AUSTRALIA
Man weds best mate: dog
Twenty-year-old Joe Guiso has surprised friends by getting married — to his pet dog of five years, a golden Labrador called Honey. Guiso said the “marriage” ceremony performed by a friend in the Queensland town of Toowoomba was simply a creative and light-hearted way of bringing together family and friends. “This was just an event for my friends and I to get together,” he said yesterday. “It really was fun. We all dressed up in suits and everything.” However, “you can’t actually marry a dog,” he added. Guiso, who reveled at a stag night at a friend’s house before the event, said while he loves his dog, it is “just Plutonic love.” “There’s nothing sexual,” he said, adding that he hoped no one was offended by the unconventional pooch partnership.
CHINA
Would-be bomber killed
A Tianjin resident apparently angry over a property dispute with a university was killed last week when a crude bomb he intended to use to attack the school’s president blew up, the Global Times reported yesterday. Tianjin Normal University president Gao Yubao (高玉葆) was not injured in the explosion, the report said, citing police sources. The incident occurred on Friday last week, but was only reported after Web users posted news of the bombing on the Internet, the newspaper said. The suspected assailant, who was involved with a dispute with the university over “property issues,” was armed with a “bottle of gasoline” when he came to the school for a meeting with the president, it said. Tianjin police and the university refused to elaborate on the incident, the paper said.
NEPAL
UN official arrives for talks
A senior UN official has arrived for talks with government and former communist rebel leaders as the world body prepares to pull its peace mission from the country. The mission began in 2006 after the Maoist rebels gave up their decade-long rebellion, signed a peace deal and entered mainstream politics. However, thousands of their fighters remain in UN-monitored camps amid disagreement over their future. The UN says it will still leave on Jan. 15. UN Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe said yesterday he would meet both government officials and Maoist leaders during his two-day visit. Nepal is under caretaker administration and locked in a political stalemate with no party able to win the parliamentary majority to form a new government.
SAUDI ARABIA
King scheduled for surgery
King Abdullah was to undergo surgery yesterday to stabilize vertebrae in his spinal column, the kingdom’s royal court said in a statement carried by the state news agency. The king, thought to be around 86 or 87, underwent surgery on his back in New York last month after a blood clot complicated a slipped spinal disc. The kingdom’s health minister said afterward that his health was “very reassuring.” “King Abdullah ... will undergo an operation on the afternoon of December 3 to stabilize some vertebrae in his spinal cord and complete the earlier surgery he underwent,” the court statement said. It did not say where the new surgery would take place, but there has been no official word of the king leaving the US. A frail Crown Prince Sultan, who has health problems of his own, has returned home to govern the world’s largest oil exporter while Abdullah is away for an unspecified period.
GERMANY
Clairvoyant sues client
A clairvoyant sued a client for 7,000 euros (US$9,200) in unpaid fees in the Federal Court of Justice on Thursday on top of 35,000 euros he had already handed over. The fortune-teller’s lawyer told the court in Karlsruhe that she was entitled to charge for her professional services just like a priest exorcising a house with holy water. Her client, who is in his 40s, sought out the fortune-teller’s supernatural services in “life coaching” in 2008 in the hope of winning back his girlfriend and was “drawn into her world like into a sect,” his lawyer said. The judge in his opening remarks signaled doubts that the plaintiff had a leg to stand on, since magic was not a proper basis for a contract. A verdict is not expected for several weeks.
UNITED STATES
Neutron bomb inventor dies
Samuel Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb — a controversial weapon able to kill people while leaving buildings intact — died on Sunday at the age of 89, his son said on Thursday. Even in his final days, Cohen defended the weapon — built after receiving the green light from US president Ronald Reagan during the Cold War and later dismantled — as the most “sane and moral weapon ever devised.” “It’s the only nuclear weapon in history that makes sense in waging war. When the war is over, the world is still intact,” Cohen told the New York Times shortly before his death. Unlike a conventional thermonuclear weapon, which can flatten an entire city, the neutron bomb emits tiny particles that pass through walls, armor or other physical objects to destroy living cells, killing combatants rapidly. US presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter all rejected the device, but Reagan approved it in order to deter a Soviet invasion of Europe, arguing it would halt tanks without flattening cities.
NORWAY
Police dog escapes
Police on Thursday asked the public for help to find Rex, a police dog who had escaped his employers. “This December 2 at 10:00am, a police dog escaped from his master during a training session,” the Oslo police said in a statement. The police left a phone number hoping to be alerted by members of the pubic about the Belgian shepherd’s whereabouts. It did not say if a reward would be given to whoever helps find Rex.
GREECE
Explosion rocks nightclub
Police say a powerful bomb has exploded outside a closed Athens nightclub, causing extensive damage but no injuries. The strong explosion occurred shortly after 10pm on Thursday in the Alimos district and was heard in a suburb 15km away. The blast also caused minor damage to a nearby restaurant, but none of the customers or staff were injured. A police statement said the bomb had been planted outside the nightclub, which was closed at the time. Several similar attacks in recent years against Athens nightclubs and bars have been attributed to criminal extortion groups or gang turf wars.
GUINEA
Conde victory confirmed
The Supreme Court confirmed early yesterday the election victory of opposition leader Alpha Conde, who won 52.52 percent of votes compared to rival Cellou Dalein Diallo’s 47.48 percent. “The candidate of the RPG [Rally of the Guinean People], professor Alpha Conde, is elected president of the Republic,” Magistrate Mamadou Sylla, who presides over the court’s constitutional chamber, announced in front of scores of journalists.
CANADA
Prostitution stay extended
A judge has extended a stay of sex-trade laws as the government prepares an appeal of a court ruling that decriminalized prostitution. Prostitution itself is not illegal in Canada, but communicating for the purposes of prostitution, pimping and operating a brothel were considered criminal acts. In September, an Ontario Superior Court judge struck down laws covering these provisions, essentially decriminalizing prostitution. The judgment was subject to a temporary stay — meaning the laws remained in effect during the appeals process. Ontario Court of Appeal Judge Marc Rosenberg ruled on Thursday the stay will be extended until April 29.
UNITED STATES
Mayor-elect robber busted
A cashier at a drug store in Washington is accused of stealing the mayor-elect’s wallet and using his credit card to buy cigarettes and liquor. Court documents and surveillance video shows 22-year-old Tamika Garris rang up Vincent Gray’s purchases and then picked up his wallet after he left it on the counter. Several hours later, she went to another register and used Gray’s credit card to buy cigarettes for US$13. Later, Garris is accused of going to a liquor store and forging the mayor-elect’s signature for US$25 in liquor. Garris was arrested on Wednesday and charged with credit-card fraud.
CUBA
Death sentence reviewed
The Supreme Court is reportedly reviewing the death sentence of a Salvadorean man convicted of committing acts of terror in 1997. Government Web site, Cubadebate, said the review of Ernesto Cruz Leon’s sentence began on Thursday. It did not give details of the process or a timetable. The government says Cruz Leon confessed to planting bombs in five hotels and a restaurant in a plot to scare away tourists and hurt a prime source of income for the island. He and fellow Salvadoran Otto Rene Rodriguez were sentenced to death in 1999 for the plot.
UNITED STATES
KKK snowman draws ire
A white separatist drew complaints from neighbors and a visit from law enforcement officers after building a snowman shaped like a member of the Ku Klux Klan on his front lawn in Hayden, Idaho. Kootenai County sheriff’s deputies told Mark Eliseuson on Wednesday that he could be charged with a crime because the 3m snowman was holding what appeared to be a noose. Deputies were called by neighbors who were appalled by the pointy-headed snowman with two dark eyes. Hayden for decades earned notoriety for being near the former rural compound of the Aryan Nations. Eliseuson could have been charged with creating a public nuisance.
UNITED STATES
Prisons try new toilet paper
Iowa prisons could soon be stocking prison-made toilet paper to save taxpayers money and provide jobs to inmates. The Des Moines Register newspaper reported on Thursday that inmates at two Iowa prisons are testing a single-ply tissue processed at a Missouri prison. Roger Baysden, director of Iowa Prison Industries, says Iowa inmates could start processing their own toilet paper next year — if the state legislature supports the idea. Iowa prisons use about 900,000 rolls of toilet paper annually. Processing it in-house would save about US$100,000 a year and would create jobs for about 50 inmates. Al Reiter, the associate warden at the prison in Anamosa, Iowa, says the paper is not fluffy, but the state says it’s an acceptable roll.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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