Black Widow behind bars

By M.K. Lim,

Black Widow that resembles Valeria's personality

     A young Russian woman, a devoted collector of horror films and spiders, is on trial for sedating and raping ten men.

     The police were shocked that 32-year-old Valeria K., a quiet good-looking woman from the city of Tambov, was the mysterious rapist who abused ten local men after poisoning them with clonidine.

     Valeria, who has already been nicknamed the Black Widow for her love of spiders, would get acquainted with men and invite them to her place.

     She gave them drinks with clonidine, which almost immediately sent them to sleep for almost 24 hours.

     After that, she undressed her victims and raped them, tightening a rope on their male organs to keep them erect.

     Waking up in hospital with clonidine poisoning and penis trauma, all the victims could remember was a friendly brunette who gave them drinks.

     Finally, local police identified the offender and arrested her.

     At present, the police know about ten of Valeria’s victims, although one of them refused to file a complaint against her.

     “It was great,” the unnamed man said.

     “I like hot women. I only wish she hadn't use the clonidine on me.”

The Whistleblower

By Y. C. LIM

Julian Assange - the founder of Wikileaks - has remained shrouded in mystery since the launch of his site in 2006.
This fascinating expose reveals the man behind the leaks.
Assange spent the majority of his youth travelling from place to place, attending 37 different schools and being charged with numerous hacking offences.
While he continues to move, he does so to maintain his extensive network of Wikileaks contacts and to avoid the unwanted attention of governments.
Despite frequently hitting the front pages of newspapers around the world, Assange has somehow managed to retain a low profile.
This is now changing as he finally steps into the spotlight to defend Wikileaks and to address what he feels is a false perception the media is portraying of him. "The true nature of this world is being revealed. It's not being interpreted for you. There it is, face to face from the inside". Now, with Wikileaks, he is finally offering it to the world.

Obama admits losing sight of leadership role

By K.M. LEW

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama admitted in an interview aired on Friday that he focused on policies but failed to rally people behind those initiatives, leading to Republicans' big gains in congressional elections this week.
     "We were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that we stopped paying attention to the fact that leadership isn't just legislation," Obama said in an excerpt from a CBS "60 Minutes" interview to be broadcast on Sunday.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at DAR Constitutional Hall in Washington September 30, 2010. U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at DAR Constitutional Hall in Washington September 30, 2010.

     Republicans describe their Tuesday midterm elections win, in which they took control of the House of Representatives and gained seats in the Senate, as a repudiation of the healthcare reform law and economic stimulus programs that dominated Obama's first two years in office.
     But the president told CBS he would seek to mend his ways in the run-up to his own re-election campaign in 2012.
     "It's a matter of persuading people, and giving them confidence, and bringing them together, and setting a tone and making an argument that people can understand," Obama said.
     "We haven't always been successful at that and I take personal responsibility for that. And it's something that I've got to examine carefully as I go forward."
     Obama said he didn't do a good enough job explaining the need for government spending on bank and auto bailouts and the economic stimulus package.
     "People looked at that and they said, "Boy, this feels as if there's a huge expansion of government," Obama said.
     "What I didn't effectively, I think, drive home, because we were in such a rush to get this stuff done, is that we were ... taking these steps not because of some theory that we wanted to expand government. It was because we had an emergency situation and we wanted to make sure the economy didn't go off a cliff."
Obama at a news conference on Wednesday said he had lost touch with voters who delivered a "shellacking" to him and his Democrats.

Engine problems hit second Qantas aircraft

By K.M. LEW

Engineers inspect the outermost port engine of a Qantas Boeing 747, flight QF6, at Singapore's Changi airport November 6, 2010. A Qantas Boeing 747 aircraft which left Singapore for Sydney on Friday evening has returned to the city-state, a Changi Airport official said on Friday.

SINGAPORE/SYDNEY (Reuters) - Engine trouble forced a Qantas Airways Ltd jet to make an emergency landing in Singapore on Friday, less than 48 hours after another of the Australian carrier's aircraft had to land prematurely because its engine blew up.

     The Sydney-bound Boeing 747-400 aircraft, with 412 people on board, returned to the airport 20 minutes after takeoff due to "an issue with one of its engines," Qantas Airways Ltd said in a statement.

     That came a day after a Qantas Airbus A380 jet was forced to make an emergency landing after one of its four Rolls-Royce Plc engines appeared to break apart in flight, scattering debris over an Indonesian island.

     "Around 20 minutes into the flight we heard a loud bang," Ranjan Sivagnanasundaram, an Australian citizen in his early 50s who was on Friday's flight, told Reuters. "It was a very big shock to us, especially after what happened yesterday."

     The Boeing Co aircraft also had been equipped with Rolls-Royce engines.

Officials at British engine-maker Rolls-Royce did not return calls seeking comment.

     The earlier incident saw Qantas ground its fleet of six A380s pending safety checks that will take 24 to 48 hours and led other airlines to check their own A380s.

     "We believe this is probably, most likely, a material failure or some sort of design issue," Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce told a news conference in Sydney. "If we don't find any adverse findings in those checks, the aircraft will resume operations."

     Separately, a European Union air safety body confirmed it told airlines in August to make checks after finding "wear, beyond engine manual limits," on the type of Rolls-Royce engines fitted to the Qantas jet and some other A380s.

The incidents could provide Rolls' rivals General Electric Co and the Pratt & Whitney unit of United Technologies Corp with a chance to grab market share from the No. 2 engine-maker.

     "Things move slowly in the engine business, but there is no question that you have a series of events that really put Rolls-Royce's reputation at risk," said Richard Aboulafia, vice president at aviation consultancy Teal Group.

     GE is the world's largest maker of jet engines, Pratt comes in third.

AIRLINES INSPECT A380S

     The A380 engine failure on Thursday was the biggest incident to date for the world's largest passenger plane, which went into service in 2007.

     Rolls-Royce and Airbus parent EADS told operators of the Rolls-equipped A380 jets to have them inspected.

     The Engine Alliance, a joint venture between GE and Pratt that makes a rival engine for the A380 told users: "The EA is not recommending engine inspections as our design is unique ... and thus has no correlation with the RR engine."

     Singapore Airlines Ltd resumed flying its 11 A380s on Friday, lifting a grounding order imposed after the first incident.

     Deutsche Lufthansa AG said it had withdrawn an A380 from a Frankfurt-Johannesburg flight because it had not had enough time to check the engines before departure.

     Passengers who had been on the first flight said a second engine on the stricken Qantas aircraft had failed to shut down once the jet was on the tarmac, sparking fears it could ignite spilling fuel.

     Passengers said after landing they had been told of the dangers of using any electronic device as fire fighters sprayed the aircraft, which was leaking fuel from a hole in the wing.

     "Obviously in the back of your mind you are concerned about a very hot engine next to leaking fuel," passenger Christopher Lee said. "Obviously, you are in a state of anxiety."

     Qantas CEO Joyce said the second engine could have been harmed by the mishap to the first engine, which caused parts to fly off.

     Aviation experts said the first plane being able to land despite the engine mishap illustrated the safety of modern aircraft.

     "The fact that it survived the damage is a credit to the design. Twenty years ago that would probably have taken the aircraft out of the sky," said John Page, senior lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at the University of New South Wales.

     Airbus sales chief John Leahy said he had not received complaints from airlines about the A380's safety.

    "We have to find out the reason for the engine failure," he told Reuters in Paris.

     Qantas said its engineers, along with those from Airbus and Rolls-Royce, were working to determine what went wrong.

     "Rolls-Royce have identified a number of potential areas," said Joyce. "This issue does not relate to maintenance."

     Rolls-Royce has maintained the engines since they were installed on the aircraft, he said. The company gets a goodly proportion of its revenues from such service contracts.

 

ROLLS SHARES SLIDE AGAIN

     European plane-maker Airbus and Rolls-Royce lost over $1.5 billion in combined market value on Thursday.

     EADS shares were flat on Friday, after Thursday's 4 percent fall, while Rolls-Royce shares fell a further 3.3 percent to 601 pence after a 5 percent slide the previous day. Boeing was up 0.7 percent at $71.37 on the New York Stock Exchange.

     Qantas shares ended down 1 percent at A$2.86 on Friday, underperforming the broader Australian market, which advanced 1.2 percent to a six-month high.

     Commonwealth Bank aviation analyst Matt Crowe said there was unlikely to be long-term damage to its reputation, as investors had tended to move on from previous safety incidents, which have never resulted in a fatal crash for Qantas.

Qantas plane makes emergency landing in S'pore after losing engine

By K.M. LEW

No reports of injuries or explosion, says airline spokesman

SINGAPORE: Qantas says one of its planes safely made an emergency landing Thursday in Singapore, after one of the aircraft's engines shut down while flying over Indonesia.

     A Qantas spokesman in Sydney, Australia, said the A380 aircraft experienced an engine issue soon after taking off from Singapore on a flight to Sydney.

     The plane had 433 passengers and 26 crew on board.

     Qantas spokeswoman Emma Kearns said one of four engines on the plane flying from Singapore to Sydney shut down.

     She added that the plane can safely fly on three engines, but the pilot landed the plane in Singapore to be safe.

     Kearns said there were no reports of injuries and the airline has not received any reports of an explosion on board.

Girl, 10, gives birth

By K.M. LEW

CADIZ (Spain): A 10-year-old girl has given birth in southern Spain, regional officials said Tuesday,the youngest woman known to have borne a child in the region of Andalusia , according to Qatar News Agency (QNA), citing the German Press Agency (DPA) report.

     The girl gave birth to a baby weighing 2.9kg at a hospital in Jerez de la Frontera a week ago.

     Mother and child, who were described as being in perfect health, were released from the hospital over the weekend, DPA reported.

     The Romanian girl became pregnant before coming to Spain, according to media reports.

     The baby's father is also believed to be a minor. Officials said they are investigating whether the girl's family is able to take care of her and the baby.

Live crab vending machine

By K.M. LEW

     This live hairy Shanghai crab vending machine keeps the crabs at 5° C, at which temperature the poor crustaceans go into hibernation. When you insert money (according to the value stated) it will dispense a crab accordingly.

     If it dispenses a dead crab, the machine's owner will give you three free live crabs by way of compensation. 

     A sign states that all the crabs in the machine are fresh: if the crab is dead-on-arrival, they promise to give you three free crabs.

     Converted into yen, the prices for the crabs range between 120 and 600 yen (depending on size). By cutting out the cost of store personnel, the seller can offer the crabs at 30% less than the usual price.

     The Chinese man who came up with the idea for the vending machine enthusiastically declares that he is ready to consider offers if there is demand for his product in Japan.

     The machine is also in Nanjing, and represents a major push in the always-complex business of live-crab vending.

For more information, visit: http://www.hjjdzx.com/ 

Mail Bombs exploded in Athens

By M.K Lim

Investigators surveying explosion area .

ATHENS - A bomb exploded at the Swiss embassy in Athens Tuesday and suspicious packages were detonated by police outside Parliament, the Bulgarian embassy and a courier company, officials said.

     No injuries or damage were reported from Tuesday’s four small explosions. Police say they suspect that far-left domestic groups are responsible for the wave of attacks that began Monday when four mail bombs failed to reach their targets — French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the embassies of Mexico, the Netherlands and Belgium.

     The bombs were found Monday after one exploded at a delivery service in central Athens, lightly wounding a worker at the delivery company.

     Authorities have said the bombs were not particularly powerful, and no link was made with the recently discovered Yemen-based mail bomb plot.

     Two Greek men were arrested on suspicion of plotting the attacks when they were spotted close to the scene of one of Monday’s bombings. Police said they were carrying handguns and bullets in waist pouches, and one wore body armor, a wig and a baseball cap.

     One of the two was wanted in connection with an investigation into a radical anarchist group known as Sect of Revolutionaries.

     Though a student uprising succeeded in ending military rule in 1974, it also left a legacy of activism and simmering tensions between Greece’s security establishment and a phalanx of deeply entrenched leftist groups that often protest against globalization and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.

     The groups have now evolved into various mainly youth factions that claim to fight trends ranging from globalization to police surveillance cameras. Their impact is usually limited to graffiti and late-night firebomb attacks on targets such as stores and cash machines.

China starts counting its wary population

By K.M. LEW

BEIJING (Reuters) - China launched a once-in-a-decade census on Monday in an exercise that will form a basis for policy-making in the world's most populous country, but is likely to face resistance from residents wary of government officials.

     Six million census-takers will fan out across the country from the booming cities on the eastern coast to the remote mountains of restive Tibet as they try to visit some 400 million households over a 10-day period.

     "The census is the basis for making policies on education, medical care, employment and social warfare and aid," Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily said in an editorial. "This is the biggest social mobilisation of peaceful times."

     The exercise will cost about 700 million yuan ($104.9 million), with 90 percent of respondents being asked 18 questions, including details about eduction and ethnic groups. The results will be released next April.

     For the first time, China is counting people based on where they actually live, rather than where they are registered under the household registration, or 'hukou', system.

     The results will help measure the degree of China's urbanisation, as well as previously uncounted children born in defiance of the one-child policy, and will outline a country undergoing a massive population shift.

     It will show that almost half the country's 1.3 billion people now live in cities, though many lack a city 'hukou', meaning they are not formally registered there and do not enjoy all the social security benefits of urban dwellers.

     Over the next 20 years another 400 million rural residents are expected to move to the cities, according to state media, adding to the estimated 200 million migrant workers who already work in cafes, factories and on building sites in urban areas.

     That is fuelling a building boom, especially in inland cities where growth has lagged that of the coast, and should help boost economic growth, as better educated and wealthier urbanites earn more and in turn spend more than their rural cousins.

     "For the majority of these migrant workers, they will not go back to the villages. They will remain, live and work, in the cities," said Wang Jing, a professor at Capital University of Economics and Business' School of Labour Economics.

     The census will also outline how fast the country is ageing. The government expects an average of 8 million to turn 60 each year by around 2015, 3.2 million more than the average in 2006-2010.

RESISTANCE

     The population dependency ratio, the proportion of those too young or old to work, is seen rising for the first time after falling for over 40 years, while the ratio of those aged 15-59 is predicted to peak and then slowly start to fall.

     This would leave China's younger generation supporting a much larger ageing population. Demographers worry China will probably become the first country in the world to age before it gets rich.

     Census takers are unlikely to have an easy time in a country nervous of government officials and a large floating population of migrant workers who keep irregular hours and may live in temporary accommodation.

Green banners encouraging people to participate festoon Beijing, in a departure from the usual red public propaganda banners, and text messages have been sent out asking people to "cooperate in accordance with the law".

     The government has tried to reassure its people that the information will be confidential, but suspicion abounds.

     "What you are looking for is all written in the household registration book, so go ahead to check that -- there's no need to do a census at all," wrote one user on the Chinese property website www.anjia.com.

     "Who dares tell the truth to a government which lacks public credibility and has a bad reputation?" the person added.

     China's last census in 2000 showed the population at 1.295 billion. It placed 64 percent, or about 800 million people, as still in the countryside, even though migrant workers had been flooding to cities and coastal factories for a decade at least.

Indonesia volcano erupts again, tsunami deaths hit 430

By K.M. LEW

 Mount Merapi volcano spews smoke as seen from Deles village in Klaten, near the ancient city of Yogyakarta, November 1, 2010. (REUTERS/Dwi Oblo)

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's Mount Merapi volcano erupted on Monday for the third time in a week, driving the number of refugees to almost 70,000, as the death toll from a tsunami thousands of kilometres to the west rose to 431, officials said.
     The fresh eruption forced a thick ash cloud around 1.5 kilometres (0.9 miles) into the air above Merapi, which sits on the outskirts of Yogyakarta city in Central Java, and caused panicked residents to flee villages on the slopes of the mountain for safety shelters.
     The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said that 38 people have been killed and 69,533 evacuated since Merapi began erupting last week, while Indonesia's vulcanology agency warned that flights around Yogyakarta may be disrupted.
     Scientists are also monitoring increased activity at two other volcanoes, Mount Anak Krakatau in the Sunda strait and Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra, an official from the vulcanology agency said.
     Merapi's third eruption comes as Indonesian disaster officials are struggling to deliver aid to the remote Mentawai islands in Sumatra province, where a 7.5 magnitude quake triggered a tsunami last week.
     The tsunami killed 431 people and another 88 are still missing, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said.