Rio may sue over episode of 'Simpsons'
 |
|
||||||||||
In the episode "Blame It on Lisa," Homer is robbed by street kids and kidnapped by an unlicensed taxi driver as the world-famous U.S. cartoon family goes to Rio to find a missing orphan Lisa has been sponsoring. The family runs across rats and monkeys looking for the orphan.
While acknowledging the show is a satire, Riotour spokesman Sergio Cavalcanti said, "What really hurt was the idea of the monkeys, the image that Rio de Janeiro was a jungle. ... It's a completely unreal image of the city."
Cavalcanti said the board has spent $18 million in the past three years promoting the city, which attracted more than 220,000 U.S. citizens in 2001.
Riot by Serbs injures 19 U.N. police officers
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia — Nineteen U.N. police officers were wounded, one seriously, when they tried to quell a riot by hundreds of Serbs yesterday in this ethnically divided Kosovo town, a U.N. spokesman said.
The rioting began when U.N. police arrested Slavoljub Jovic-Pagi, a leader of a hard-line group known as the "bridge guards," said Marko Jaksic, a Serb community leader. The "bridge guards" have previously tried to prevent ethnic Albanians and Serbs from crossing a bridge that divides Kosovska Mitrovica between the two rival ethnic communities.
Jaksic said two civilians suffered wounds from bullets "apparently fired by riot police." One was in critical condition with a gunshot wound in the neck, he said.
Tokyo woman admits bodies are those of her six babies
TOKYO — A woman admitted to police yesterday that she gave birth to six babies whose decomposed bodies were found in a vacant apartment outside Tokyo, police said.
The 58-year-old woman said she delivered the last of the babies more than 10 years ago, police official Kazuhiko Nakanishi said.
It was not clear how the babies died or why she kept the bodies, said Nakanishi, who declined to provide further details.
IRA scraps more weapons, leading inspector reports
BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The Irish Republican Army has scrapped more guns and explosives in a secret ceremony, North American weapons inspectors announced yesterday.
The widely expected move — more than five months after the shadowy organization made history by starting down the road to disarmament — bolstered the key achievement of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord, a Catholic-Protestant government that includes IRA's Sinn Fein party.
Retired Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain, who has led Northern Ireland's independent disarmament commission since 1997, said he "witnessed an event in which the IRA leadership has put a varied and substantial quantity of ammunition, arms and explosive material beyond use."
De Chastelain said he couldn't specify when or where the disarmament took place, nor the method used, because the IRA was insisting on releasing no details. "Beyond use" is a deliberately vague term that could mean their handover, destruction or sealing in concrete