DENMARK
Drag queen wows Eurovision
A bearded drag queen who was initially written off was considered a favorite to win yesterday’s Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen. Conchita Wurst, the hirsute alter ego of Austrian performer Tom Neuwirth, was to represent his homeland with the Bond theme-like ballad Rise Like a Phoenix. In Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, petitioners have demanded that the 25-year-old drag artist be dropped from the competition. “I have very thick skin. It never ceases to amaze me just how much fuss is made over a little facial hair,” Wurst told reporters. However, much like the title of her song, the singer on Friday rose to second place in the odds table after winning over viewers with her performance in Thursday’s semi-final.
CAMBODIA
Ivory found in beans
Cambodian customs on Friday seized more than three tonnes of ivory — the country’s largest-ever haul of elephant tusks — hidden in a container of beans. The haul was made after the container was scanned at the southwestern port of Sihanoukville, said Bun Chiv, deputy head of the port’s customs office. Local media reported that the container was sent from Malaysia. Conservationists have voiced concerns that Cambodia is emerging as a key transit route for African ivory, which often makes its way to wealthy buyers in Vietnam or China. Poaching of elephants has risen sharply in Africa to meet demand in Asia.
ITALY
Ex-PM ally sentence upheld
Rome’s top court on Friday confirmed a seven-year sentence against a key political ally of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi accused of serving as a mediator between Berlusconi and the Sicilian Mafia. Marcello Dell’Utri was arrested in Lebanon last month after police in Italy issued a warrant for his arrest, saying he was a possible flight risk. The high court decision against Dell’Utri concludes a legal case that has lasted for more than two decades. The 72-year-old led the advertising arm of Berlusconi’s media business empire and helped his political debut with the foundation of the Forza Italia (Go Italy) party in the early 1990s. Prosecutors allege that Dell’Utri used his Mafia connections to buy protection for Berlusconi as the media magnate rose to political prominence. On Friday, Berlusconi himself began community service for tax fraud, marking a spectacular fall from grace after years of narrowly avoiding being caught out by the law.
BOSNIA
Storied building reopens
Sarajevo’s City Hall, a building marked by two 20th-century wars, reopened on Friday, restored to its former glory after being destroyed by Serb shelling of the besieged city in 1992.The neo-Moorish building, first opened in 1896, has been restored to mark the centenary of the start of World War I. Converted into the National Library in 1949, it went up in flames in August 1992, destroying almost 2 million books, including many rare volumes reflecting its multicultural life under the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. “Tonight ... we mark the triumph of civilization over barbarism, of light over darkness, of life over death,” said Bakir Izetbegovic, the Muslim Bosniak member of Bosnia’s three-man inter-ethnic presidency. The building is to house the national and university libraries, the city council and a museum about its own history.
CANADA
Extradition to India ordered
The mother and uncle of a woman allegedly killed over her secret marriage to a poor rickshaw driver were ordered on Friday to be extradited to India to face charges. Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu was found strangled and beaten to death in Punjab in 2000. She was 25 years old. Her mother Malkit Sidhu and uncle Surjit Badesha were arrested in 2012 in the Vancouver suburb of Maple Ridge on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the 14-year-old case.
UNITED STATES
Robotic arm approved
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a robotic arm for amputees that can perform multiple, simultaneous movements, a huge advance over the metal hook currently in use. The FDA on Friday said it allowed the sale of the DEKA Arm System after reviewing data, including a Department of Veterans Affairs study in which 90 percent of people who used the device were able to perform complex tasks.
UNITED STATES
Clones cannot be patented
The method for cloning animals such as the famed Dolly the Sheep can be patented, but the resulting animals themselves cannot, a federal appeals court has ruled. Scientists Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell of the Roslin Institute of Edinburgh, Scotland, generated international headlines and intense ethical debates in 1996, when they created Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. Roslin had argued that its clones were distinguishable from their donor mammals, in part because environmental factors could make their shape, size, color and behavior different than their donors’. The Federal Circuit disagreed, saying that Roslin itself had said that such differences were produced “quite independently of any effort of the patentee.”
UNITED STATES
Cold case murder solved
An elderly Missouri woman accused of killing her husband four decades ago and burying his body in an abandoned Wyoming gold mine was found guilty on Thursday of second-degree murder, a court official said. Alice Uden, 75, of Chadwick, Missouri, faces 20 years in prison for the shooting death in Wyoming in 1974 or 1975 of Ronald Holtz, her husband of several months. Allegations about Holtz’s death came to light during a separate probe by the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Cold Case Team into the 1980 disappearance of Virginia Uden and her two young sons, according to court records. Virginia Uden was the ex-wife of Gerald Uden, Alice Uden’s current husband. A witness in that probe said Alice Uden had confessed to shooting Holtz, stuffing his body in a barrel and burying it in an abandoned mine on Wyoming ranchlands, court documents said. In August last year, Wyoming authorities recovered Holtz’ remains in the derelict mine.
UNITED STATES
Polar bears adapted to fat
Scientists unveiled a thorough genetic analysis of the polar bear on Thursday and compared it to its closest cousin, the brown bear. They found that since diverging from brown bears less than 500,000 years ago to become a new species, polar bears have undergone remarkable genetic changes to permit the high-fat diet they need in the frigid Arctic conditions they call home. Multiple genes related to cardiovascular function and fatty acid metabolism have changed radically through mutations to permit a high-fat menu without high risk of heart disease, the researchers said.
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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