TOKYO, August 31 -- A group of Japanese porn actresses raised tens of thousands of dollars at the weekend by having their breasts squeezed by fans at a "Boob Aid" charity event for AIDS prevention.
Boob Aid is part of the 24-hour "Stop! AIDS" campaign event in Tokyo, which was also televised live on a Japanese adult cable channel. The breast-squeezing resumed Sunday morning after an overnight break. More than 2,300 pairs of hands groped for a total of eight hours until early Sunday afternoon, organisers said. The figure suggests some $23,000 has already been collected as each participant was expected to donate 1,000 yen (about $10) or more. The final money count will be announced after the event closes at around 8pm (1100 GMT) on Sunday. The event is the 12th since its launch in 2003. It is backed by the Japan Foundation for AIDS Prevention. "I'm really looking forward to lots of people fondling my boobs," Rina Serina told the Tokyo Sports newspaper before the event. "But I would be very happy if you would please be delicate." The event comes after sexist heckling of a Tokyo assemblywoman hit the headlines, highlighting old-fashioned views towards women that still permeate Japanese society. "I never thought my boobs could contribute to society," added the ponytailed Serina, apparently unaware of any contradiction. Fellow porn actress Iku Sakuragi had no qualms about being groped by hundreds of pairs of hands. Source: GMA
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MOSCOW, August 31 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin is leaving on another lengthy tour of Russia that will take him to the Urals, the Far East and Siberia, the Kremlin press service reported. His first stop will be in Chelyabinsk, a city in South Urals. Putin who is a great judo fan will attend the closing ceremony of the Judo World Championship 2014 on Sunday. The competitions have brought together 639 athletes from 120 countries. On September 1, which Russia marks as Day of Knowledge, Putin will arrive in Yakutsk, the capital city of the Sakha Republic located about 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of the Arctic Circle. He will meet the students and professors of the North-Eastern Federal University named after M.K. Ammosov. Putin will also discuss state support for priority investment projects and territories of advanced development in the Far East at a meeting with the heads of the federal ministries, regional administrations and major companies, the Kremlin press service went on to say. The same day, on Monday, Putin will attend a ceremony of connecting the first stage of the Force of Siberia gas pipeline that will be used to supply gas both to the domestic market and China. Chita-Khabarovsk road After Yakutsk, Putin will move to Russia’s Amur region to inspect the Chita-Khabarovsk road (Amur) which has been under construction since 1978. The first 20 years of construction from 1978 to 1998 were not inefficient (only 25% of planned works were finished) but the process perked up significantly in 2002. The Chita-Khabarovsk highway was finished in 2010. Vladimir Putin who was then the Russian prime minister took a historic ride on it in a yellow Lada-Kalina car. He covered 2,165 kilometers in four days. After the car run, Putin said that about a quarter of the road had to be renovated. One of the road’s worst sections was located exactly in the Amur region near the city of Blagoveshchensk. Vostochny space launch facility Putin will visit another vital construction site in the Amur region - the Vostochny space launch facility located near the town of Uglegorsk. The first launches are to start in 2015. The construction of launching facilities for the Angara rocket will get under way in 2016. Manned spaceships will be able to lift off from Vostochny as of 2018. The construction is expected to be finished by 2020. Putin will finish his trip in Gorno-Altaisk, the Siberian Autonomous District, where he will discuss the liquidation of flood consequences in Russian regions at a meeting with regional officials. Source: Agencies ROTTERDAM, August 31 -- Several dozen Yazidi women kidnapped by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq militants (ISIS) have been taken from Iraq to Syria, forced to convert and sold into marriage to militants, an activist group says. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said it had confirmed that at least 27 Yazidi women had been sold for around $1,000 each to ISIS fighters. The group said it was aware that some 300 Yazidi women had been kidnapped and transported to Syria by the militants, but it had so far documented the sale into marriage of 27. "In recent weeks, some 300 women and girls of the Yazidi faith who were abducted in Iraq have been distributed as spoils of war to fighters from the Islamic State," a statement said. The group said it had documented several cases in which the fighters then sold the women as brides for $1,000 each to other ISIS members after forcing them to convert to Islam. "The Observatory documented at least 27 cases of those being sold into marriage by Islamic State members in the north-east of Aleppo province, and parts of Raqqa and Hassakeh province," SOHR said. It added that some Syrian Arabs and Kurds had tried to buy some of the women in a bid to set them free, but they were only being sold to ISIS members. The Observatory said it was unclear what had happened to the rest of the 300 women, and strongly denounced the "sale of these women who are being treated as though they are objects to buy and sell". Both U.N. officials and Yazidis fleeing ISIS advances in Iraq have said fighters kidnapped women to be sold into forced marriages. U.N. religious right monitor Heiner Beilefeldt warned earlier this month of reports of women being executed and kidnapped by ISIS militants. "We have reports of women being executed and unverified reports that strongly suggest that hundreds of women and children have been kidnapped – many of the teenagers have been sexually assaulted, and women have been assigned or sold to IS fighters," she said. Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority who follow an ancient faith rooted in Zoroastrianism, are dubbed "devil worshippers" by ISIS militants because of their unorthodox blend of beliefs and practices. The ISIS emerged from the one-time Iraqi affiliate of al-Qaeda but has since broken with that group and espouses an interpretation of Islam that has been widely rejected. It has pressed a campaign of terror in the areas under its control in Syria and Iraq, which it deems an Islamic caliphate, carrying out decapitations, crucifixions and public stonings. In June, the group launched a lightning offensive in Iraq, overrunning parts of five provinces. In August, it captured Yazidi villages in the area of Mount Sinjar, prompting an enormous outpouring of the minority amid reports of executions and the abduction of women. Source: Agencies KIEV, August 31 -- Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko said on Saturday her Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party would soon initiate a nationwide referendum on the country’s accession to NATO. She said the party would submit the necessary papers to the Central Electoral Commission before the end of the day so that the referendum could be held simultaneously with the early parliamentary elections slated for October 26. “The Batkivshchina party made the decision to begin today all procedures that are required for holding a referendum on accession to NATO on the day of the pre-term elections to the Verkhovna Rada [parliament],” Timoshenko said in a statement posted on the party’s official website. The party is planning to collect 3 million signatures required for initiating a referendum. On Friday, a bill abolishing Ukraine’s non-bloc status was registered in the national parliament. The bill also resumes the process of accession to NATO. The bill amends the laws on the basic principles of Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy and on the basic principles of Ukraine’s national security and creates a legislative framework for the country’s integration into the Euro-Atlantic security space and for protecting territorial integrity and sovereignty. The bill also forbids Ukraine to join any alliances other than the European Union. Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk told a cabinet meeting earlier in the day that Ukraine would seek NATO membership. Only several months earlier, he stated that “the question of membership in the alliance is not on the agenda now” and “we are talking about cooperation and technical support in order upgrade the army”. “We are submitting a draft law to parliament that cancels the non-bloc status. This charts the way for Ukraine to become a member of NATO,” he said. Ukraine signed the Charter on Distinctive Partnership with NATO in 1997 and began to take steps towards joining the alliance five years later, setting 2008 as the target date for joining the Western military bloc. Ukraine joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme in 1994. NATO defines the programme as allowing Euro-Atlantic partner countries to build individual relationships with the bloc, choosing their own priorities for co-operation. The process of accession to NATO was halted in 2010 when the then president Viktor Yanukovich pushed through a law declaring the non-bloc status and giving up plans to join the organisation. Yanukovich said that non-block status would allow his country to develop cooperation with all countries. Source: Tass DONETSK, August 31-- More than 100 Ukrainian servicemen have surrendered to the army of Novorossia, the headquarters of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said on Sunday. “The Ukrainian military surrendered arms in the area of Starobeshevo (in the southeast of the Donetsk region). The prisoners of war have been sent to detention facilities. Medical aid has been provided to the wounded,” the DPR headquarters is quoted by the Novorossia news agency. “The first column of the surrendering came under the friendly fire, and the second passed unhindered,” according to eyewitnesses. According to preliminary information, this group of Ukrainian troops accepted DPR premier Aleksandr Sakharchenko’s proposal made on Saturday to surrender arms. The sides have been actively firing on each other’s positions, Novorossia says. Several groups of Ukrainian security forces are encircled by the separatist militia fighters in three locations, it added. The DPR militias continue an offensive in the south of the Sea of Azov. Taking Novoazovsk, the militias has so far avoided storming Mariupol, only sending sabotage and reconnaissance forces bypassing the city, blocking the road to Berdyansk, the agency says. Militia fighters after week-long fighting have forced the Ukrainian troops back from Novosvetlovka settlement in the Lugansk region that opens the way to the cargo delivery to Lugansk, a military analyst told Novorossia. Source: Tass
The prognosis of four of the injured were committed, said the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis Philippe Gally. The rescue still looking at least six adults and five children. The Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, went there, around 9:30. At the scene of the collapse, ten vehicles and more than 150 firefighters from forty barracks were assisting the victims. The possibility of a gas leak planned "Other potential victims are searched and a dozen people are still buried" in rubble and red plane which provides significant medical resources mobilization was started at 7 am 40, said the commander Gabriel More Firefighters Paris. "We must congratulate the dedicated teams that have already saved two victims." Reportedly, a third person had been located about 10 hours under the rubble with expert dogs and sensors firefighters. Firefighters had made eye contact with the lady who was still alive under the rubble, but she succumbed to her injuries explain firefighters on site. "We can expect to find victims in the rubble," said a firefighter, believing that they could discover the victims still alive under the rubble over a period between 12 and 24 hours. Source: The Parisien LONDON, August 31 -- In spite of Islamic State, a Wigan travel agency reports a surge in demand for its trips to the region. A holiday in an area under threat from Islamic State militants is probably not most people's idea of a relaxing break. Yet a UK tour company is reporting a "massive increase" in bookings for trips to Iraq. Wigan-based Lupine Travel has had demand for its tours to Iraqi Kurdistan treble following the recent escalation of the threat to the region by IS, and has taken about 100 bookings in a few weeks. The agency's owner, Dylan Harris, has filled the forthcoming tour in October and two trips in May and October next year, each taking 30 people. As there are a further 40 people on a waiting list, he is thinking of running two additional tours in December and February. Mr Harris, 35, said that while the Iraq trip had proved popular since it launched a year ago, he was "really surprised" by the recent surge in interest. "Generally when things like this happen, the numbers go down," he said. "I also do trips to Ukraine, which was my most popular trip until this year, and this year it's just gone crashing down. Nobody wants to go there. Iraq looks a lot more dangerous, so you'd think there would be less interest, but for some reason there is a lot more." He said recent bookings were from a mix of "thrill-seekers" who perceived the trip as dangerous, and charity workers keen to check out how their organisations might get involved in the region in the future. The nine-day October tour, which costs £749 excluding flights, will start in Diyarbakir, Turkey, before crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan. Sights include the city of Erbil with its ancient citadel, a journey along Hamilton Road past gorges, canyons, lakes and mountains; and a sombre stop at Amna Suraka in Sulaymaniyah, where Kurds were imprisoned and tortured under Saddam Hussein's regime. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) currently advises against all travel to Erbil city and all but essential travel to the other areas in Iraq visited on the tour. "The closest we get [to the trouble] is Erbil," said Mr Harris, who carries out background checks on the people going to Iraq and has offered to send their names to the FCO. "A couple of weeks ago we were waiting to cancel it because IS were getting very close, but the air strikes have knocked them back quite significantly now. "We're getting updates by the day from each separate destination, so if it ever got to the point where it was looking too dangerous there is no way I would travel. The trip would be cancelled. But everybody knows that already and understands the situation." Mr Harris is arranging to add visits to refugee camps in Duhok to the tour. "I know it can be seen as a bit voyeuristic but we're going to find out what these people need," he said. "We're going to ask people to bring stuff over to donate. It gives people an idea of what it is actually going on, and the scale. There are two million refugees over there. It's all well and good just hearing the figure but actually seeing it for yourself, hopefully it can help people to better understand." Lupine Travel, which launched in 2007, specialises in "unique destinations", including Iran, Turkmenistan and Chernobyl in Ukraine. The company also has an office in Dandong, China, on the border with North Korea, which recently surpassed Ukraine as its most popular destination. Source: The Independent CAIRO, August 31 -- The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Saturday that a Ukrainian plane crashed in Algeria. A cargo An-12 plane of the Ukraine Aero Alliance company with a Ukrainian crew crashed in Algeria on Saturday morning, the ministry cited its embassy in Algeria as saying. The plane was carrying oil equipment on a flight from Tamanrasset (Algeria) to Malabo (Equatorial Guinea). According to preliminary reports, all the seven crew members died. Search work was continuing at the site. Experts were working there, the Foreign Ministry said. Algerian media reported that the An-12 crashed three minutes after the take off. The plane fell 15 km south of the airport in the province of Tamanrasset. It was on a flight to Equatorial Guinea. Among versions of supposed causes is a technical fault. Three dead bodies have been found, including the body of the captain. The search is complicated because the site is in mountains. According to the official website of Ukraine Aero Alliance, it is a private joint stock company, one of Ukraine’s first private airlines to receive the international status. It was founded in 1992. It provides cargo transportation services. The company has experience to transport U.N. humanitarian cargoes. It has seven An-12 planes. Aero Alliance is approved to transport dangerous cargoes, including for military use. Source: Agencies Source: Bloomberg
ROTTERDAM, August 31 -- US jets target fighters and drop aid in Amerli, as its Shia residents vow to die rather than risk capture. "If the Islamic State storms our town everyone will be killing their wives and children." The US military has attacked Islamic State positions around the besieged Iraqi town of Amerli, where thousands of Shia Turkmen have been cut off from food and water for nearly two months by the group. John Kirby, the US department of defence spokesman, said on Sunday that President Barack Obama authorised the "limited" military operation to prevent an Islamic State attack on Amerli and to enable an aid drop to those in the town.Kirby said the aid came at the request of the Iraqi government and that the US military conducted the raids to support the aid delivery, the AP news agency reported. He added that aircraft from Australia, France and the UK had joined the US in the aid drop. The strikes come as Iraq launched a major operation to liberate the besieged town, with support from Shia militias. The AFP news agency reported that Kurdish peshmerga were also involved in the operation. Residents of Amerli, who are in danger because of their faith and their resistance to the armed group, have vowed to kill themselves rather than risk capture by the group. Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf, reporting from Baghdad, said on Saturday that any air strikes by the US around Amerli would widen its mandate in Iraq of protecting US personel and critical Iraqi infrastructure. She said men in the town had taken up arms against the Islamic State and had been resisting the group for weeks. "They're backed by Shia militia members who have been flown into the town by Iraqi helicopters - then around that you've got the circle of Islamic State fighters and around that from both sides you have the militias and the Iraqi army." "If the operation fails the fear is it could lead to even more sectarian violence." The Islamic State group, an al-Qaeda off-shoot formerly known as ISIL, has declared an Islamic caliphate in large swathes of territory it seized in recent months in Syria and Iraq. The Turkmen, ethnically Turkish, are Iraq’s third largest ethnic group after Arabs and Kurds. Most are Sunni Muslim. Source: Al Jazeera BRUSSELS, August 31 -- Top EU official says sanctions will be tightened as he warns Ukraine conflict with Moscow threatens peace in Europe. European Union leaders are poised to impose new sanctions against Russia as Ukraine's president warns the conflict with Moscow threatens peace and stability for Europe as a whole. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Saturday the EU was prepared to toughen sanctions against Russia but added that the bloc also wanted a political deal to end the confrontation. At a news conference in Brussels with Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, Barroso, who said on Friday he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone to condemn significant incursions by Russian forces into Ukraine, said the situation was getting close to the point of no return. Barroso made it clear the EU would take a twin track approach, which would entail threatening stronger sanctions against Russia while keeping the door to negotiations open. He stressed that the EU was running out of patience and that Russia was adopting a very high risk strategy. Poroshenko, who on Wednesday cancelled a trip to Turkey amid reports that Russian forces were on Ukrainian soil, said a strong EU response was needed because his country is subject to "military aggression and terror". "Thousand(s) of the foreign troops and hundreds of the foreign tanks are now on the territory of Ukraine," Poroshenko told reporters, speaking in English. "There is a very high risk not only for peace and stability for Ukraine but for the whole peace and stability of Europe." NATO estimates that at least 1,000 Russian soldiers are in Ukraine even though Russia denies any military involvement in the fighting that has so far claimed 2,600 lives, according to UN figures. As pro-Russia separatist rebels continue to fight for independence in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukraine said Saturday that it was abandoning a city where its forces have been surrounded by rebels for days. It was also pulling back from another it had claimed to have taken control of two weeks earlier. Colonel Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's national security council, said regular units of the military had been ordered to retreat from Novosvitlivka and Khryashchuvate, two towns on the main road between the Russian border and Luhansk, the second-largest rebel-held city. Ukraine had claimed control of Novosvitlivka earlier in August. The statements by Lysenko indicate that Ukrainian forces were facing increasingly strong resistance from Russian-backed separatist rebels just weeks after racking up significant gains and forcing rebels out of much of the territory they had held, the Associated Press news agency reported. MOSCOW, August 30 -- US fast-food giant McDonald's said on Friday it would close 18 restaurants across Russia in September for a planned modernization. “Modernization work will be carried out in several days, and then the outlets will return to normal operation,” the company said. McDonald’s plans to modernize five restaurants in St. Petersburg, two in Moscow, two in the wider Moscow region, two in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and seven more across the country. McDonald's has temporarily closed 12 restaurants in Russia following food hygiene inspections in recent weeks. Six outlets have closed throughout the entire Krasnodar region, four in the city of Krasnodar, and two in Sochi, southern Russia. Three have closed in Moscow, one in Serpukhov in the wider Moscow region, one in the southern Stavropol region and one in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city. Moscow courts on Wednesday ordered a 90-day closure of three McDonald's restaurants in the city center over breaches of sanitary rules. These included the famous location on Pushkin Square that brought McDonald's to Russia just before the fall of the Soviet Union, a branch on Manezh Square under the Kremlin walls, and on the thoroughfare Prospect Mira. Russia's food safety agency Rospotrebnadzor is currently checking 100 restaurants of the fast-food chain nationwide, the company press service told ITAR-TASS. Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets said there was no “total plan” to inspect all the chain's outlets in Russia. She claimed activities were being carried out “in accordance with the general plan, and based on some cases of violations of sanitary-epidemiological legislation”. Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said Russian authorities were not planning to close down McDonald's chain nationwide. “No-one is talking about it at all (banning McDonald's in Russia),” Dvorkovich said after inspectors took to the road. But some businessmen in Russia said checks had been driven by souring relations between Russia and the West over events in Ukraine. “Obviously it's driven by political issues surrounding Ukraine,” said Alexis Rodzianko, president and CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. Source: Tass
China's largely rubber-stamp parliament is set to meet on Sunday, when it is expected to limit 2017 elections for Hong Kong's leader to a handful of pro-Beijing candidates, a move likely to escalate plans by pro-democracy activists to blockade the city's central business district. An article in the ruling Communist Party's flagship newspaper the People's Daily said that some in the former British colony were colluding with outside forces to interfere in Hong Kong's governance. "Not only are they undermining Hong Kong's stability and development, but they're also attempting to turn Hong Kong into a bridgehead for subverting and infiltrating the Chinese mainland," said the article. "This can absolutely not be permitted," it said, citing an unidentified official in the foreign ministry's department for Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan affairs. 'Occupy Central' campaign Such a strongly worded statement from the ministry signals increasing anxiety among Chinese leaders about the outcome of Sunday's decision, which will be watched closely by diplomats and international human rights groups. The expected move to limit the number of candidates for the 2017 elections could trigger a showdown with pro-democracy demonstrators who are planning an "Occupy Central" campaign. Student leaders are also considering a walkout of university classes next month. Pro-democracy activists want changes in the current system under which a 1,200-member panel stacked with mostly pro-Beijing elites gets to pick the leader. Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 and there have been fierce debates in the past year over how its next leader is chosen - by universal suffrage, as the democrats would like, or from a list of pro-Beijing candidates. There are growing concerns among many of the territory's seven million people that China wishes to insert itself more strongly into Hong Kong's affairs. Meanwhile, in neighbouring Macau, another Chinese Special Administrative Region, chief executive Fernando Chui is widely expected to be "re-elected" on Sunday after his pro-China government stifled an unofficial referendum on democracy in the gambling hub. Source: Agencies ROTTERDAM, August 29 -- The United States has exhausted its annual supply of EB-5 immigrant investor visas for the first time in the program's history following a surge of applications from Chinese nationals. The State Department's chief of visa control, Charles Oppenheimer, told lawyers at an industry conference earlier this week that no more spots will be available to Chinese for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Several attendees confirmed his comments. Known as EB-5, the immigration program offers a green card to any foreigner willing to invest at least $500,000 and create 10 jobs in America. No more than 10,000 of the visas are allowed every year, and this will mark the first time the quota has been reached since the program's inception in 1990. "It's like the movie house is sold out -- there are no spare tickets left," said Bernard Wolfsdorf, founder of immigration law firm Wolfsdorf Rosenthal. "Pretty much all the visas for this year are accounted for." Source: The Financial Times |
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