Ukraine’s jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is urging her country to defeat President Viktor Yanukovych’s party in next month’s parliamentary election.
In an emotional video appeal, Ms Tymoshenko accused Mr Yanukovych of turning Ukraine into a “police state”.
Her lawyer says the video, released yesterday, was recorded by him on a mobile phone in a hospital where she is receiving treatment for back pain.
Blast kills firefighter
An explosion at a chemical factory in western Japan has killed a firefighter and injured dozens of people.
Police said the explosion was reported today at chemical plant Nippon Shokubai Co. in the coastal industrial area of Himeji, about 100 miles west of Tokyo.
Plant workers first reported a large bursting noise after a chemical tank exploded.
Iran falls for Onion joke
A joke by satirical US newspaper The Onion appears to have got lost in translation after an Iranian news agency picked up as fact a supposed survey showing an overwhelming majority of rural white Americans would rather vote for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than Barack Obama.
But it was made up, like everything in the just-for-laughs newspaper, based in Chicago.
The English-language service of Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency republished the story word for word.
The way to San José
Addresses in the Costa Rican capital of San José have never had street signs and people asking directions often are told to take a right at a landmark that has not existed for decades.
But now, for the first time, city workers are putting up 22,000 signs to help tourists and get Costa Ricans to start using the real, but largely unknown, road names that have existed for at least 20 years.