POLAND
EU warns Ukraine, Belarus
European leaders are telling Ukraine, Belarus and other countries to the EU’s east that they must respect democracy if they want deeper integration with the bloc. The statement was made yesterday at an EU summit in Warsaw on the Eastern Partnership. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said on Twitter that the summit was sending a “clear signal on respect for democracy and human rights as part of EU integration. Kiev must take note.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman tweeted that she was meeting with Belarussian rights activists and that authoritarian Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko “must free all political prisoners.”
CAMEROON
Gunmen blockade bridge
Gunmen wearing military uniforms and carrying signs opposing the country’s longtime ruler blockaded a major bridge, shooting at police for several hours in an attack less than two weeks before the presidential election. Relative calm returned to Douala on Thursday after deployed troops arrested at least nine of the gunmen who were calling for President Paul Biya to quit, a military official said on condition of anonymity. Biya, who has been in power since 1982, faces 22 challengers in the Oct. 9 poll.
GERMANY
Namibian skulls returned
The country faced up to a bloody chapter of its colonial past yesterday when it handed back 20 skulls spirited away after what many historians call the first genocide of the 20th century. A delegation of 55 Namibians was in Berlin to attend the solemn ceremony to receive the remains that they hope will be just a first step toward a greater reckoning with the country’s brief but brutal African adventure a century ago. The skulls are among an estimated 300 taken to the country after a massacre of indigenous Namibians at the start of the previous century during an anti-colonial uprising in what was then called South-West Africa, which Berlin ruled from 1884 to 1915. Up to 80,000 Hereros lived in Namibia when the uprising began. Afterward, only 15,000 were left.
UNITED KINGDOM
Seventh man charged in plot
Prosecutors said they had authorized police to charge a seventh man over an alleged suicide bombing plot. The Crown Prosecution Service said that 20-year-old Mujahid Hussain was expected to appear at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday on charges of terrorist fund-raising and failure to disclose information about a terrorist act. Six other men already have been charged after being arrested in Birmingham earlier this month in what police described as a major operation. Four are charged with planning a terror attack, with three accused of intending to become suicide bombers. Security officials said the plot was in its early stages and the targets were not immediately known.
SPAIN
Woman killed, baby saved
A gunman walked into a Catholic church and killed a pregnant woman on Thursday, then committed suicide, but emergency crews performed a Caesarean section on the woman inside the church and saved the baby, a police official said. Another woman sitting near the victim was wounded by a stray bullet in the shooting in an upper-middle class neighborhood of Madrid, the National Police official said. Neither the man nor the woman were named and the motive for the attack was not immediately known, but the newspaper El Mundo said the man used to be the woman’s boyfriend.
MEXICO
Married — for now
Mexico City lawmakers want to help newlyweds avoid the hassle of divorce by giving them an easy exit strategy: temporary marriage licenses. Leftists in the city’s assembly — who have already riled conservatives by legalizing gay marriage — proposed a reform to the civil code this week that would allow couples to decide on the length of their commitment, opting out of a lifetime. The minimum marriage contract would be for two years and could be renewed if the couple stays happy. The contracts would include provisions on how children and property would be handled if the couple splits. Assemblyman Leonel Luna said the proposed law was gaining support and he expected a vote by the end of this year.
UNITED STATES
Man survives car plunge
A man was found alive days after his car plunged 60m down a ravine off a winding mountain road in southern California, his daughter said on Thursday. Family members found 67-year-old David Lavau at the scene of the crash off Lake Hughes Road in the Angeles National Forest after conducting their own search, Los Angeles County Fire Department Captain Mark Savage said. Lavau’s daughter, Lisa Lavau, told KCAL-TV her family had not heard from her father for several days and reported him missing to police. Authorities told Lisa that her father had used his debit card at a nearby grocery store, so she decided to conduct a search of the area along with her daughter and brother.
BRAZIL
Bundchen’s ad shocks
Supermodel Gisele Bundchen’s lingerie campaign for the label Hope has appalled government officials in her homeland and led to calls for the “sexist” and “stereotyped” adverts to be axed. The campaign includes several TV spots, one of which features a scantily clad Bundchen, trying to appease her husband after committing a series of marital blunders. Officials from the women’s secretariat in Brasilia failed to see the funny side, demanding it be pulled from TV schedules. “The campaign promotes the misguided stereotype of a woman as a sexual object of her husband and ignores the major advances we have achieved in deconstructing sexist practices and thinking,” the secretariat said this week in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Two-faced cat makes record
Frank and Louie the cat was born with two faces, two mouths, two noses and three eyes. Now, 12 years after Marty Stevens rescued him from being euthanized because of his condition, the exotic blue-eyed ragdoll cat is not only thriving, but has also made it into the 2012 edition of Guinness World Records as the longest-surviving member of a group known as Janus cats, named for the Roman god with two faces.
UNITED STATES
Bed bug killers gather
The nation’s obsession with bed bugs has led to a rush of entrepreneurs seeking profit from exterminating them, and about 75 firms gathered this week at the second annual Bed Bug University in Chicago in hopes of launching the perfect bed bug killer. A study this year by University of Kentucky researchers and the National Pest Management Association showed 80 percent of surveyed pest control companies had treated hotels for bed bugs within a year, up from 67 percent a year ago. Companies attending the conference showed search and destroy methods ranging from bug-sniffing dogs to vacuum-like machines that spout carbon dioxide to freeze the bugs.
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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