BELGIUM
Rail workers strike
Trade unions in Brussels and the south of the country have begun a 48-hour rail strike which is set to disrupt national traffic and international connections to Paris and London. Workers began walking off the job late on Tuesday to protest planned government reforms aimed at streamlining services and making the sector more efficient. The unions say the government is imposing austerity measures that will cost thousands of jobs and cut services.
UNITED STATES
Paul Bley dies, aged 83
Canadian avant-garde jazz pianist Paul Bley has died at his Florida home. He was 83. The publicist for Bley’s record label, ECM Records, on Tuesday said that Bley died of natural causes on Sunday at his Stuart home. Born on Nov. 10, 1932, in Montreal, Bley began studying music at the age of five and formed his first band at the age of 13. He studied at Julliard in the 1950s, and in the 1960s he pioneered using electric pianos and synthesizers.
UNITED STATES
Hacker gets time served
A Latvian man was spared further prison time on Tuesday for what US prosecutors said was his crucial role in a conspiracy to distribute a computer virus that infected more than 1 million computers worldwide. Deniss Calovskis, 30, spent 21 months in prison before he pleaded guilty in September and admitted to having written some of the computer code for the so-called Gozi virus. At the time, prosecutors sought additional time in custody. US District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan called Calovskis’ conduct serious, but said “the goal of punishment has been served already.”
FRANCE
Men jailed over ‘rape’ video
Two young men have been arrested, charged and jailed after shocked Internet users watched a video of a suspected rape and alerted police. Lawyer Francoise Nogues said the two men, aged 18 and 22, were on Tuesday charged with “aggravated gang rape” of an 18-year-old girl and “diffusion of pornographic images.” Perpignan prosecutor Achille Kiriakides said in a statement that the young men were jailed. The prosecutor said the girl knew both men and that a barrage of analyses would help determine if the sexual encounters were “completely and freely” accepted.
SPAIN
Mas ‘ready’ to call elections
Catalonia’s outgoing separatist leader Artur Mas on Tuesday said that he was reluctantly “ready” to call fresh parliamentary elections, with the region’s secessionist faction unable to agree on who should lead a new government after winning September’s polls. “I’m ready — against my will, this is not what we wanted and it is not what I want — but I’m ready to sign the decree to convene elections,” he told reporters in Barcelona as Saturday’s deadline to form a new government drew dangerously close.
MEXICO
Mota investigation deepens
The investigation into the murder of Temixco Mayor Gisela Mota has led police to a clandestine grave containing five other bodies, authorities said on Tuesday. The burial spot was found in the community of Alpuyeca following the killing of Mota on Saturday, just one day after taking office. Three people — a 32-year-old woman, an 18-year-old man and a 17-year-old boy — who were detained right after the mayor’s murder were formally charged with homicide on Tuesday.
HONG KONG
Bird flu death in China
A woman in Shenzhen died last week after being infected with the highly contagious H5N6 bird flu virus, days after she was admitted to hospital, the Hong Kong Department of Health said yesterday. The department said it was also notified by the Guangdong Province health authorities on Friday last week that a 40-year-old woman from Zhaoqing was infected with H5N6 and was in a critical condition. It said health-check systems were in place at border crossings with Shenzhen and the airport.
PHILIPPINES
Demand for compensation
Elderly women forced to work as comfort women by Japanese troops during World War II are calling for compensation from Tokyo after it pledged US$8.3 million for South Korean women forced into Japanese military-run brothels during the war. Their lawyers yesterday said that they are also exploring the possibility of filing cases with UN bodies and holding President Benigno Aquino III liable for allegedly failing to support the case of the women against Japan. “Is there a difference in the rape of a South Korean and a Filipino woman?” said Harry Roque, one of the lawyers, said at a news conference in Manila. “The answer is there should be none, because rape is a crime against women and is prohibited by international humanitarian law and is recognized as an international crime.”
AUSTRALIA
Lizards learn to avoid toads
Scientists yesterday said they had devised an “innovative method of conservation” through feeding giant monitor lizards small cane toads so they will not be killed by adult cane toads, which are so toxic they can kill predators that try to eat them. Researchers from the University of Sydney said they were able to teach free-ranging goannas in the Kimberley wilderness to avoid eating the toxic toads about to invade the remote floodplain. They offered small, non-lethal cane toads to the wild yellow-spotted monitors with further trials confirming “just one or two toad meals were enough to convince a goanna not to eat another toad.” “After training, giant monitor lizards, known as goannas, survived when the toads arrived, whereas untrained lizards were immediately killed,” lead researcher Georgia Ward-Fear said of the study, which was published in the Biology Letters journal.
INDIA
Actress shames pirate
Bollywood star Kriti Sanon posted a series of angry tweets after a passenger sitting next to her on a flight brazenly started watching a pirated copy of one of her films. Sanon was travelling to New Delhi last week when the man seated beside her started using an iPhone projector to watch Hindi blockbuster Dilwale. The movie had only been released 10 days before. The tweets were accompanied by a picture of the passenger, who appeared to be enjoying the movie.
UNITED NATIONS
New CAR abuse claims
The UN peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic (CAR) on Tuesday said it was investigating new allegations of sexual abuse of minors by peacekeepers in the nation. It said that staff of the UN Children’s Fund based in Bangui have met with four of the alleged child victims. The statement said the head of mission was discussing with the human rights office in Geneva ways of combating sexual abuse, including through the formation of a police brigade that would identify perpetrators and deter such abuse.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
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