JAPAN
Renho apologizes for shoot
Renho, a 42-year-old former TV presenter who is state minister for administrative reform, apologized yesterday after a photo shoot she did in the parliament building for Vogue Nippon drew fire from opposition parties. The magazine went on sale roughly a week ago but only became an issue on Thursday, when a weekly magazine took it up. Opposition lawmakers promptly denounced the shoot, which accompanied an interview with Renho on her political beliefs and juggling of job and motherhood, as “inappropriate.” Renho, who is half--Taiwanese and goes by only one name, stressed to a news conference that she had gone through proper channels to set up the photo session, which took place in August when Parliament was in recess.
SOUTH KOREA
Happiness guru kills self
A television personality known as the “happiness preacher” and her husband have been found dead in a motel room in an apparent joint suicide, police said yesterday. A motel employee in the town of Goyang north of Seoul found Choi Yoon-hee, 63, and her 72-year-old husband hanging in their room on Thursday night, Choi wrote about 20 books about happiness and hope and earned her nickname for inspiring people to live happily through her TV programs. South Korea has the world’s highest suicide rate for women among major advanced nations, according to official data, and the second-highest rate for men after Japan.
MALAYSIA
Monkey steals, kills baby
A newborn baby died after being snatched by a monkey from her family’s living room in Negri Sembilan State on Wednesday, said a Wildlife Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol. The body of the four-day-old girl was found outside the family’s home. The monkey took the infant to the roof of the single-story house and then dropped her after possibly mistaking her for food, the official said. The girl, who had been left alone in the room, had bite marks on her neck and face. Wildlife authorities fatally shot the monkey, which remained near the house and might have been attracted by a female pet monkey the family kept in a cage, the official said. Malaysian authorities have been battling a booming macaque population in cities where they sometimes attack people and raid food supplies. Plans to catch and export them for food and scientific research were scrapped in 2008 after officials discovered most were riddled with disease.
AUSTRALIA
Whale rider let off
A teenager who climbed on the back of a whale has been let off with a warning, officials said yesterday. Environment and conservation officers tracked down the boy after a witness photographed him clambering on the whale at a beach in the country’s west. “Although he acted foolishly, we believe that there was no malicious intent to harm the whale,” said officer Mike Shephard. “We believe he now realizes that he had put himself in serious danger by approaching the whale.” Harassing protected species carries a maximum fine of A$10,000 (US$9,800) and boats, surfers and kayakers must stay 100m away from whales for their own safety, under environmental laws. “In this instance, the teenager was lucky to have escaped injury but it could have easily ended tragically had he been in the way of a tail slap or breaching action,” Shephard said.
RUSSIA
Putin given racy calendar
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin received an unusual birthday gift on Thursday from 12 female journalism students, who posed in lacy underwear and used sexual innuendo to create a calendar dedicated to the macho leader. “How about a third time?” asks Miss February, hinting at a third presidential term for Putin, who served two terms as president from 2000 to 2008 and is eligible to run again in 2012. “You put out the forest fires, but I’m still burning,” says Miss March, referring to Putin’s piloting of a firefighting plane during the summer’s devastating wildfires. The calendar created for Putin’s 58th birthday takes its inspiration from a Kremlin-driven campaign to boost Putin’s popularity and cultivate his alpha-male image.
AUSTRIA
Dancer fired over nude pics
The ballet company of the Vienna Opera has fired one of its dancers over a series of risque pictures that appeared in a magazine, the opera’s director confirmed on Thursday. Karina Sarkissova had already received a warning for another series of nude photos, Dominique Meyer said. “She was fired on Aug. 23 after this new publication,” Meyer said. “The ballet corps has been shocked by these new images which appeared in the sex section,” he added. In comments to the Austrian media, Sarkissova said she felt discriminated against.
ITALY
Mafia boss found in closet
One of Sicily’s most dangerous mafia bosses was arrested on Thursday after 15 years on the run when police found him hiding in a secret space behind a wardrobe in his wife’s luxury apartment, officials said. Francesco Di Fresco was arrested after police became suspicious that his wife had hardly left the house in the last few months, a spokeswoman for the police force in the Sicilian capital Palermo said. During a previous search on Monday, investigators had found the table set for three while only his wife and his daughter could be seen in the apartment. It was only when police returned with a detailed plan of the apartment that they discovered a secret closet, measuring 120cm by 50cm, hidden behind a large wardrobe that could be moved.
ROMANIA
Ex-champ backs Sarkozy
Former tennis champion Ilie Nastase is under investigation over remarks about the country’s Roma minority, local media reported on Thursday. The National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD) “is going to examine Mr Nastase’s comments to see if it is a question of inciting racial hatred or trying to create an atmosphere that is hostile, degrading and offensive toward the Roma community,” CNCD head Csaba Astalosz said. The CNCD is looking into comments published in the newspaper ProSport on Thursday in which Nastase is reported to have said if he were the president he would “send the gypsies [Roma] to Harghita,” referring to a department in central Romania where the majority of people are of Hungarian origin. As for France’s recent toughening of its policy on Roma migrants, Nastase said French President Nicolas Sarkozy “was right about the gypsies.”
UNITED STATES
FBI seizes Lennon’s prints
A set of John Lennon’s fingerprints being auctioned for at least US$100,000 was seized by the FBI on Wednesday 30 years after the singer’s death. The 1976 signed application for Lennon’s US citizenship was one of the hallmarks of about 850 celebrity items in an online sale timed around Lennon’s 70th birthday last Saturday. The fingerprint card was being shown to media at a midtown New York store early on Wednesday in an auction preview of more than 90 Beatles items when the FBI faxed a subpoena there and took the card. Lennon was born in Liverpool, England and had been investigated by the FBI in the early 1970s for anti-war activity. Peter Siegel, co-founder of Gotta Have It, the shop selling the fingerprint card, said he was bewildered by the FBI action and interest during the week also by Homeland Security. “This great icon has been deceased for 30 years,” he said. “This is not a national threat.”
BRAZIL
Police fired after robberies
Dozens of armed drug gang members have been setting up roadblocks and robbing drivers en masse in recent days in the Rio de Janeiro area, prompting the firing of 19 police battalion leaders in the city that will host the 2016 Olympics. Residents were yanked from their cars in the middle of the streets in about 10 such robberies in the past week, including three since Tuesday. Gunmen made off with vehicles and took some victims hostage as they battled police with weapons and grenades. No serious injuries have been linked to the robberies so far, although Globo TV’s Web site said on Thursday that a 13-year-old boy was killed in the crossfire of a gunbattle during a police operation to recover a stolen vehicle in a shantytown. It was not known if he was killed by police or gang members. A spokesman with Rio state’s public safety department said the 19 police commanders were replaced late on Wednesday for failing to improve security.
UNITED STATES
Woman attacks ‘erotic’ art
A piece of artwork denounced as obscene by church members and allegedly ripped up by a Montana woman using a crowbar won’t be returned to display because of safety concerns, city officials said on Thursday. Kathleen Folden, 56, of Montana, was arrested on Wednesday on a charge of criminal mischief. Witnesses told police that she used a crowbar to smash glass shielding the print at the Loveland Museum Gallery and then tore part of it up. Folden, a truck driver, told police that she drove from Montana and bought a crowbar in Loveland before going to the museum to destroy the artwork, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by the Coloradoan newspaper in Fort Collins. Police said the damaged part includes what critics say was a depiction of Jesus Christ engaged in a sex act.
UNITED STATES
Boy helps out drivers
St Louis County highway officials are crediting a six-year-old boy with giving them some direction on making their road signs more accurate. KTVI-TV says primary school student David Hindes apparently noticed that a sign in the St Louis suburb of Manchester told motorists that a single curve was ahead rather than the multiple twists and turns that actually unfold. The boy repeatedly complained to his parents about the discrepancy until his dad suggested he take action. The boy wrote a letter to highway administrators who called him the next day to tell him he’s right. The sign has since been updated.
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
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
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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