■INDIA
Three rebels killed: police
More than 125 heavily armed Maoists ambushed a team of central reserve police force patrolling the forested Chintagufa area, about 445km south of Raipur, capital of Chhattisgarh state, said Rahul Sharma, a local superintendent of police. Eight security personnel were injured in the attack, in which three Maoist rebels were also killed, he said. Maoist rebels, who say they are fighting for the rights of poor farmers and landless laborers, have stepped up violence in the state ahead of the general election that gets under way next week. They have ordered people to boycott the polls.
■JAPAN
Woman gives Osaka US$1m
The youthful governor of Osaka city voiced gratitude on Friday for an unexpected present from a woman aged in her 80s — a backpack stuffed with US$1 million in cash donations. “I was surprised. I couldn’t feel more grateful,” Toru Hashimoto told reporters, vowing to make sure the donation was put to good use. The elderly woman, who asked not to be named, late last month walked into his office and handed over the backpack filled with ¥100 million, an Osaka government official said. The woman said she wanted to donate the money for welfare.
■MALAYSIA
Panty thief gets 25 weeks
A man was sentenced to 25 weeks in jail for stealing 80 pairs of women’s panties, a media report said yesterday. The Star newspaper said Zunaidi Ismail, a 34-year-old unemployed man from Borneo, had admitted stealing the underwear from an apartment occupied by nursing students in three separate break-ins. Zunaidi told the court he stole the underwear for resell at a secondhand clothing market.
■INDIA
World’s ‘hottest’ woman
Anandita Dutta Tamuly is hoping to enter the record books as the world’s “hottest” woman after munching 51 fiery chilis in two minutes, organizers of the feat said on Friday. Anandita, 26, consumed the chilis in the company of British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who was producing a TV show on food and anchoring the event in Jorhat, 300km east of Assam’s main city of Guwahati. “In two minutes, Anandita gobbled 51 red-hot chilis without batting an eyelid or shedding a tear, and also smeared seeds of 25 chilis into her eyes in one minute,” said Atul Lahkar, a chef who organized the show. Guinness World Records had “asked us to provide them with a recording of the feat supervised by someone responsible. We asked Ramsay to be the adjudicator,” said Diganta Saikia, another coordinator.
■AUSTRALIA
Swimmer’s remains found
Police found the remains of a 20-year-old man who was taken by a 4m crocodile when he went for a nighttime swim in a river in northern Australia, an officer said yesterday. The crocodile believed responsible has been killed, police said. Police Superintendent Dean Maloney said the man was attacked at about 2am on Friday when he and his brother, who had been drinking with the victim’s wife on the bank, decided to swim across the Daly River, about 225km south of the tropical city of Darwin. Maloney said the trio were local residents and should have known that large saltwater crocodiles live in the river.
■CHINA
Strikers demand pay owed
More than 20 construction workers occupied a 17-story apartment block in Beijing, demanding their unpaid wages, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The workers occupied a residential building of real estate project Zhujiang Augusta in Beijing’s Tongzhou district for three hours on Friday afternoon, Xinhua said. Guo Yanjun, the workers’ leader, was quoted as saying that they had not received any payment even though the project was almost complete. Workers were owed 400,000 yuan (US$59,000) by the project owner, the report said. Problems with unpaid wages are common in the local construction industry, which is staffed largely by migrant workers. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 5.8 percent of the country’s migrant workers had been affected by wage arrears as of the end of last year.
■AUSTRALIA
Rain good for memory
People grumbling their way through the grimness of winter have better recall than those enjoying a carefree, sunny day, researchers at the University of New South Wales have found. The team used a Sydney news agency to test whether people’s moods had an impact on their ability to remember small details. Researchers placed 10 small items on the shop counter, including a toy cannon, a red bus and a piggy bank, and quizzed shoppers about what they remembered seeing upon their exit. Lead researcher Joseph Forgas said subjects were able to remember three times as many items on cold, windy, rainy days when there was somber classical music playing as they were when conditions were sunny and bright. Rainy day shoppers were also less likely to have false memories of objects that weren’t there, Forgas wrote in the study, which was published in the latest edition of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. He said a worse mood helped to focus people’s attention on their surroundings and led to a more thorough and careful thinking style.
■CYPRUS
Four accused over lasers
Four Greek Cypriot soldiers appeared in court on Friday accused of pointing laser beams at passenger planes flying into the Mediterranean island’s largest airport. The four conscripts in the Greek Cypriot National Guard were arrested on Thursday after a police probe into a string of incidents this week at Larnaca Airport. “We could have had an air tragedy, which is why this phenomenon has to be stamped out,” Larnaca’s deputy police chief Angelos Karadjias told state radio. Local police recorded four separate laser attacks on low-flying passenger jets this week.
■SOUTH KOREA
Fan lends singer his pants
An opera lover spared British singer Bryn Terfel his blushes by lending him a pair of trousers after he absent-mindedly arrived for a concert in shorts, a report said yesterday. The burly, 1.93m tall Terfel had put on shorts at his hotel in Seoul because the weather was warm, but he forgot he was still wearing them when he headed for the performance, the Daily Telegraph reported. “One can be a bit forgetful on the day of a concert — and I forgot my trousers at the hotel,” Terfel said. “But what could I do? ... There was one person there who happened to be the same height as me.” Thanks to the loan of the trousers, the concert was able to go ahead.
■ALBANIA
Bullet found in cheekbone
A woman lived for a dozen years with a bullet lodged below her cheekbone without noticing it, news agency ATA reported on Friday. Mrike Rrucaj was sleeping when a bullet flew into her house in 1997, the news agency reported. “I was covered in blood and my husband took me to the emergency [room], where there were many people injured,” Rrucaj recalled of the incident. “But the doctor told me that the bullet came out and cleaned the wound,” ATA quoted the 40-year-old saying. Only recently did Rrucaj begin experiencing headaches, prompting her to seek medical help. After an X-ray showed the bullet in her jaw area, she had surgery to remove it.
■POLAND
‘Gay’ elephant causes stir
A politician has criticized a zoo for acquiring a “gay” elephant named Ninio who prefers male companions and may not procreate, media reported on Friday. “We didn’t pay 37 million zlotys [US$11 million] for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there,” Michal Grzes, a conservative councilor in the city of Poznan, was quoted as saying. “We were supposed to have a herd, but as Ninio prefers male friends over females, how will he produce offspring?” asked Grzes, who is from the right-wing opposition Law and Justice party. The head of the zoo said 10-year-old Ninio may be too young to decide whether he prefers males or females, as elephants only reach sexual maturity at 14.
■RUSSIA
Man kills over lice: report
A karate expert has been charged with beating to death a 61-year-old woman and her son, whom he accused of infecting his wife with lice, an investigator said on Friday. The drunk 26-year-old burst into a room in his hostel on Tuesday and used karate moves to kill the pair, state investigator Eduard Abdullin said by telephone from Kazan, 700km east of Moscow. “He literally beat them to death with his hands and feet,” Abdullin said. “He blamed them for infecting his wife and the entire corridor with lice.” The 58-year-old husband of the dead woman was also badly beaten, but survived.
■UNITED STATES
Prostitution tax blocked
Nevada lawmakers on Thursday defeated a proposed prostitution tax that had won support from brothel owners and working ladies willing to do their part to ease the state’s US$3 billion budget crisis. Nevada, one of only two states that allow some prostitution, is reeling from a deep economic recession that has led to high numbers of foreclosures, dwindling tourism revenues and a gaping budget shortfall. State Senator Bob Coffin, a Democrat, proposed levying a US$5-per-customer service tax on patrons of some 20 legal brothels operating in rural Nevada, all of them outside Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, where prostitution remains outlawed.
■UNITED STATES
Job search hits highway
An unemployed Connecticut woman has taken her job search to the side of a highway. Pasha Stocking of East Hampton has rented a billboard along Interstate 95 in Bridgeport. The sign includes her photo and the message, “Hire Me!” It directs people to her Web site, www.hirepasha.com. Stocking, a 37-year-old single mother, was laid off in June. She says she has tried everything to land a new job in marketing and design, the New Haven Register quoted her as saying. She is also interested in executive assistant positions. She says she’s paying for the ad with money she had been saving to buy a home. She won’t say how much she spent, but the billboard company says on its Web site that a similar sign costs about US$7,000 a month.
■UNITED STATES
‘Zombies’ stalk Harrelson
Actor Woody Harrelson is likening a paparazzi he tussled with at a New York airport to one of the undead zombies he battled in his most recent film. In a statement released on Friday, Harrelson jokingly compares the scrutiny of the paparazzi to his being “constantly under assault by zombies” in his upcoming film Zombieland. Celebrity gossip site TMZ posted a video on Thursday of Harrelson chasing one of their photographers who followed the actor and his 12-year-old daughter through New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Harrelson says he was “still very much in character” when he was met by the photographer, who, he adds, he mistook for a zombie.
■UNITED STATES
Priest drives into crowd
Authorities and witnesses say a priest drove into a group of churchgoers after a Good Friday service near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing an 89-year-old woman and wounding four other people. Madeline Romell’s leg had to be amputated shortly after the Friday afternoon crash in the parking lot of St Maurice Catholic Church in Forest Hills. She was pronounced dead about five hours later. Parishioner Angela Thomas tended to the wounded, including a man pinned under the car. She says the priest told her the accelerator just went. Witnesses say the priest served at St Maurice’s.
■UNITED STATES
Saddam’s AK-47 returns
Federal customs agents say a pearl-handled AK-47 that belonged to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and was in the hands of the US Army is being sent back to Iraq. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the automatic rifle is chrome-plated and has a photo of Hussein near the sight. ICE spokesman Lou Martinez says the return of the rifle was recently requested by the Iraqi government and ICE traced it to Fort Lewis in Washington.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
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