■ China
Sexuality park opens
China's largest adult-only sexuality museum and combined natural theme park opened in Guangdong Province, boasting such attractions as "penis-like" rocks and "vagina-like" caves, state press reported yesterday. The 2,400m2 sex museum is located not far from Hong Kong on Danxia Mountain near Shaoguan City, and is believed to be the biggest such museum in China, Xinhua news agency said. "Danxia Mountain is well-known for its special red physiognomy and called `a naked park' for its penis-like big stone, vagina-like cave, rocks shaped like breasts and naked `sleeping beauty,'" the report said of the park. The mountain was listed on Feb. 13 as one of the "28 world geo-parks" by the United Nations cultural arm UNESCO, the report said.
■ Australia
Getting tough on kiddie porn
Australia proposed new laws yesterday to crack down on child porn on the Internet, including 15-year sentences for pedophiles who use the Web to prey on children. The new legislation would "provide an avenue to prosecute Internet child pornography offenders Australia-wide under Commonwealth law," Communications Minister Daryl Williams and Justice Minister Chris Ellison said in a statement. As well as mandating 15-year prison terms for those who procure children for sex over the Internet, the planned legislation imposes 10-year sentences for those convicted of accessing, transmitting or making child pornography available on the Internet.
■ Afghanistan
Sweep nets Taliban
Three Taliban commanders have been arrested in a US-led sweep of southeastern Afghanistan aimed at crushing members of the former regime and their al-Qaeda allies, an Afghan army officer said yesterday. At least 12 Taliban fighters have been killed in the week-old offensive, which US officials hope will snare al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Rebels fired rockets into the eastern city of Jalalabad yesterday wounding two people, a Pakistan-based news agency said. The three Taliban commanders were arrested on Friday in a raid on a house in Zabul province, said General Fateh Khan, an Afghan army officer based in the southeast of the country.
■ Australia
Presley discusses marriage
Lisa Marie Presley has told an Australian talk show that she saw things she "couldn't do anything about" during her brief marriage to Michael Jackson, who has been charged with child molestation. In an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp's respected Enough Rope talk show, to be aired tonight, Presley said she felt powerless during her 1994-1996 marriage to the self-styled King of Pop, but refused to elaborate. Excerpts of the interview were released yesterday. Presley said she felt "powerless in a lot of ways, in terms of ... realizing that I was part of a machine, and seeing things going on that I couldn't do anything about," she said.
■ Australia
Police issue terror warning
The federal police chief said yesterday the country likely will be targeted by terrorists sometime in the future. "I don't think anyone has been hiding the fact that we do believe, ultimately, that one day whether it be in one month's time, one year's time or 10 years' time, something will happen [in Australia] and no one can guarantee it won't," Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said.
■ Vatican city
Pope says remember roots
Pope John Paul II, on the eve of becoming history's third-longest serving pontiff, urged young Europeans on Saturday to protect the continent's "Christian heritage" as the EU enlarges. The 83-year old Polish pope, in a live video linkup with 2,000 students of 10 countries who will enter the EU on May 1, said the great universities of Europe had instilled Christian spiritual values through the centuries. "It is vital that this rich heritage is not lost," he said. The pope, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, spoke in a relatively strong voice to cheers and flag-waving.
■ Bosnia
Karadzic still on the loose
Bosnian Serb police, under Western pressure to arrest one of the world's most wanted men, said they failed to find war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic in a large-scale operation on Saturday. The force said it had received information that wartime Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic, wanted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, was near the town of Bratunac, in a hardline nationalist region bordering Serbia. But the day-long operation failed to net the 58-year-old, accused of genocide against Muslims during the 1992-95 Bosnian war but still a hero for many Serb nationalists.
■ Sierra Leone
Top lawyer disqualified
Top British lawyer Geoffrey Robertson should not sit on trials of former Sierra Leone rebels at a war crimes court, but remains a judge of the UN-backed tribunal, the court ruled on Saturday. Lawyers for three indictees from the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which became notorious for hacking off limbs, had accused him of "grave bias" because of comments he made about the RUF in a book written before his appointment. Robertson's comments "did show an appearance of bias," the court said in a statement, but it ruled he was not disqualified from remaining an appeals chamber judge.
■ Syria
Soccer violence kills 14
About 14 people have died in the northeast Syrian city of Kameshli in fighting at a soccer match and rioting by Kurds, and the interior minister has gone to the area to restore order, residents said on Saturday. Interior Minister Ali Haj Hammoud went to the Kameshli area, near Syria's borders with Turkey and Iraq, to take charge of efforts to end two days of disturbances during which buildings have been damaged in several towns and up to 40 people badly injured, they said.
■ Saudi Arabia
Officials affirm terror trials
Saudi Arabia has tried and convicted a number of suspects arrested in connection with terror investigations, Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed bin Abdul-Aziz said in remarks published on Saturday. This is the first time Saudi authorities have acknowledged the trials of the suspects, detained over the last year in sweeping anti-terrorism operations. Abdul-Aziz also told the daily Okaz that the government would "welcome" visits by a newly founded national human rights group to prisoners in detention. "A limited number [of suspects] have been detained for the public good [in connection to the terrorism investigation] ... and some of those have received jail sentences and other cases are still in courts," Abdul-Aziz said, without giving specific numbers or charges.
■ United States
Drug charges for 96-year-old
A 96-year-old woman facing drug charges said she does not know how crack cocaine got into her wheelchair. Julia Roberts was charged with possession of crack with intent to sell, and with possessing a crack pipe, sheriff's officials said. A search warrant for her arrest said deputies have twice before seized crack at the mobile home she shared with her son, Harold Roberts, 61. The son was charged with possession of stolen goods and his brother James with possession of moonshine. The Cleveland County sheriff's office said Julia Roberts, her sons and a neighbor traded crack for stolen property. An affidavit said an informant told deputies that Julia Roberts hid crack in her prosthetic leg during a previous search. She has since kicked her son out of the house.
■ United States
FBI to pursue Hoffa lead
The FBI will investigate a purported deathbed confession by a former Pennsylvania Teamster official that says he helped dispose of the body of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. The confession, said to have been written by Francis Sheeran before he died on Dec. 14 in a nursing home near Philadelphia, says he flew to Pontiac, Michigan, the day Hoffa disappeared in 1975, picked up Hoffa's body from his killers and drove it to a trash incinerator where it was cremated. Sheeran's daughter says the letter is a fake. "It's definitely a forgery. It's not his signature," Dolores Miller, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, told the Detroit Free Press.
■ United States
Britney rejects suicide video
Pop icon Britney Spears, reputed for her racy music videos, has resisted the temptation to simulate drowning in her bathtub for the video to accompany her upcoming new single Everytime, the New York Daily News reported Saturday. In the video draft the young beauty is depicted escaping from paparazzi after a booze-fuelled confrontation with her boyfriend. The star-crossed pair wind up in a hotel room where Spears apparently takes an overdose and slips into a coma, in her bathtub. The video was rejected by Spears, who said in a statement that she did not want a "fictional accidental occurrence to be misinterpreted as suicide."
■ United States
Grandmother held hostage
An unemployed man held his invalid grandmother hostage for nearly seven hours in a New York City apartment on Saturday, firing as many as 100 shots at the police through her apartment door before he was subdued by officers using Taser guns. The police received the first call to the apartment, where the grandmother and other relatives live, at 9:34am, officials said. Police say Adam Perry, 32, was upset at having recently been laid off from his job in the mailroom of the Sony Corp.
■ united nations
Aids plan faces collapse
A UN plan to provide 3 million HIV-infected patients in Africa with anti-retroviral drugs by 2005 is in danger of collapsing due to a lack of funds, UN and World Health Organization officials said. Some countries, particularly the US, are balking at supporting the project, Aids workers say, partly because the plan intends to use fixed-dose combination anti-retroviral drugs whose use is opposed by large pharma-ceutical companies. Only US$2.3 billion has been secured for the US$5.5 billion WHO project, and only the UK, Sweden and Spain have provided money to date, officials said.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of