■ROMANIA
Family recovers savings
Newspapers are reporting that a family who hid 40,000 euros (US$57,768) in a pair of old shoes, then threw them away by mistake, has recovered the bulk of its savings. Newspapers Evenimentul Zilei and Gandul reported on Wednesday that a man from the city of Alba Iulia hid the savings in the shoes without telling his wife. The papers say the wife cleaned house before Christmas and threw the shoes away. The papers reported that the couple informed police, who discovered that a woman found the shoes — and bought a 22,000 euro cottage. The family recovered 11,000 euros from the woman and 19,000 euros from the people who sold the house.
■KENYA
China to develop port
China will finance the building of a second port in the east African nation, a transport corridor and the upgrading of a railroad linking Mombasa port and the Ugandan capital, a statement said on Wednesday. The second port is to be built in the coastal town of Lamu, the statement from President Mwai Kibaki’s office said without giving figures. Initially, the port was to be financed by Qatar under a deal to lease swathes of arable land to the Gulf state, but the agreement was shelved. The road could provide a route to export Chinese oil from southern Sudan.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Affairs Web site growing
Britons snowed in by wintry weather have been flocking to an extra-marital dating site in the last 24 hours. Illicit Encounters, which provides a platform for married people to conduct affairs, said on Wednesday it has seen an unexpected increase in visitors over the past 24 hours, and received a record number of new profiles on Wednesday morning. The Web site said most new members are registering from areas worst hit by this week’s extreme weather, including Hampshire, Berkshire and the West Country, and the site has taken on several temporary staff members to cope with the rush. The Web site said it has gained 2,567 new members in the last six days, suggesting that this month will be its busiest month ever.
■EGYPT
Churchgoers gunned down
Three men in a car sprayed automatic gunfire into a crowd of churchgoers in the south as they left a midnight Mass for Coptic Christmas, killing at least seven people in a drive-by shooting, the church bishop and security officials said. The Interior Ministry said the attack on Wednesday just before midnight was suspected as retaliation for the November rape of a Muslim girl by a Christian man in the same town. The statement said witnesses have identified the lead attacker. The attack took place in the town of Nag Hamadi in Qena province, about 64km from the famous ancient ruins of Luxor.
■ICELAND
‘Obligations will be honored’
The country will “honor its obligations” over the more than US$5 billion owed to the UK and the Netherlands that was lost in failed savings banks, President Olafur Grimsson told British television. The parliament had approved a deeply unpopular bill to cover compensation already paid out by the British and Dutch governments to holders of “Icesave” accounts after banks that collapsed in 2008. Grimsson stunned international financial markets and the government on Tuesday by refusing to sign it and forcing a referendum on the issue.
■CUBA
Contractor was spy: Havana
A US contractor detained last month in Cuba for distributing satellite communications equipment worked for US “secret services” and is being investigated, a top Cuban official said on Wednesday. Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon shed no light on what the government plans to do with the prisoner, who President Raul Castro has cited as evidence that the US continues its five-decade long campaign to subvert the island’s communist system. The man, arrested early last month, has never been publicly identified. US diplomats were permitted to visit him on Dec. 28, but they have provided little information. He worked for a Maryland-based company called Development Alternatives Inc that said he was involved in a US government program to strengthen civil society and promote democracy in Cuba. “This is a man hired by a company that contracts for the American secret services and that is the object of investigation,” Alarcon told reporters. He said the contractor was part of a trend toward “privatization of war” by the US, which hires people to be “agents, torturers, spies.” Asked if the prisoner was in good condition, Alarcon said: “I can assure you that he is much better — much, much better — than the victims of those contractors all over the world.”
■UNITED STATES
Sculpture mystery solved
The mystery of a missing 4 tonne sculpture outside a Utah motorcycle shop has been solved. It disappeared over the weekend, and apparently the sculptor took it back. Springville sculptor Jeffrey Decker’s attorney said Decker owns the statue and was legally entitled to remove it, the Daily Herald reported. Lawyer Randall Spencer said on Tuesday a loan agreement made it clear that the sculpture was on loan to Timpanogos Harley-Davidson. The US$100,000 sculpture depicts an old-time speed racer. It was erected two years ago at the store in Lindon. Employees who showed up for work on Saturday found that the statue and the granite block it was mounted on were gone.
■UNITED STATES
Sentence me here: Polanski
Roman Polanski sent a letter from house arrest in Switzerland asking a Los Angeles judge to sentence him in a sex case without making him return to the US, but a ruling was postponed on Wednesday. The notarized letter signed by Polanski on Dec. 26 in Gstaad was filed by his lawyer. It said Polanski understood he had the right to be present at all legal proceedings, but “I request that judgment be pronounced against me in my absence.” Deputy District Attorney David Walgren objected to the request and demanded he “show his face” in court before he was sentenced. The director fled the US in 1978 on the eve of sentencing after pleading guilty to one count of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Espinoza accepted the letter but said he wanted to see legal briefs that state why sentencing Polanski in absentia was appropriate.
■UNITED STATES
Dogs flown to new homes
More than a dozen Chihuahuas from San Francisco are flying in style to new homes in New York. The 15 animals are flying in the main cabin of Virgin America flights scheduled to leave from San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday morning. San Francisco animal control officials say Chihuahuas are in abundance at California animal shelters, but they’re in demand in other states like New York. Experts say pop culture is to blame for the overpopulation of the dogs in California, with fans imitating Chihuahua-toting celebrities like Paris Hilton.
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
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
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