Tokyo, Japan |-He was described by a British columnist earlier this month as the "albino warthog" -- a name London Mayor Boris Johnson fully lived up to in Tokyo when he flattened a 10-year-old rugby fan.
The famously eccentric British politician, renowned for his flop of blond hair and off the cuff remarks, was showing off his ball "skills" to a group of schoolchildren during a three-day visit to the Japanese capital.
Video footage showed the lumbering mayor -- dressed in a white shirt and tie, his sleeves rolled up -- running down the side of a small pitch chased by children.
One particularly brave boy stood his ground only to be floored by the mayor's considerable bulk, sending both parties tumbling to the ground much to the merriment of the gathered press and spectators.
"I'm so sorry, are you okay?" Johnson could be heard asking the boy who nodded and then shook the mayor's hand.
"We have just played a game of street rugby with a bunch of kids and I accidentally flattened a 10-year-old, on TV unfortunately," Johnson told reporters after the match according to British media.
"But, he bounced back, he put it behind him, the smile returned rapidly to his face," he added.
The Conservative politician has previous form in over-enthusiastic displays of competitive grit.
In 2006 he barreled headfirst into former Germany international Maurizio Gaudino in a rugby-style tackle during a charity football match, and in 2014 he mistimed a tackle during an informal kickabout, upending a 9-year-old boy.
As the video went viral, so did the Twitter comments.
"International diplomacy at its finest," tweeted Michael Deacon (@MichaelPDeacon), a sketchwriter for Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper.
"I'd vote for Boris Johnson, a guy who's not afraid to take on any challenge put in front of him... however small it may be," added Gareth Williams (@bluesman74).
Japan -- a country where football, baseball and sumo wrestling usually rule supreme -- is undergoing something of a rugby renaissance following the national team's stunning success at the Rugby World Cup in England.
Although they failed to make it through the qualifiers, Japan came away with three victories -- including an astonishing win over South Africa in their opening game.
Previously, Japan had only ever won once at a World Cup, against minnows Zimbabwe in 1991.
Japan hosts the next Rugby World Cup in 2019.
The Hague, Netherlands -Security workers on Amsterdam's public trams and buses are being issued with special kits to collect DNA from unruly passengers who spit at staff, city officials said
The "spit-kits" are part of an experiment to catch offenders which began after a series of attacks left dozens of drivers and conductors covered in saliva -- an assault that carries a three-month jail term or a 4,000 euro ($4,500) fine.
"Spitting is one of the most humiliating forms of aggression around," said Mireille Muller, spokeswoman for Amsterdam's Council Transport Company (GVB).
"Although it is getting safer for our staff, the idea is to completely eradicate this crime," she told AFP.
Security personnel are now issued with a special "spit kit" consisting of a plastic tube and a gauze swab and have been trained by forensic specialists to collect saliva samples.
They can get to the scene of any spitting incident within six minutes, Muller said.
The DNA sample is then handed over to police and prosecutors for further investigation and sent off to the Dutch National Forensic Institute for profiling, said Franklin Wattimena of the Public Prosecutor's office.
Even if there is no match, the DNA sample is kept for the next 12 years, he added, making future matches possible.
Since the "spit-kit" experiment was introduced at least one attack has been recorded, Dutch media has reported although the outcome of the probe is not yet known.
"We encourage our staff to immediately report any incidents as soon as they happen," said Muller, hoping the "spit-kits" will help prevent future attacks.
More than 740,000 passengers make use of Amsterdam's public transport services daily, according to the GVB's latest figures.
The GVB is one of the largest employers in Amsterdam, with a staff of more than 3,500 people.
New York, United States -Augustin Hadelich, a violinist known for his mastery of a diverse solo repertoire, won the inaugural Warner Music Prize aimed at promoting young classical musicians.
The Warner Music Prize, announced last year with backing of the Warner label, comes with $100,000 for an artist between 18 and 35 recognized as an emerging talent.
Hadelich in a statement said he was "overjoyed" to win the prize, calling it "an extraordinary help to me as I continue to build my career."
The 31-year-old violinist, described in a release by the Warner Music Prize as "one of the top violin soloists of his generation," has proven himself to be an expressive interpreter of an array of work ranging from Bach and Beethoven to contemporary fare by British composer Thomas Ades.
His album of concertos by Ades and Sibelius with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic was nominated for a Gramophone Award, a London-based prize generally considered the classical world's most prestigious for recordings.
In a sign of his diverse skills, Hadelich in 2013 also recorded a tango album, "Histoire du Tango," with Spanish classical guitarist Pablo Sainz Villegas.
The son of German parents, Hadelich was born and raised in Italy and has lived since 2004 in New York where he studied at Juilliard and has since taken US citizenship.
In 2006, he won the gold medal in the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, a major contest that takes place every four years.
Stu Bergen, a senior executive at Warner, described Hadelich as a "dazzling young artist with enormous talent, undeniable charisma and a bright career ahead of him."
The award is open to artists on any label who performed a significant solo at New York's Carnegie Hall in the 2014-2015 season.
Hadelich in December performed Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall, where earlier in the year he premiered the "mystery sonatas" of David Lang, one of the leading living US composers.
The Warner Music Prize winner was selected by a five-person jury that included soprano Deborah Voigt.
The other nominees included violinist Itamar Zorman, cellist Brook Speltz, double bassist Roman Patkolo, harpist Sivan Magen and pianist Behzod Abduraimov.
Also nominated were sopranos Sarah Shafer and Jennifer Zetlan; mezzo-sopranos Jamie Barton, Rachel Calloway, Cecelia Hall, Alisa Kolosova and Peabody Southwell; tenor Dominic Armstrong and bass-baritones Aubrey Allicock and Evan Hughes.
New York, United States -Costumes and props worn by Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone in the box-office smash hit "Rocky" and Rambo" movies went on public view in New York before being offered for auction.
Die-hard fans with deep pockets can snap up more than a thousand pieces of Stallone memorabilia at auction in Los Angeles in December, which will help benefit veterans charities.
The top valued items are Rocky Balboa's boxing gloves and championship belt from "Rocky II," and could each fetch a whopping $500,000, according to Heritage Auctions.
Other highlights are the character's leather jacket from "Rocky" -- the 1976 film that won three Oscars and propelled Stallone to international stardom -- and his white robe from "Rocky IV."
Also on sale is Stallone's handwritten script for "Rocky," his character John Rambo's army jacket from "First Blood" and a "Judge Dredd" costume including helmet, boots and shoulder armor.
Top lots from the sale will remain on view in New York until Wednesday, before being offered for sale from December 18-20 in Los Angeles, Heritage Auctions announced.
The New York-born Stallone is an Academy-award nominated actor best known for his tough guy roles in the "Rocky" and "Rambo" franchises. The 69-year-old is also a director and screenwriter.
"I thought other people would really appreciate them. So, rather than keep them in the dark (in storage) and just forget about them, I thought, let me just pass them on," he told Heritage.
Fans can also bid on Rocky's "Eye of the Tiger" jacket worn in "Rocky II," the motorcycle he rode in "Rocky III" and "Rocky V" and items from his more recent "The Expendables" movies.
Greg Rohan, president of Heritage Auctions, said Stallone was an "international superstar."
"These items include some of the iconic, cultural symbols of clothing and props from his most famous and loved action films," he said.
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© 1994-2015 Agence France-Presse
Tokyo, Japan -Honda said it would put a commercialised self-driving car on the road by 2020, challenging rivals Toyota and Nissan which are also betting on the future of autonomous vehicles.
The announcement, ahead of the Tokyo Motor Show , comes as Japan's auto giants step on the accelerator in a bid to race past overseas competitors on the next-generation technology.
Google has been testing self-driving cars in Silicon Valley, as have US-based Tesla and General Motors, while Nissan has vowed to put an automated car on Japan's highways as soon as 2016.
Earlier this month, Toyota unveiled a vehicle that can drive itself along a highway, with plans for a 2020 rollout.
The car, a modified Lexus GS, uses sophisticated sensors to navigate roads, merge lanes and overtake other vehicles.
In its current incarnation, the car only switches to fully automated mode once it reaches the less frenetic confines of a highway and passes a sensor.
Last week, high-end electric vehicle maker Tesla said it was taking a major step toward self-driving cars by installing new autopilot software in vehicles so they can automatically change lanes, manage speed and even hit the brakes.
The car can also scan for available parking spaces, alert drivers when one is spotted and then parallel park on command.
GM -- which is developing fuel-cell systems with Honda -- is looking to commercialise self-driving cars by 2017.
Honda and GM are considering expanding the scope of cooperation in research and development to include self-driving technologies and other areas, a Honda spokesman said.
Jerusalem-Call it a pea-sized gesture, but an Israeli owner of a hummus restaurant cooked it up anyway.
Kobi Tzafrir, an Israeli Jew who runs the Hummus Bar in Kfar Vitkin near the Mediterranean coast, said he was offering 50 percent off for any table where Jews and Arabs sit together.
It is a bid to encourage co-existence even in the most difficult times, with a wave of violence and unrest since the start of the month having raised fears of a full-scale Palestinian uprising.
Many Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews weary from violence would likely look upon the effort with a great deal of scepticism.
But Tzafrir said: "I heard and saw many cruel and harsh things from both Arabs and Jews in these difficult circumstances, and I saw the stress and tension. But I believe that we must live together."
He said a number of groups had already taken advantage of the deal but did not give a number.
At least one other similar effort has occurred.
In the old city of Acre in northern Israel, the owners of the Al Marsa restaurant, Moussa Alaa and Marwan Sawaed, invited the owners of nearby Jewish restaurants to join them for dinner.
"Acre is a mixed city and the situation in the country affects the Arabs and Jews," Sawaed told AFP.
When violence starts, "the Arabs go with the Arabs and the Jews go with the Jews and this affects Acre."
"We must live together for the solution. Sitting around a table eating and talking in a civilised manner is the best way to live a common life."
Arab Israelis make up around 17.5 percent of the population of Israel and are largely supportive of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
They are the descendants of Palestinians who remained after the creation of Israel in 1948 and hold Israeli citizenship.
Frankfurt, Germany -Don't like the ending of Ken Follett's 'Pillars of the Earth'? Gamers can soon change the fate of the book's main characters in a video game adaptation of the bestseller, ready for launch in 2017.
As the sprawling medieval saga celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, Follett said it was a "fascinating experiment" to see it adapted.
"The challenge for me as a writer is to draw the reader into my imaginary world. Game is another way to do that," he said at the Frankfurt Book Fair on Thursday.
Set in 12th century Britain, the novel has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide and has already been adapted for television, said Marco Schneiders of Follett's German publisher of more than 30 years, Bastei Luebbe.
The video game would be available in versions for PC, Mac, tablet computers, Playstation and Xbox. With 25 hours of possible game time, the idea was to develop a new concept of interactive literature, Schneiders said.
Gamers can step into the shoes of one of the book's three main characters: the architect Jack; the disinherited young girl, Aliena; or the prior Philip; and make decisions that would change the direction of the story.
Compared with classical narration techniques used in novels and films, the game "adds intriguing new elements to the story, exploration of locations, interaction with the characters and the environment and decisions that players have to make," said Carsten Fichtelmann of the game's developers Daedalic Entertainment.
"We have used maybe 15 percent of original text and another 85 percent are new stories, new background stories of the characters to what already exist," he said, adding that he hoped the game would sell at least three million copies.
"All authors want constantly younger people to read their books," said Follett.
"I'm hoping that knowing that huge proportion of the playing audience is young, that the name 'The Pillars of the Earth' will become familiar to a new generation of people and maybe some of them will enjoy the game so much that" maybe they would read the book too, said the author.
If the game proves a success, Follett -- whose latest opus "Edge of Eternity" was published last year -- said he would not rule out a video game adaptation of other novels.
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina |-A Dubai-based developer signed a 4.5-billion euro ($5.1-billion) contract to build a "tourist city" in Bosnia, which has become a magnet for investment from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Buroj Property Development plans to build thousands of homes, several hotels, a shopping mall and a hospital in the municipality of Trnovo at the foot of Bjelasica, one of four mountains surrounding the capital Sarajevo. Work on the complex is set to begin in April.
"This is my life project and I hope that we will finish it without delay", the company's president Ismail Ahmed said at the signing ceremony.
"I sincerely believe in this because I am convinced that Bosnia is an important global tourist destination that has yet to be discovered," he said.
The Balkans country of 3.8 million people, 40 percent of whom are Muslims, has registered a significant increase in visitors from Gulf states such as UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in recent years.
The "tourist city" is the latest in a series of large property projects by Gulf companies.
A tourist resort built by a Kuwaiti investor around 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Sarajevo is scheduled to open on Saturday.
Elsewhere, a Saudi company is building a new residential area comprising more than 200 villas in the hills of Sarajevo.
The project is slated for completion by the end of 2016.
Lahore, Pakistan -A group of young Pakistani entrepreneurs have launched an Uber-like rickshaw app service that is quickly growing popular with commuters struggling to find transport in the teeming eastern city of Lahore.
Taxis and private cars are expensive to rent in the historic city, Pakistan's second-largest, and public buses and vans are often over-crowded.
Rickshaws are the only convenient form of transport, said Shahmir Khan, CEO of Travely, the company behind the service -- but many commuters struggle to catch one during the early hours or late at night.
A pilot version of the service has been launched in two upscale neighbourhoods.
The response has been "mammoth", 25-year-old Khan told AFP, adding that the company was quickly expanding.
"We are getting great response from the commuters and have started receiving calls even in the late night hours," he said.
Khan and his five friends were inspired to launch the service after working on a project to develop transport apps with the help of the government of Punjab province, of which Lahore is capital.
"After graduating in software engineering, we got an opportunity to be associated with the Punjab government's Plan9 which has been crafted to help young software engineers to develop their own projects, and we successfully launched transport applications for the commuters," Khan said.
"Then we conceived the idea to start a rickshaw app because that is only convenient transport available in Lahore," he said.
Sher Qilla, Pakistan -The hems of his jeans rolled, Rehmat Ali climbs barefoot up a tree to pick the grapes dangling from climbing vines, defying hostile religious injunctions against alcohol to celebrate a wine-making tradition that is older than Islam in the mountains of Pakistan.
Every autumn in the remote village of Sher Qilla in the foothills of the Himalayas, Rehmat joins the many agile young people taking to the trees for the long-awaited harvest under the watchful eye of their gnarled and chiselled elders.
Drenched in sunlight, bunches of grapes crown the treetops, where they are safe from the opportunistic reach of greedy farm animals.
Rehmat -- slim, and with an aquiline nose -- begins to pick the forbidden fruit. Working with his bare hands, he places the green and crimson grapes in a wicker basket that is lowered to the ground along a rope.
The fruit is tossed into the khor, a cement tank washed with icy glacier water, where barefoot villagers trample it to press the juice.
Then, beneath the permanently snow-capped mountains, the villagers concoct their tangy, golden wine with undercurrents of peach, as well as brandies of grape and blackberry.
"We learned from our fathers and grandfathers, who were already making wine," smiles Rehmat, who pressed his first grapes and tasted his first sip of wine at the age of "eight or nine".
Eighty-six-year-old Ali, balancing his beige pakol -- a flat, soft-topped hat -- atop his head, cranes his neck to watch the freshly-pressed juice hurtling towards the base of the angled khor.
Inhabitants of the remote area converted to Islam in the 16th century -- but, before that, they were Buddhists who, Ali says, were the first to make wine here.
"People have maintained this tradition after the conversion to Islam," he explains.
When he was a child, he says, "before the harvest, custom demanded we slaughter an animal and pray before we started picking the grapes".
The juice, he explains, was then kept in an underground stone reservoir. Once fermented, they would lower a hollowed out yak horn on a piece of wire to draw up draughts of wine.
"Not everyone can drink the wine," says Ali.
"Some are not able to digest it, and the ignorant lose their heads and fight", he said.
But, he adds, for others, "wine and alcohol nourish love and humility".
- Winter survival tool -
Majnoon Omar, an elderly man with a thin green cedar twig tucked beneath his topi, or circular cap, sings of this love.
Whirling languidly, like a dervish in slow motion, he recites his poetry. "You say that my prayers are not legitimate because I have a glass of wine / But you take bribes," he sings pointedly in Shina, a local language.
Majnoon is addressing his ode to those who, on the side of the authorities, reproach him.
One of the different currents of Islam that flow through the alpine region is Isma'ilism, a branch of Shiism led by the influential Aga Khan, the hereditary chief.
The present Aga Khan, who lives part of the year in France, forbids his followers from consuming or producing alcohol, in line with a ban in Pakistan dating from the 1970s.
Some might call the ban fruitless: the walls of some cities in the region are adorned with warnings against drinking and driving.
Villagers say they especially like drinking wine during Persian New Year, at weddings and other celebrations, and even to mark the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed.
Ismailis are not the only ones to produce alcohol in the region: Shiites and Sunnis do also.
Sabirullah -- a plump Sunni with bouffant hair reminiscent of Elvis Presley -- sees the harvest as a mountain legacy that he has no plans to give up.
"Our ancestors had to survive the winter, the alcohol was warming and relaxing," he said.
"This is part of our culture and it will not die as long as I live."
- 'But I like it' -
Local police, meanwhile, tolerate the amateur wine-making so long as no one is profiting from it.
Mohammad Aslam -- a member of the Ismaili education board who has been trying to persuade villagers in the region not to drink for 30 years -- says the only tool he has is persuasion.
"All branches of Islam, including the Ismailis, are adamant about the production and consumption of alcohol: it is 'haram', forbidden," he says.
"I can ask people, I can make them understand. But you see, it's very difficult to change the habits of people, the cultural habits of the people."
The elderly singer Majnoon, for one, remains defiant. "Religious leaders are no-one to command or control my life," he retorts.
"From a religious point of view... people used to say that we shouldn't drink. It is not so much that it is a sin or forbidden, but that it is not good for your health.
"But I am used to it and I like it."
