NEW ZEALAND
Man inflated ‘like a balloon’
A man who inflated “like a balloon” when he fell buttocks-first onto a compressed air nozzle was described as lucky to be alive yesterday. Steven McCormack was working on his truck in Opotiki on North Island on Saturday when he slipped between the cab and the trailer, dislodging the compressed air hose that feeds the brakes, the Whakatane Beacon reported. It said the brass fitting that the hose had been attached to pierced McCormack’s left buttock in the fall, sending compressed air rushing into his body. The 48-year-old said he felt as if he was going to explode and began to scream as his neck, feet and hands swelled up. “I was blowing up like a football ... it felt like I had the bends, like in diving. I had no choice but just to lay there, blowing up like a balloon,” he told the newspaper. Workmates rushed to McCormack’s aid, turning off the compressed air and packing ice around his swollen neck. Ambulance officers removed the brass nozzle from his buttock and rushed him to Whakatane Hospital, where a surgeon treated the injury and drained one of his lungs, which had filled with fluid during the ordeal. McCormack said doctors later told him that the air separated fat from muscle and they were surprised his skin did not burst. Now recuperating in Whakatane Hospital, he told the Beacon his skin felt “like a pork roast,” hard and crackly on the outside, but soft underneath. A hospital spokeswoman confirmed details of the freak accident, which she said could have killed McCormack. “It’s fair to say he’s lucky to be alive, it was a potentially life-threatening situation,” she said.
INDIA
IMF candidate is too old
India’s top candidate for the vacant managing director role at the IMF has been ruled out because he is too old, New Delhi’s representative at the lender has said. IMF executive director Arvind Virmani said senior Indian economic adviser Montek Singh Ahluwalia was a fine candidate, but he was over the IMF’s age limit of 65. “He has excellent qualifications, but will not qualify because of the current bylaw of the IMF which states the candidate must be 65 years of age or below,” Virmani told India’s NDTV news channel in a broadcast aired yesterday.
SOUTH KOREA
Lawmaker found guilty
A lawmaker who allegedly said the country’s female broadcasters should be willing to offer sex to advance their careers was yesterday given a six-month suspended jail sentence. A group of female TV announcers had filed a lawsuit alleging that Kang Yong-seok, 41, was guilty of defamation, a criminal offense, after making lewd remarks. Kang reportedly made the comments while drinking with a group of female students last year. “TV broadcasters have to serve [their seniors] with all they have. Do you think you yourself can do that?” he reportedly asked one student, who expressed her wish to become a broadcaster.
CHINA
Mongolians in protest march
A large group of ethnic Mongolians protested in front of a government building in the north of the country yesterday, angered by inaction over the death of a herder, a rights group said, in a rare instance of unrest by the minority ethnic group. The New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center said almost 2,000 students marched in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia. They went “to urge the Chinese authorities to respect the rights and dignity of Mongolian herders” in Inner Mongolia, the group said in an e-mailed statement.
POLAND
Abusive nun sentenced
An appeals court in Warsaw is sending a Catholic nun to prison after she was convicted of beating children at a home for troubled youths and allowing one resident to be sexually abused by other children. A lower court had given the nun a suspended two-year sentence, but the three-judge appeals court on Tuesday increased that to two years in prison at the request of prosecutors. The nun, identified only as Agnieszka F, headed the home run by God’s Mercy Convent in the southern city of Zabrze. The appeals court also upheld an eight-month suspended prison term the lower court had given another nun, identified only as Bogumila L, who was convicted of verbally insulting children at the center.
CANADA
Women like bad boys: study
Women find happy men less sexually attractive than those with expressions that show pride or hint that they have done wrong and know it, researchers in Vancouver have found. The study published online on Tuesday in the American Psychological Association journal Emotion showed pictures of the opposite sex to both men and women. Participants were then asked for their initial reactions on sexual attractiveness based on the expressions they saw. “Men who smile were considered fairly unattractive by women,” said Jessica Tracy, a University of British Columbia psychology professor who directed the study. “So to the extent that men think that smiling is a good thing to do if they want to be found sexually attractive, our findings suggest that’s not the case,” Tracy said. The men’s reaction was just the opposite. The researchers admit they are not sure why men and women reacted differently to smiles. In a man, a big smile may make him appear too feminine or more desperate for sex. The study also adds fuel to the notion that women are attracted to bad boys. A slightly downcast expression of shame is an appeasement gesture that hints at a need for sympathy.
UNITED KINGDOM
Huhne runs into car trouble
Police on Tuesday interviewed Energy Secretary Chris Huhne over career-threatening allegations he dishonestly avoided a driving ban. Huhne, one of the junior coalition partner Liberal Democrats’ most senior politicians, denies allegations made by his estranged wife that he pressured another person to take the blame for a speeding offense in 2003. Such a ploy would be a criminal offense. Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative, and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg both gave Huhne their backing after his denial of wrongdoing earlier this month.
ITALY
Pope shuts dance cathedral
Pope Benedict XVI has shut down a famous community in Rome that organized dances by a former nightclub dancer nun and hosted VIPs like Madonna, earning the disfavor of the Vatican. The closure of the monastery of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which holds some of the church’s most prized relics, was reported by dailies La Stampa and Il Foglio. The reports said the community of Cistercian monks based at the church for more than five centuries was being transferred to other churches nationwide. Contacted by reporters, the Vatican did not deny the reports. The basilica had become a hub for the “Friends of Santa Croce,” an aristocratic group, and had been criticized for some unorthodox practices, including dances in which nuns pranced around the altar.
UNITED STATES
Bayer Advanced released
German drugmaker Bayer has released a souped-up version of Bayer aspirin that it says relieves pain twice as fast as its namesake brand. Bayer Advanced Aspirin was released over the weekend in 500 Wal-Mart stores and is rolling out in retail chains nationwide. The product uses a new technology that chops aspirin into particles that are 10 times smaller than the original, allowing it to be absorbed more quickly. The company says clinical studies on patients with dental pain show the drug starts working twice as quickly as the original Bayer aspirin, which was first released in 1899.
GUYANA
American jailed for drugs
A US man who entered the country on May 13 to collect a consignment of cocaine was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in jail. Kirwin Dimmott, 29, of Boston, Massachusetts, confessed to Lower Court Chief Judge Priya Beharry that he made a mistake traveling to attempt to smuggle 2.2kg of cocaine in false sides of his suitcase. The father of two children was caught on May 22 at Cheddi Jagan International Airport. Appearing without a lawyer, Dimmott asked the judge to be lenient with him.
UNITED STATES
Obama’s team seeks sofas
President Barack Obama’s deputy campaign manager on Tuesday sent an e-mail asking supporters for an unusual favor — can you spare a couch for our volunteers to sleep on? As Obama’s campaign for next year’s presidential election heats up, volunteers from around the country are joining local offices and need places to stay, the message from deputy campaign manager Julianna Smoot said. “If you have an extra bedroom or a foldout couch, would you be willing to host a staffer or volunteer for a few days or a couple of weeks?” the message read. The campaign would not release a head count, but the number of staff is expected to be larger than it was in 2008.
COLOMBIA
Reparations law passed
Congress passed a victims’ law on Tuesday that opened the door for reparations for victims and aims to return millions of acres of land to people displaced by a decades-old war. President Juan Manuel Santos called the law “historic” in a message on Twitter. A key aspect of the law is giving back land — estimates run as high as 4 million hectares — taken from peasants by heavily-armed paramilitaries, drug lords and ranchers. “Lasting peace in the country, as has always been said, passes through the meridian of a solution to land disputes. Today it has taken a decisive step in this direction,” Agriculture Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo said in a statement. Experts say the law will face challenges such as institutional deficiencies and the threat of violence against displaced people who want to return to land stolen from them. At least 11 leaders of restitution movements have been killed in the last year and a half, rights groups say.
UNITED STATES
Florida bad for walkers
Several major Florida cities — Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami-Fort Lauderdale — took the top spots on a list of the most dangerous metropolitan areas for pedestrians published by a transportation reform group on Tuesday. The Dangerous by Design report produced by Transportation for America ranked cities with populations of more than a million people in terms of the danger to pedestrians relative to the amount of walking in a given area. Riverside, California; Las Vegas, Memphis, Phoenix, Houston and Dallas, in that order, filled out the Top 10.
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
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
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