RUSSIA
Putin names dog Buffy
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has named his new dog Buffy, but there was no sign in a walkabout for the cameras on Thursday that the Bulgarian shepherd had any vampire-slaying tricks. In fact, Putin said the dog “can’t do a thing,” although the caramel-and-white-patched puppy contradicted Putin by obediently sitting on his command. A five-year-old boy won a competition to find a name for the dog, which Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov gave to Putin in Sofia last month. “It’s soft, kind and sounds nice,” Putin told the boy, Dima.
RUSSIA
Drivers need ethics courses
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has ordered drivers of vehicles with blue flashing lights to undergo a course in “professional ethics” in an attempt to dampen public anger over their brutish behavior on the roads. According to new rules drawn up at Putin’s request, all drivers who use migalki — as the lights are known —- will have to pass the training, starting Jan. 1. Migalki are fixed on police, government and emergency vehicles, but are also available to a large number of middle-ranking state officials. Businessmen and criminals acquire licenses for the lights illegally, paying bribes of up to US$200,000 per year. There has been rising public anger over the impunity afforded to drivers with migalki, especially since a series of violent attacks on people who did not give way to vehicles with migalki.
UNITED STATES
‘Bomb factory’ blown up
A California house containing a “bomb factory” of explosives went up in smoke on Thursday in an operation controlled by fire services, who said it was the safest way to destroy it. Occasional blasts could be heard as flames leapt high into the air, after a bomb-arson team ignited the building in Escondido. Serbian George Djura Jakubec, 54, who lived in the house for about four years, pleaded not guilty on Monday to eight charges, including making and possessing destructive devices, as well as robbing three banks.
MEXICO
Alleged hitman a US citizen
US embassy spokesman Alexander Featherstone says US authorities have confirmed that an alleged 14-year-old drug gang killer and his 19-year-old sister are US citizens. A birth certificate shows the boy was born in San Diego. He is a suspect in at least four deaths. Featherstone says embassy officials have visited both in prison. They were arrested last week as they tried to board a plane to Tijuana at an airport near Cuernavaca.
NETHERLANDS
Fossil is hyena dung
Researchers say a curled-up brown fossil dredged up off the coast is an ancient piece of hyena dung, the first found in the North Sea dating back to the Late Pleistocene era, 12,000-100,000 years ago. Jelle Reumer, director of the Rotterdam Natural History museum called the prehistoric piece of poop “a beauty.” It was found during work to expand Rotterdam’s port and went on display on Thursday.
UNITED STATES
Dead Door pardoned
Rock and roll icon Jim Morrison was pardoned on Thursday by the Florida clemency board for exposing himself at a raucous concert in 1969, an act the late singer and many concertgoers denied ever took place. Florida Governor Charlie Crist and the board voted unanimously to pardon The Doors’ lead singer, who was appealing his conviction when he died in Paris in 1971 at age 27.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
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