charged with murder and three counts of assault and battery with intent to kill. The jail official said she didn’t know whether Patrick had an attorney and his telephone number was unpublished. The family was headed home from a city-sponsored event in Sumter, South Carolina, when they decided to stop at a few homes, Sumter Police Chief Patty Patterson said.
■ CANADA
Wallaby escapes from pen
An intrepid wallaby has escaped from its pen at an exotic zoo and gone on an 80km walkabout across the eastern part of the country where he remained on the lam on Friday, zookeepers said. Wendell, a three-year-old Bennett’s Red Necked wallaby, was reported missing on Wednesday after a storm toppled a tree which destroyed the animal’s pen at a facility near the capital Ottawa. The animal, native to eastern Australia, and three others as well as a kangaroo, “just hopped out of their broken enclosure,” Carla Saunders, co-owner of Saunders Country Critters and Garden Centre said. But only Wendell strayed very far, she said.
■ UNITED STATES
Painting returned to France
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has sent a US$2.8 million painting back to France after concluding it had been stolen by the Nazis during World War II. The museum had owned the 1911 Fernand Leger painting Smoke Over Rooftops since 1961. But after a decade of detective work, the institute decided to return it to the French heirs of a Jewish art collector who died in 1948. “Having researched this to the end of the road, we decided we had to return the painting; it was the right thing to do,” Kaywin Feldman, director of the institute, told the Star Tribune for a story published on Thursday.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
DEFIANT: Ukraine and the EU voiced concern that ICC member Mongolia might not execute an international warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes in Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin
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