■ 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.
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
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
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