RUSSIA
Guard adds eyes to painting
A security guard vandalized an avant-garde painting on loan from the country’s top art repository by drawing eyes on the picture’s deliberately featureless faces, the Yeltsin Center in Ekaterinburg said, adding that the damage can be repaired. On Dec. 7, an employee for a private company providing security for the gallery altered Anna Leporskaya’s Three Figures. The painting, dating from the 1930s, shows three torsos and heads with hair, but no facial features; the vandal drew eyes on two of them with a ballpoint pen. The Russian news site RBC said a criminal case has been opened on charges that carry a sentence of up to three months in prison. The painting had been reportedly insured for 74.9 million rubles (US$1 million).
MEXICO
Journalist killed in shooting
A journalist was on Thursday shot dead, an official said, the fifth such killing this year. Heber Lopez Vazquez, who ran the news Web site Noticias Web in the southern state of Oaxaca, was shot in his car, state prosecutor Arturo Calvo told the TV channel Milenio. Two suspects were arrested as they tried to flee the scene of the crime and their guns were recovered, Calvo said, adding that it was not known who ordered the killing. Lopez’s death brings the number of journalists killed in Mexico this year to five, according to Reporters Without Borders data, which showed that at least seven were murdered last year.
UNITED STATES
Beware prostitutes: mayor
The mayor of an upscale city outside Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday told a city council meeting that allowing ice fishing shanties on a city lake could lead to prostitution. Hudson Mayor Craig Shubert said that he wanted to raise some “data points” during a discussion about whether to permit people to fish on the frozen lake. “And if you then allow ice fishing with shanties, then that leads to another problem — prostitution,” he said. “Now you’ve got the police chief and the police department involved.” Shubert issued a statement to WJW-TV, saying that his comment about ice shanties and prostitution stemmed from his experience as a television news reporter covering law enforcement agencies that have arrested people for prostitution in shanties. “When discussing proposed legislation, it is wise to discuss the potential for unintended consequences,” Shubert said in the statement.
UNITED STATES
Woman accuses Snoop Dogg
An unidentified woman on Wednesday filed a civil lawsuit that accuses rapper Snoop Dogg of sexual assault and battery after she attended one of his concerts in 2013. The lawsuit was filed days before Snoop Dogg is set to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show with other hip-hop artists near Los Angeles. The woman was identified as Jane Doe and described as a dancer, model, host and actress who had worked with Snoop Dogg. In the lawsuit, the woman said Snoop Dogg entered a bathroom she was using, forced her to perform oral sex and masturbated in front of her. Representatives for Snoop Dogg did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The woman said in the lawsuit that she was also sexually assaulted earlier in the evening by a Snoop Dogg employee who is also named as a defendant. The parties tried to resolve the matter through mediation, the complaint said. Snoop Dogg wrote on Instagram on Wednesday that “Gold digger season is here be careful... keep ya guards up. And. Keep ya circle small.”
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
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