Submitted by admin on Thu, 2007-03-15 08:00. ::
MOSCOW - A Russian woman paid a former convict to kill her 17-year-old son because she was fed up with sharing her small one-room apartment with him, the newspaper Izvestia reported yesterday.
The 42-year-old crane operator paid the man a deposit to kill her son, Izvestia said. But the would-be hitman told police, who set up a sting operation and arrested her.
The woman and her son shared the tiny apartment with their respective partners and there were frequent rows, which became worse when the son's girlfriend became pregnant.
Police believe Shigeo Kodama, 54, amassed the 3,977 panties, 355 bras and 10 pairs of stockings over a six-year period. He was arrested in February after he stole underwear from two houses.
"He didn't steal any other kinds of clothing. But as long as it was underwear, apparently anything would do," a police spokesman in the western city of Hiroshima said.
The 42-year-old woman's brush with disaster happened Tuesday morning when she slipped, jamming the offending 15-cm implement down her throat, the South China Morning Post said.
TOKYO -- The secret behind Japan's plunging birth rate? A record 39.7% of Japanese citizens aged 16-49 have not had sex for more than a month -- up five percentage points from two years ago -- according to a survey published this week by the Japan Family Planning Association. Among married couples, the rate was only slightly lower, at 34.6%.
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