COSTA RICA
Ranked No. 1 for balance
A London-based think tank has placed Costa Rica at the top of its “Happy Planet Index” for the third time. This does not mean that Costa Rica is home to the world’s cheeriest people, but rather that the country has reached a balance where its citizens lead relatively long and satisfied lives without an outsized impact on the planet. Because the index’s formula divides measures of wellbeing by each country’s ecological footprint, none of the world’s most developed countries figure in the top 10. Costa Rica is trailed by Mexico and Colombia in this year’s ranking. Vanuatu and Vietnam round out the top five. The index, published by the New Economics Foundation, takes a different approach to measuring national wellbeing. Rather than emphasizing production, it seeks to reward sustainability, it said.
BANGLADESH
Hundreds fight over TV show
A brawl broke out between villagers in eastern Bangladesh arguing over the plot of an Indian fantasy television serial, leaving 100 people injured, police said on Friday. The villagers had gathered at a restaurant in Habiganj District on Wednesday night to watch Kiranmala, a famous Bengali-language show about a warrior princess who saves mankind from evil, when the dispute erupted. Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowd as the argument escalated throughout the night, with angry viewers vandalizing the restaurant in Dhol village and attacking each other with sticks and knives. “Two men got involved into an argument over the story of the episode, which later turned into a group skirmish,” local police chief Yasinul Haque told reporters.
ISRAEL
Poison plotter rearrested
Police on Friday said they have rearrested a Palestinian man days after he completed a 14-year prison sentence for a plot to poison diners at an Israeli restaurant. A police statement said the man was detained on Thursday in the Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal Mukaber, where he lives. “Police units arrest terrorist from Jabal Mukaber who served 14 years in prison for terrorism,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld posted on his official Twitter account. “He was arrested again for supporting terrorism.” Rosenfeld did not identify the man, but Israeli media named him as Sufian Abdu, an accomplice in a 2002 plan by Palestinian cook Othman Qihanya to kill customers at west Jerusalem landmark Cafe Rimon, on behalf of the militant group Hamas.
INDONESIA
Two detained in police death
Police on Friday arrested an Australian woman and a British man in connection with the killing of a police officer in Bali. Sarah Connor and David Taylor were arrested as they were seeking protection at the Australian Consulate in Denpasar, Bali’s capital, two days after the killing of traffic police officer Wayan Sudarsa. Bali Police Chief Major General Sugeng Priyanto said statements from nine witnesses led to the arrests. Sudarsa’s bloodied body was found early on Wednesday on the beach outside the Pullman Hotel in Kuta, while Connor’s handbag was discovered nearby. Priyanto said he interrogated Connor and she said that she had been at that location with Taylor, but had been drunk and could not remember what happened. She also said her handbag was missing, Priyanto said. Ngurah Rai Immigration Office chief Yoseph Renung Widodo said both Connor and Taylor have been banned from leaving Bali on police request.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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