Zombie fad rises in tough times

Fans participate in ''Zombie Walk: San Diego'' during Comic-Con International 2012 on July 13, 2012 in San Diego. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

ZOMBIES seem to be everywhere these days.

In the popular American TV series The Walking Dead humans struggle to escape from a pack of zombies hungry for flesh.

Prank alerts have warned of a zombie apocalypse on radio stations in a handful of US states. And across the country, zombie wannabes in tattered clothes occasionally fill local parks, gurgling moans of the undead.

Are these just unhealthy obsessions with death and decay? To Clemson University professor Sarah Lauro, the phenomenon isn't harmful or a random fad, but part of a historical trend that mirrors a level of cultural dissatisfaction and economic upheaval.

Ms Lauro, who teaches English at Clemson, studied zombies while working on her doctoral degree at the University of California at Davis. Ms Lauro said she keeps track of zombie movies, TV shows and video games, but her research focuses primarily on the concept of the "zombie walk," a mass gathering of people who, dressed in the clothes and makeup of the undead, stagger about and dance.

It's a fascination that, for Ms Lauro, a self-described "chicken," seems unnatural. Disinterested in violent movies or games, Ms Lauro said she finds herself now taking part in both in an attempt to further understand what makes zombie-lovers tick.

"I hate violence," she said. "I can't stand gore. So it's a labour, but I do it."

Actors dressed as zombies promoting the US zombie series The Walking Dead shamble along the Brooklyn Bridge. Picture: AP

The zombie mob originated in 2003 in Toronto, Ms Lauro said, and popularity escalated dramatically in the United States in 2005, alongside a rise in dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq.

"It was a way that the population was getting to exercise the fact that they felt like they hadn't been listened to by the Bush administration," Ms Lauro said.

"Nobody really wanted that war, and yet we were going to war anyway."

The mid- to late 2000s also saw an uptick in overall zombie popularity, perhaps prompted in part by the release of post-apocalyptic movies including Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later.

As of last year, Ms Lauro said, zombie walks had been documented in 20 countries. The largest gathering drew more than 4000 participants at the New Jersey Zombie Walk in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in October 2010, according to Guinness World Records.

"We are more interested in the zombie at times when as a culture we feel disempowered," Ms Lauro said.

"And the facts are there that, when we are experiencing economic crises, the vast population is feeling disempowered. ... Either playing dead themselves ... or watching a show like Walking Dead provides a great variety of outlets for people."

But, Ms Lauro pointed out, the display of dissatisfaction isn't always a conscious expression of that feeling of frustration.

"If you were to ask the participants, I don't think that all of them are very cognisant of what they're saying when they put on the zombie makeup and participate," she said.

"To me, it's such an obvious allegory. We feel like, in one way, we're dead."
 

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Recovering Queen to miss service

Queen Elizabeth II walks with a member of nursing staff as she leaves King Edward VII Hospital in London after being admitted suffering from gastroenteritis. Source: AFP

THE Queen will miss today's Commonwealth Day service in London as she is still recovering from the symptoms of gastroenteritis, Buckingham Palace said.

The 86-year-old was admitted to hospital for the first time in 10 years last week due to the illness. She was discharged last Monday after an overnight stay in a private London hospital.

The monarch, who is the head of the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations, will not attend the service at Westminster Abbey, the palace said.

The Queen's 91-year-old husband Prince Philip will now be the only senior British royal at the service, which will be attended by Commonwealth ambassadors, or high commissioners, from around the world and will feature an address from Virgin tycoon Richard Branson.

The BBC, Britain's publicly-funded national broadcaster, reported that doctors had recommended it would be best for the queen not to sit through an hour-long church service.

The monarch will still attend an evening reception where she will sign the new Commonwealth charter, a document that includes commitments to gay rights among other issues, the palace said.

All of the Commonwealth nations adopted the charter in December. The 16-point charter aims to protect democracy, the rule of law, international security and free speech.

"We are implacably opposed to all forms of discrimination, whether rooted in gender, race, colour, creed, political belief or other grounds,'' the document reads

The Queen is head of state of 16 Commonwealth realms including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Her titles also include head of the Commonwealth, which mainly groups territories of the former British empire.
 

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Who was the India gang-rape suspect?

The mother of Ram Singh, the man accused of driving the bus on which a 23-year-old student was gang raped in December 2012, cries after he was found dead in his cell. Picture: AP Source: AP

RAM Singh, the 34-year-old Delhi gang-rape suspect who died in his cell, was a heavy-drinking migrant who was ready to accept his punishment for taking part in the crime, family and neighbours say.

Singh was accused by police of being the ringleader in the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi last December in a case that prompted outrage and soul-searching over India's treatment of women.

He, along with his younger brother Mukesh - another of the six suspects on trial for murder, rape and kidnap - moved to the capital in the early 1990s to escape grinding poverty in their native village in the western state of Rajasthan.

The family found a place in the Ravi Dass Camp slum - a maze of narrow lanes, open drains and mud-and-brick houses with corrugated metal rooftops - while the brothers went on to look for jobs as bus drivers or labourers.

"He made a mistake - he admitted that to us - but even God forgives one mistake," Singh's distraught mother Kalyani Devi said after hearing of his death in top-security Tihar Jail on Monday morning.

"He was not even given a chance to repent," she sobbed, despite the fact that Singh, along with his co-accused, had denied all charges.

On the night of the December 16 attack the suspects allegedly gathered at the family home for dinner and drinks before taking the bus for a joyride, luring on board passengers who mistook the vehicle for genuine public transport.

Indian policemen stand guard as an ambulance leaves the main entrance of Tihar Jail in New Delhi. Ram Singh, accused of the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in December 2012, has reportedly been found hanged in jail while in solitary confinement, prompting outrage from the victim's family. Picture: AFP

After her male friend was beaten up the victim was repeatedly raped before being sexually assaulted with an iron bar, leading to severe internal injuries that would claim her life 13 days later.

Some neighbours recalled Singh, who was slightly built with narrow, slanting eyes, as a troublemaker whose drinking grew worse after his wife's death in 2008.

"They used to drink and get into fights with people," said Kajal, a 21-year-old college student who lived next door to the Singh brothers.

"When I got to know about his death this morning, I felt nothing. He would have died anyway. It is just that he decided to end his life a little earlier."

Singh's father Mange Lal said that his son had been resigned to facing the death penalty when sentences are handed down by the court, which has been hearing the case since January.

"My son told me that he was ashamed by what had happened on 16 December. He said that he would accept whatever punishment was given to him by the court," he said.

An artist works on a banner calling for the death sentence for rapists who fatally attacked a woman on a bus, promoting national outrage. Picture: AFP

Singh leaves behind a young boy aged four or five whom he legally adopted, neighbours said. The child is thought to be the son of Singh's late wife from a previous relationship.

Singh was the first of the accused to be arrested when police pulled over the private bus allegedly used in the attack, which was normally used to ferry schoolchildren.

Detectives' suspicions were aroused because the seats of the bus had been freshly cleaned.

"He pretended as if it was just another normal day and he was back to work," Chhaya Sharma, a deputy commissioner of police who was in charge of the gang-rape investigation, told AFP in a recent interview.

On Monday, journalists crowded outside Singh's shack while a small group of policemen stood nearby and watched.

People in the area said they resented the spotlight the case had shone on their locality.

"We live in constant fear of the unknown. We don't like the sudden attention. We are used to our normal, everyday life," said Seema Singh, a 24-year-old neighbour.

During a life of anonymous labour and poverty common to many migrants to the capital, Singh had once previously entered the public limelight when he appeared on a reality TV show hosted by former top police officer Kiran Bedi in 2010.

On the program the widower was publicly accused by a former employer of drink driving and irresponsible behaviour.
 

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S Korea generals slammed for golf game

Golf is a hugely popular sport in South Korea and political and military leader's obsession with the game has led to controversy in the past. Picture: AP/Yonhap, Kim Ho-chun. Source: AP

SOUTH Korea is looking into reports that top military officials played golf instead of tending to surging tensions with North Korea.

Various newspapers reported that a military golf course in Seoul was crowded with senior army officers, including ranking generals, on Saturday and Sunday.

South Korea is currently bracing for a possible military provocation from North Korea, which has announced it is scrapping the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, as well as separate peace pacts signed with Seoul.

"The office of the senior civil affairs secretary has immediately launched an inquiry to determine what has exactly happened regarding the reports about military golf," presidential spokesman Yoon Chang-Jung told reporters.

The defense ministry confirmed some generals had played golf at the weekend, but stressed they did not include commanders in sensitive positions.

Golf is enormously popular in South Korea - both as a sport and a networking opportunity.

In 2006 then prime minister Lee Hae-Chan stepped down after a golf outing with businessmen sparked a criminal investigation into alleged influence-peddling.

In 2007, the air force chief resigned after playing golf while the country was mourning the death of a Korean soldier in Afghanistan, and in 2009 the defence ministry sacked the military's chief medical officer and court-martialled 50 military doctors for playing while on duty.

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Slum joy as Chavez returns home

A supporter of the late President Hugo Chavez weeps outside of his funeral in Caracas. Chavez will be moved to a barracks where he will lie in state for longer and then be embalmed. Picture: AFP/Ronaldo Schemidt Source: AFP

EVEN in death Hugo Chavez is courting his political base after plans to display his remains in a slum were greeted with joy by residents.

The late Venezuela president's embalmed body will be coming soon to permanent display in an old military barracks-turned-museum in the "January 23" slum.

Residents of the hilltop barrio - where orange, yellow and blue cinderblock and tin-roof houses are precariously perched on picturesque steep slopes - could not be more pleased to welcome a hero home.

"I am so proud... It is such an honor for our neighborhood" to host the mausoleum in the sprawling red and gold Spanish colonial-style building, said Iraima Diaz, 39.

"I live in that little green house, right over there," she said excitedly, pointing to a humble abode across from the former barracks serving as a makeshift military museum.

It was from there on February 4, 1992, that the former paratrooper Chavez led a failed coup attempt that put him on the local political map.

Chavez, whose body has been on display in an open casket at a military academy since last Wednedsay, will be moved to the museum on Friday.

But his time there could be short.

Acting President Nicolas Maduro announced on Sunday that the government would seek a constitutional amendment to move him to the national pantheon next to South American independence hero Simon Bolivar. This could lead to a national referendum on April 14, the day of a presidential election to succeed him.

On "February 4 Square," which abuts the barracks barred to journalists at the time, neighbours are beside themselves with the unexpected honor of hosting Chavez's mausoleum.

Just beneath the building on the hillside is a giant red and white sign reading "4-F" that can be seen from afar. It refers again to the date Chavez rose up against then president Carlos Andre Perez.

For his followers, it is a symbol of the start of the government putting the poor first and taking on the old political party system. The government had been dominated mostly by the wealthy for decades during which the poor made precious little progress.

Even in 1992, the building already had become a Museum of Military History, "but Chavez picked it as his base for the coup attempt because it is fairly close to the presidential palace," said historian Agustin Blanco Munoz.

Once the "Comandante" was elected to lead Venezuela in 1998, the neighbourhood became among the most storied Chavez political strongholds.

It enjoys all the symbols of Chavez's socialist state-led neighborhood development: a medical center, a state food shop and a museum.

The walls are decked out in huge frescoes with images of the late president, Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara and local independence-era hero Simon Bolivar.

Sporting the Chavez supporters' trademark red beret, Diaz said that while she is honored by the late president's possible final resting place being in her neighborhood, she actually hopes that it "won't be for long."

Like many fervent Chavez faithful, she wants to see Chavez be laid to rest in the National Pantheon alongside his main national hero, Bolivar.

Carmen Rosa Diaz, a musical instrument maker of 51 sitting in the sunny plaza with her government-issued red hat and government-issued (red) toys for relatives, said she was "proud and delighted that something so important" would happen in her neighbourhood.

The area takes its Chavismo seriously.

Shopkeeper Isabel Torres said that mausoleum or not, she won't be hawking the dizzying array of Chavez hats, T-shirts, stickers, postcards and other memorabilia available in most area shops.

"His memory is so much more important than all of those things," she stressed.

Chavez lost his battle against cancer on Tuesday at the age of 58, leaving behind a divided country after a tumultuous 14-year presidency.

The government plans to embalm and preserve Chavez "like Lenin" to rest in a glass casket "for eternity," a move decried by the opposition, which claimed that it went against the president's wish to be buried.

Thousands of Venezuelans, meanwhile, continued to file past the open casket of the firebrand leader at the military academy, in a prolonged farewell to the man whose socialist revolution heightened class tensions in the country of 29 million.

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'Canadian Psycho' faces court

This handout picture released by Montreal police on June 5, 2012 shows Luka Rocco Magnotta, a porn actor dubbed the "Canadian Psycho" for allegedly killing and chopping up another man. Picture: AFP

THE most high-profile Canadian criminal case in years has landed in a Montreal court as a former porn actor appeared to face charges of slaying and dismembering a Chinese student.

Luka Rocco Magnotta, 30, made worldwide headlines last year after allegedly filming himself murdering his victim and performing lewd acts with the body before posting the images online.

He arrived escorted by prison guards for the start of a preliminary hearing, in which a judge decides whether there is enough evidence to prosecute.

Mr Magnotta faces first degree murder and other charges, including committing indignities to a body and harassing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Police say the occasional gay porn actor and male prostitute used an ice pick to stab his 33-year-old victim Lin Jun in late May before carving up his body, sexually abusing the corpse, filming the act and posting the video online.

Days after the killing, authorities discovered the victim's torso in a suitcase by the trash outside an apartment along a busy highway.

His severed hands and feet were sent through the mail to federal political parties in Ottawa and to two schools in Vancouver. The head was found in a Montreal park months later.

Lin's parents, who travelled to Canada from China last year following their son's horrific death, have returned to Quebec to watch the court case of a man they have branded "a devil."

Mr Magnotta pleaded not guilty following his arrest in a Berlin Internet cafe in June last year and subsequent extradition to Canada.

His lawyers said they would ask the judge to bar the public from his preliminary hearing, which is expected to last at least 10 days. It is rare for a preliminary hearing to be held behind closed doors.

If convicted, Mr Magnotta faces life imprisonment.

His lawyers may argue against jailing him, claiming he has a history of mental illness.

Born Eric Clinton Newman, he changed his name to Magnotta in 2006, after years of swapping aliases such as Vladimir Romanov, or Angel.

Police said he was known to change his appearance by dying his hair or wearing wigs, or disguising himself as a woman.

The media, however, dubbed him the "Canadian Psycho" because of the soundtrack from the movie "American Psycho" playing in the background as he allegedly butchered his victim.
 

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UK teen pleads guilty to terror charges

A 16-year-old boy has pleaded guilty to possessing explosive substances and bomb-making books. Picture: AP Source: AP

A 16-year-old boy has pleaded guilty to two terrorism charges in the central England city of Birmingham.

The boy, who cannot be named under British law because he is a minor, admitted to possessing two explosive substances, sulphur powder and potassium nitrate, and to possessing bomb-making books and diagrams, including The Terrorist Handbook and a book on how to make the explosive Semtex.

The boy came to the attention of British police after FBI agents passed on an alert they had received from an Internet user in the United States, according to prosecutor Mark Topping.

Mr Topping said the boy had made online postings saying that twenty minutes later he would storm a high school with a handgun and pistol and "shoot until the police arrive and then shoot himself.''

The boy also kept a notebook with notes about plans to kill pupils in a school attack, according to Topping.

Consultant child psychologist Dr. John Brian told the court that the boy had never been physically aggressive and that he had been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome shortly after his arrest in February 2012.

The boy has been detained since then under the Mental Health Act and is receiving therapeutic and medical treatment for his condition, Brian said.

He was sentenced to a further six months of treatment Monday by the Birmingham Magistrates Court.

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Reeva met ex days before shooting

Reeva Steenkamp meet for coffee with her ex-boyfriend of five years days before she was shot dead by Olympic star Oscar Pistorius. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

REEVA Steenkamp met with an ex-boyfriend just days before she was shot dead by Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, a new BBC documentary says.

Steenkamp had coffee with her ex Warren Lahoud, who the model dated for five years, the Sun reports. Lahoud said sprint star Pistorius called twice while the pair were catching up. Pistorius is facing murder charges for Steenkamp's death, but claims he mistook her for an intruder. Prosecutors believe he killed her intentionally after an argument.

"I said 'Is everything OK. I mean he's phoned twice already.' I asked her that question. She said 'There's nothing wrong.' Lahoud told the BBC documentary, set to air today.

"She seemed fine," said Lahoud, adding that they didn't really discuss their personal relationships.

"She didn't seem unhappy. She told me that she wouldn't be with anybody that she felt unhappy with, or she wouldn't allow herself to be with somebody like that."

Meanwhile, lawyers for Pistorius have filed an appeal in a South African court against bail restrictions imposed on the sprint star.

"The conditions appealed against are unwarranted and not substantiated by the facts," said the appeal, which was filed Friday in Pretoria, the South African capital, according to papers released by the Pistorius family.

Under the terms of his bail, Oscar Pistorius is banned from alcohol, foreign travel and is forbidden from returning to the home where the killing took place. Picture: AFP.

The appeal reflected the robust defense strategy of lawyers for Pistorius, who has been staying at his uncle Arnold's home in a Pretoria suburb since he was released on bail on February 22.

It is a delicate balance because the Pistorius family has also sought to keep a low profile, expressing sorrow for the death of Steenkamp on Valentine's Day.

The appeal was prepared by Ramsay Webber, a legal firm based in Johannesburg.

In the papers, lawyers for the double-amputee athlete argued against the requirement that he surrender all passports and travel documents, and refrain from applying for such documents pending the end of his case.

The lawyers said evidence presented at the athlete's bail hearing showed he is not a flight risk and should have the option of traveling outside South Africa as long as he has official permission.

The appeal also said there was "no basis in fact or in law" justifying terms under which Pistorius must be supervised by a probation officer and a correctional official.

Officials will visit Pistorius at his uncle's home at least four times a month, according to James Smalberger, chief deputy commissioner of the department of correctional services.

He's not under house arrest, but his movements need to be known to us so that we don't pitch there and he's not there," Smalberger said in an interview last month.

"We agree on 'free time' normally during the course of the day, and in the evening we expect him to be home."

The appeal against the bail conditions also objected to the requirement that Pistorius refrain from using alcohol or any banned substance, even though he had no intention of doing so.

"The mere use of any substance with alcohol in it will give rise to a transgression of the wide condition imposed," the appeal said.

In addition, the runner should be allowed access to the property at Silverwoods Country Estate where he shot Steenkamp, once the state completes its investigations there within a "reasonable time limit," according to Pistorius' legal camp.

"A blanket restriction on speaking to residents is unfair" and infringes on Pistorius' rights to consult people on the estate to prepare for his trial, the appeal said.

Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair had set bail at 1 million rand ($107,000). The 26-year-old track star was also ordered to turn in any guns he owns, and cannot leave the district of Pretoria without his probation officer's permission.

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