UNITED KINGDOM
Driver hits police station
Police arrested a man on suspicion of drunk driving on Friday after he crashed his car into their police station. Officers at Frodsham police station near Liverpool did not have to go far to find their suspect after the car was left with its front end resting on the outside wall. The suspect is thought to have lost control of the vehicle in a neighboring parking lot at about 12:20am. The local Cheshire Police force tweeted about the incident. “Man arrested for #drinkdrive after losing control on a car park and crashing into Frodsham police station. #epicfail,” a first tweet said. It was followed by: “Male in Frodsham kindly handed himself in for drink driving #drivenintostationwall.” A 49-year-old man was arrested and released on bail.
GERMANY
Team avoid flock of models
Sharing a hotel with 400 Russian models apparently is not every athlete’s idea of a good time. Third-division soccer team Duisburg said they changed the hotel booking for their winter training camp in Turkey next week after learning that the hotel is hosting a pageant of Russian models. Duisburg said that the club want to “prepare calmly” for their matches and the original hotel might also have been overbooked. The team will be staying at another hotel in the Mediterranean city of Antalya’s Lara District from Thursday to Jan. 16.
LITHUANIA
Obsolete note finds niche
The nation abandoned the litas on Thursday when it became the 19th nation to adopt the euro, but at least one of the old bills is still in vogue, a gay activist said on Friday. Vladimir Simonko, cofounder of the Lithuanian Gay League, told reporters that the 10 litas note — which features two pilots in uniform — was being traded in gay circles in Western Europe for as much as ￡10 (US$15.30), which is about four times its value at the current exchange rate. For Simonko, the note created interest among foreigners “because it shows two handsome men in uniform. One finds oneself wondering why they are two and what their relationship is.” The aviators who lent their faces to the note are Steponas Darius and Stasys Girenas. In 1933, the pair attempted a nonstop flight from New York to Kaunas, Lithuania. They crashed 37 hours into the flight, after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and are revered in Lithuania as heroes.
UNITED KINGDOM
Applicants eager to get shot
About 10,000 people from around the world have applied to be shot at as a paintball bullet tester, the British company posting the job advert said on Friday. UKPaintball, which has more than 60 paintballing venues in Britain, said it was stunned by the response to its search for a “human bullet impact tester.” Candidates from as far away as the US, Canada and India have applied for the ￡40,000-a-year job testing the impact of paintballs. “This incredible response is the last thing we expected when we posted the ad,” UKPaintball owner Justin Toohig said. “We couldn’t have predicted that so many people in the UK and beyond would want to get shot for a living.” Applicants have cited a range of different skills to prove they were up to the job, including one who said he was fat, so would be easier to hit, he said. “We’ve had individuals hoping to secure the job including an ex-army soldier boasting previous experience of guns and weaponry ... and an ex-magician’s assistant who was once almost shot for real in an illusion that went horribly wrong,” Toohig added. “It’s going to be a real struggle attempting to whittle down the thousands of applicants to just one.”
EL SALVADOR
Homicides increase 57%
Authorities say homicides increased 57 percent in El Salvador last year to 3,912. National Police Commissioner Mauricio Ramirez Landaverde on Friday said that there were 412 killings last month, an average of 13 a day. That was nearly double from the same month in 2013. Ramirez Landaverde attributed the sharp increase to the dissolution of a pact among the country’s criminal gangs. In March 2012, leaders of the gangs Mara Salvatrucha MS13 and Barrio 18 agreed to reduce violence, and homicides fell to an average of five a day. The gangs are fighting over territories where they extort businesses and traffic drugs. In 2013, El Salvador reported 2,492 homicides, while it listed 2,543 in 2012.
UNITED STATES
Girl survives plane crash
A seven-year-old girl survived a plane crash that killed four people, walking away from the wreckage disoriented and reporting the crash to a local resident, authorities said. The small Piper PA-34 reported engine trouble and lost contact with air traffic controllers as it was flying over the southwestern part of Kentucky about 5:55pm on Friday, authorities said. About half an hour later, a Lyon County resident called police and told dispatchers that a girl had walked to his home and said she had been involved in a plane crash, Sergeant Dean Patterson of said. About two hours later, authorities found the crash site in a heavily wooded area near Kentucky lake. They discovered four bodies, including the pilot and the three passengers.
UNITED STATES
No new charges for gunman
The man who shot a presidential spokesman during a 1981 assassination attempt on former president Ronald Reagan will not face new murder charges, even though the victim’s death last year was ruled a homicide, prosecutors said on Friday. Prosecutors had weighed whether to charge John Hinckley in the death of White House press secretary James Brady, who died in August aged 73, more than three decades after he was shot in the head. Brady had been gravely wounded and was left wheelchair-bound and with brain damage. Hinckley, who after the shooting said he was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster and was charged with attempted assassination of the president and other crimes, was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Federal prosecutors said they could not charge Hinckley because a jury had already found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Further, before 1987, Washington courts followed a “year-and-a-day rule,” where a homicide prosecution could only be brought if a victim died in that time frame after an attack.
UNITED STATES
Man unstuck from zipline
A man stuck dangling from a zipline about 24m above a Las Vegas street for nearly an hour is back on the ground after being rescued by firefighters. Las Vegas Fire and Rescue spokesman Timothy Szymanski said firefighters rescued the rider from SlotZilla at the downtown Fremont Street Experience shortly after 3pm on Friday. He said a passer-by called at 2:34pm to report a man stuck above Fourth Street since about 2pm. He said SlotZilla workers stayed with the man while he was suspended and tried to bring him down, but eventually asked firefighters to reach him. The US$40 “zoomline” rides involve flying over Fremont Street superhero-style, facing the ground. Fremont Street Experience spokeswoman Lauren Silverstein said a team is investigating the incident.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
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