Aside from his extraordinary leadership skills which led to his being named "Person of the Year" by Time Magazine, Russian President Vladimir Putin will soon be recognized internationally for his athletic prowess. In particular his judo moves as he and an Olympic Japanese judo medalist will come out with an instructional video soon. Mr. Putin and Yasuhiro Yamashita shot the instructional video disc as a supplement to a judo manual. The disc is slated to be released on January or February, President Putin said Friday at the opening of a Toyota Motor Corporation's assembly plant near St. Petersburg.

Consumer electronics giant Sony unveiled a prototype hand-powered digital camera called the "Twirl N' Take. " In the same vein as previous hand-powered radios and flashlights, 15 seconds of movement generates enough power to snap a photo. According to reports, the "Twirl N' Take" is shaped like a pizza cutter and includes 3-megapixel mobile phone digital camera technology. Sony doesn't plan to market the device.

A woman died after jumping from the rooftop of a department store in Tokyo. A passer-by was knocked unconscious after breaking the woman's fall, authorities said Tuesday. Local Police Spokesman Tetsuhiko Kanehara said they responded immediately to the scene after phone-calls from other passers-by, finding the man and woman collapsed and bleeding on the street infront of the Ikebukuro Parco Department Store in Tokyo's Toshima-ku at around 1 p. m. on Tuesday.

A traveling exhibition based on broken relationships has arrived in Berlin where it is proving to be popular. Aptly named The Museum of Broken Relationships, it asks people in each city it comes to, to donate memorabilia of their terminated relationships, from brief flings to long painful divorces.

Thousands of Japanese commuters got a free train ride to work at 662 railway and subway stations in the Tokyo area on Friday morning, local newspapers reported. Train operators allowed the commuters to pass through 4,400 electronic ticket gates that temporarily failed to operate without using their prepaid access cards. The decision to give the passengers free access was to avoid confusion during rush hour.