■ Hong Kong
Woman hacks man, kills self
An elderly Hong Kong woman suffering from poor health tried to kill her bedridden husband with a cleaver and then jumped to her death in the latest of a number of family tragedies in the territory. The woman, 67, had been taking care of her husband after he suffered a stroke but decided to end both their lives on Sunday after she herself fell ill, a police spokesman said. "She left behind a suicide note saying she was ill and did not want to live any more. She said she was killing her husband as she was afraid no one would take care of him after she dies," the police spokesman told reporters on Sunday.
■ Australia
Backyards bad for cancer
Australians are more at risk of contracting deadly skin cancer in their home backyards gardening, barbecuing or simply hanging out the washing than on the beach. A national skin cancer survey, "From beach burns to backyard scorchings," found Australians were twice as likely to get sunburnt in the backyard as on the beach, the Cancer Council of Australia said yesterday. Cancer is the leading cause of death in Australia, killing more than 35,500 people each year. Skin cancer is the most common, with more than 85,000 people diagnosed with the disease every year. "Australians seem to be associating sun protection with the beach but not with their incidental outdoor activity," said Dr Andrew Penman, spokesman of the Cancer Council.
■ Australia
Midnight Oil man burned
Midnight Oil rock singer Peter Garrett got a fiery reception in Canberra yesterday as he prepared for his new role as opposition lawmaker, with a government minister accusing him of lying about his voting record. The 51-year-old musician and environmental activist was a star recruit of the center-left Labor Party opposition when he agreed to run in a Sydney electorate for the Oct. 9 elections. But his candidacy was marred by accusations in the media that he had not been enrolled to vote -- an offense in Australia where voting is compulsory. The maximum fine faced by the wealthy rock star for failure to enroll is A$50 (US$38). However, now that he has enrolled electoral authorities will not impose a fine.
■ Malaysia
Anwar visits prime minister
Malaysian rebel politician Anwar Ibrahim met Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi at an Eid al-Fitr reception yesterday, which analysts say may presage future cooperation between Anwar and the government. The former deputy premier, once tipped to be Malaysia's next leader before an acrimonious fall-out with former leader Mahathir Mohamad, visited Abdullah at the latter's Eid reception in northern Penang state, an aide to the prime minister said. "Anwar Ibrahim attended the PM's open house. They spoke for 30 minutes," the aide said.
■ Australia
Rogue undertakers get flak
Rogue Australian funeral companies transport bodies in open-back trucks and station wagons, stack bodies on top of each other, and store them unrefrigerated in homes and warehouses, an inquiry into the industry has found. The Australian Funeral Directors Association has warned that "backyard" [unprofessional] operators have crept into the industry, leading to a stream of consumer complaints, the Age newspaper in Mel-bourne, the state capital, reported yesterday.
■ United Kingdom
House sold with corpse
A British couple got more than they bargained for after the discovery of a badly decomposed body in an upstairs bedroom of the house they had just bought, the Daily Telegraph said on Monday. The newspaper said the skeletal remains may have been in the US$180,300 derelict house in Birming-ham, central England, for at least two years and had escaped detection despite complaints from neighbors about a bad smell. The dead man, who has not been identified, is thought to have been sleeping rough.
■ Cyprus
New Atlantis claim made
A US researcher claims to have discovered the site of the mythological city Atlantis at a depth of 1,600m on the seabed between Cyprus and Syria, reported local media yesterday. Robert Sarmast, using sonar scanning, found remnants of "roads, drains and enormous walls," on the bottom of the sea off Cyprus, according to national television. The finds are "identical" to the descriptions of Atlantis by philosopher Plato, according to Sarmast, who said a hill found by the research team matches Plato's description of the acropolis of Atlantis "with perfect precision." To continue the study at the site 80km southeast of Cyprus will cost US$250,000, according to the researcher.
■ United Kingdom
Traffic bad for the heart
The risk of suffering a heart attack triples in a traffic jam, the British Daily Telegraph recently reported, citing a study by German scientists. The researchers found that an hour of exposure to the particles of pollution in vehicle fumes can trigger an attack. The study concluded that as many as one in 12 of all heart attacks were caused by such "particulate" pollution. The results, which appear in the latest issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, were compiled from a study of 691 German heart attack sufferers. Stress was ruled out as a leading factor because people in buses were as much at risk as those driving cars.
■ Namibia
Presidential election starts
Namibians began voting yesterday for a successor to founding President Sam Nujoma, who stands down in March after 15 years in charge. Favorite to win is Nujoma's anointed choice Hifikepunye Pohamba, the candidate of his leading SWAPO party, which is also expected to romp home with another landslide victory in simultaneous parliamentary elections. There are six other presidential candidates and two other parties contesting the parliamentary elections but they are given little chance of unseating SWAPO. Nujoma cast the first vote at a polling station in the center of the capital, Windhoek, as polls opened at 7am.
■ Mexico
PRI makes comeback
Mexico's former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, trying to fight its way back to the presidency, had two strong gubernatorial victories on Sunday and was nearly deadlocked in two others races. The PRI lost the presidency in 2000 after 71 years of one-party rule, ushering in what was widely considered to be the start of Mexico's true democracy. But the PRI has shown resilience this year, winning four of the six gubernatorial elections leading up to Sunday's polls. In the border state of Tamaulipas, with more than 50 percent of the ballots counted, the PRI's Eugenio Hernandez was the clear winner with 58 percent of the vote, nearly double those of his closest challenger.
■ Iraq
Two Allawi relatives freed
Kidnappers have released two women relatives of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, two pan-Arab satellite channels said on Sunday. But the Iraqi government said it had no knowledge of the release. Allawi's cousin, Ghazi Allawi and his wife and the prime minister's pregnant daughter-in-law were kidnapped by gunmen on Nov. 9. A group, Ansar al-Jihad, claimed responsibility and threatened to behead them within 48 hours unless all detainees were released and the siege of Fallujah was lifted. On Sunday, Al-Jazeera TV quoted unidentified sources as saying the two women were freed in Baqouba. Al-Arabiya reported that government officials had confirmed the women's release. Both channels said Ghazi Allawi was still a hostage.
■ Iraq
Officer charged in murder
A US Army officer was charged yesterday with murder and conspiracy to commit murder for his role in the shooting dead of a wounded Iraqi in a Baghdad slum, the US military said. "Second Lieutenant Erick Anderson of Company C, 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, has been charged with premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder," a statement said. Anderson had been put under investi-gation over whether he gave two soldiers permission to shoot a man whom they thought was so badly injured he would die anyway.
■ United States
Champ takes on burgers
Japan's Takeru Kobayashi, 26, the undefeated champion in hot-dog eating competi-tions has broadened his repertoire, wowing a US crowd by munching 69 hamburgers in eight minutes. Kobayashi took home US$10,000 after stuf-fing himself at the contest in Chattanooga, Tennessee. "Kobayashi is, without a doubt, the greatest eater ever to live upon planet Earth," said David Baer of the International Federation of Compe-titive Eating. Koba-yashi has won the July 4 hot-dog contest in New York City four years in row, this year breaking his previous record by swallowing 53 and a half frankfurters.
■ United States
Spiritual guru lifts Cessna
Sri Chinmoy, a 73-year-old native of India, has spent three days demonstrating his fitness by lifting three planes, a helicopter, three elephants and a group of Olympic gold medal winners at locations in and around New York City, media reports said. Chinmoy raised platforms off the ground for several seconds bearing weights up to 2,417kg at a time -- including one lift of a twin-engine Cessna plane with seven passengers aboard in Wall, New Jersey. The 1.7m, 84kg man told the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey that it's a matter of mind over matter. "The body has limits, but you can use the mind to control the body," he said.
■ Germany
Nazi victims finally buried
Remains of concentration-camp victims that had been kept for decades in a Berlin museum were interred on Sunday close to the Buchen-wald camp memorial. The cremation urns were lowered into the soil at a bleak cemetery where at least 400 former inmates lie. Mourners laid flowers for the unknown dead. During an inventory several months ago the German History Museum found urns of ashes and fragmented bones from several Nazi concentration camps. The urns were donated to a communist party research department in the late 1940s.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese