■ India
Blonde-crazy Bollywood
Indian film directors are recruiting young, fair and blonde leading ladies from abroad to reach out to a larger international market, it was reported yesterday. A slew of new Bollywood films feature little-known actresses from Britain, South Africa and the US, the Telegraph reported. Flashy Bollywood director Subhash Ghai held lengthy auditions in London to find the female lead for his film Kisna. His latest discovery
is British actress Antonia Bernath. "My story needed Antonia," Ghai said, adding that she was busy practicing the dance steps required in every Bollywood film.
■ China
Life in jail for porn barons
Chinese makers and distributors of pornographic materials sent through the Internet, mobile phones and other communication devices will face penalties as severe as life imprisonment under new rules that took effect yesterday. The crackdown is part of a renewed campaign for greater control over the Internet by authorities, who have closed thousands of Internet cafes, stepped up surveillance and fortified filters aimed at shutting out such material. The tougher punishments also apply to phone-sex services, it said. Cases involving pornographic Web sites that have been clicked on more than 250,000 times will be considered "very severe," with convictions resulting in life sentences, Xinhua said.
■ China
Flooding kills 76
Torrential floods in southwest China have claimed at least 76 lives, prompting beleaguered officials to seek help from the military in rescuing hundreds trapped by mudslides and caved-in roads, state media reported. Days of heavy rain in Sichuan province and the municipality of Chongqing have swamped entire villages and ruined huge swathes of farmland, Xinhua said. The downpours, which began on Thursday, were forecast to last through today, the agency said.
■ Singapore
Bullies targeted by SMS
Singapore's latest behavior modification campaign is taking on schoolchildren
as the city-state tackles bullying through mobile-phone text messaging, local media reported yesterday. The campaign is organized by the independent, nonprofit Singapore Children's Society. The Straits Times said "Bully Free Week" starting Sept. 13 will be counting on "SMS-keen teens" to spread the anti-bullying message by mobile phone. Students will be encouraged to send the common "Be cool, be bully-free" message to their friends, the paper said. In Singapore, "taunting and name-calling are the most-often cited forms of bullying," the paper said, quoting the society.
■ North Korea
Power plants on hold
The international consortium overseeing a frozen plan to build two nuclear power plants in North Korea have agreed to extend the suspension by another year, according to reports yesterday. The decision by Japan, South Korea and the US to extend the freeze is aimed at making Pyongyang completely abandon its nuclear development programs, the Yomiuri Shimbun said. The project had been promoted by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), an international consortium set up in 1995. Board members consist of Japan, the EU, South Korea and the US. KEDO's board is expected to formally adopt the agreement at a meeting scheduled for Oct. 13 in New York, the paper said.
■ United Kingdom
Cigarettes worse than cars
Cigarette smoke produces 10 times more air pollution than diesel car fumes, according to research by British scientists. The study in the magazine Tobacco Control, published by the British Medical Journal, also showed that air pollution levels from cigarettes in a confined space were 15 times more than those recorded outside. The experiment was carried out in a garage in the town of Chiavenna, northern Italy, which enjoys low levels of outdoor particulate matter (PM). PM is the most dangerous element of air pollution and comes from various sources including cigarettes and car exhausts.
■ Turkey
Adultery plan defended
Turkey's devout Muslim leader, Tayyip Erdogan, has defended his government's plans to criminalize adultery, despite protests that have shown the issue is dividing the country. Erdogan, whose AK party has its roots in political Islam, said this weekend that outlawing marital infidelity is a vital step towards preserving the family and "human honor." Although Turkey aspires to join the EU, it did not have to adopt its "imperfect" western morals, he said.
■ Germany
Castles getting cheaper
The financial woes of former East Germany mean that people of relatively modest means can aspire to become castle-owners, with many edifices now costing little more than the land they stand on. In the village of Ribbeck, 30km from Berlin, one castle has been put on the market for just 104,000 euros (US$126,500). Dozens of other chateaux are on offer for similar prices. The collapse of Nazi Germany left much of former Prussia and Saxony, with their hundreds of castles, in the hands of the Communists. Political reforms turned them into schools, clinics and administrative centers, but with high unemployment and a virtually stagnant economy, the villages and towns that inherited them have no funds for maintenance.
■ United Kingdom
Babies favor attractive faces
Babies are born with an eye for beauty. Infants only hours old will choose to stare at an attractive face rather than an unattractive one -- and they also prefer to listen to Vivaldi straight, rather than Vivaldi backwards. According to Alan Slater, a developmental psychologist at the University of Exeter in southwest England, humans may have a biologically-ingrained preference for beauty. He presented a photographic choice to almost 100 newborns, on average only 2.5 days old. His subjects were held upright, looking at photographs or other imagery, while being watched by psychologists. "Attractiveness is not simply in the eye of the beholder, it is in the brain of the newborn infant right from the moment of birth and possibly prior to birth," he said.
■ Germany
Social Democrats trounced
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his Social Democrats suffered a stinging loss in the western state of Saarland on Sunday in the first of several regional elections whose outcome will measure the political price of unpopular cuts in social welfare programs. The conservative Christian Democrats retained power in the state by increasing their share of the vote to 47.5 percent from 45.5 percent , while the Social Democrats' share plummeted from to 30.8 percent from 44.5 percent. It was the Social Democrats' worst performance in Saarland, once a party stronghold, since 1960.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number