SOUTH KOREA
Escaped wolf closes schools
A wolf that escaped from a zoo remained at large yesterday, authorities said, prompting a local school to close over safety concerns as the search continued. The male wolf — born in 2024 and weighing about 30kg — escaped from a zoo at a theme park in Daejeon on Wednesday, triggering a wide search in surrounding areas. It remained at large yesterday, with a nearby school closing for safety, authorities said. The wolf dug into the ground and damaged the zoo’s installed fence before escaping, a Daejeon Fire Headquarters official said. More than 300 people — including firefighters, police officers and soldiers — were taking part in the search operation, the official said.
Photo: EPA
UNITED STATES
Army vet charged with leak
A an army veteran was on Wednesday charged with providing classified information to a journalist for a book that alleged drug trafficking, murder and corruption at a military base where she had worked, the Department of Justice said. Courtney Williams, 40, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges related to “her alleged transmission of classified national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it, including a journalist,” the justice department said in a statement. Prosecutors allege that between 2022 and last year, Williams repeatedly communicated by phone and text message with a journalist who was seeking information for an article and book about the unit. While court filings did not identify the reporter, journalist Seth Harp wrote a book published last year titled The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. An accompanying article named Williams as a source and attributed specific statements to her.
AUSTRALIA
Home built on wrong plot
A couple has moved house, literally, after realizing it was placed on the wrong plot of land. Melanie and David Moor said they set up their home to “relax” at a 2.5-hectare block two hours’ drive west of Melbourne. They put up the prefabricated house in March 2024, with plumbing and electricity. Five months later, “we got the call from the council to say that we had to stop works because it was on the wrong block — and we actually owned the block next door,” Melanie Moor said yesterday. “It’s just been a nightmare.” The couple said the plot’s boundaries were unclear, and they had relied on the local council and the real-estate agent for the right advice. The couple on Thursday last week moved their house about 100m by truck to the right plot. They are living in a caravan while the home is secured to the correct site. Under an agreement with the owners of the plot where the house was originally put, the couple said they have until May 2 to restore that land to its original state. “It was a relief seeing the truck take the house across the property,” Melanie Moor said.
AUSTRALIA
‘Ketamine Queen’ sentenced
A drug dealer dubbed the “Ketamine Queen” was on Wednesday sentenced to 15 years in prison in connection with Friends star Matthew Perry’s 2023 death, including her role in supplying the dose of the powerful anesthetic that killed the actor. Jasveen Sangha, who admitted to running a “stash house” for illegal narcotics out of her home in the North Hollywood area of Los Angeles, pleaded guilty in September to five felony drug counts stemming from Perry’s death at age 54.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
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