LONDON (AP) – Hundreds of naked cyclists rode past Big Ben and the U.S. Embassy in London on Saturday to protest the West’s dependence on gas-guzzling cars – and to push for more use of bicycles.
The organizers of World Naked Bike Ride 2005 said protests were expected in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, the United States, Ireland, Italy, Latvia and Israel.
In London, crowds watched about 100 cyclists leave Hyde Park Corner on a journey that took them past some of the capital’s most famous landmarks.
Most of the riders stripped naked for the six-mile ride past Piccadilly Circus, Big Ben, Covent Garden, Oxford Street and the U.S. Embassy.
Some bikes carried banners reading, “Oil is not a bare necessity but a crude obsession” and “Support the trade justice movement.”
Japan to compile foreigner data
TOKYO – The Justice Ministry likely will introduce a new database to collate information on foreigners visiting and residing in Japan, and has requested a budgetary allocation for the system next fiscal year, ministry sources said Saturday.
The sources said the ministry can currently search online only text information, such as an individual’s name and nationality, and plans to upgrade the system to download images, such as people’s photos and fingerprints.
Records on individuals who in the past were deported after committing crimes also will be able to be accessed online under the new system, according to the sources, adding that those records are now available only by fax from the local immigration bureau that deported the individual.
Kidnapped aid workers released
GENEVA (AP) – Two aid workers kidnapped nine days ago while traveling to a refugee camp in Congo were released Saturday, according to the humanitarian aid group Medecins San Frontieres.
The two workers, abducted while traveling to the Jina camp in Congo’s violent Ituri province, were released without conditions and are in good health, said the agency, which is known in English as Doctors Without Borders. The workers were identified only as a French aid worker and a Congolese driver.
The Geneva-based branch of the organization has been working in Ituri since 2003, when the province was being torn apart by violent clashes between ethnic Lendu and Hema militia.
Aymeric Peguillan, spokesman for MSF Switzerland, said the hostages were handed over north of Bunia on Saturday morning
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