■ Australia
Vagrancy law repealed
Witches and sorcerers were to celebrate under a full moon yesterday after a state government introduced legislation to repeal an antiquated vagrancy law which made witchcraft illegal. Victoria state Attorney-General Rob Hulls introduced legislation to repeal the Vagrancy Act. "It is almost 200 years old and is steeped in the language and attitudes of Dickensian England," Hulls told parliament. "The times have long since passed when witchcraft and fortune-telling represented a danger to law and order." The legislation will most likely be adopted by the state parliament within two months. "There'll be several thousand pagans in Melbourne celebrating this news under the full moon tonight," said Gavin Andrew, Victorian coordinator for the Pagan Awareness Network Inc.
■ Malaysia
Teapot followers detained
Malaysian authorities on Wednesday arrested 58 followers of a bizarre cult built around a giant teapot, two days after the sect's headquarters was torched. The official Bernama news agency said those arrested were aged between 20 and 60 years and included a New Zealand woman. Cult leader, Ayah Pin, was not among those arrested and was believed to have gone into hiding after about 30-35 assailants armed with machetes and Molotov cocktails attacked the commune on Monday, torching a car and the roof of a building and scorching the giant teapot itself. Police have detained a 65-year-old man over the attack. The sect is in a strongly Muslim area that has suddenly lost patience with the cult, headed by the man who says he is God and owner of everything, his "Sky Kingdom."
■ Hong Kong
Mum pushed into the sea
A 50-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly murdering his mother by pushing her into the sea in her wheelchair. The 83-year-old woman was picked up from an elderly home in Kowloon on Wednesday afternoon and took her to the Victoria Harbor seafront. He then allegedly pushed her into the sea and jumped into the water after her in an apparent attempt to commit suicide, a police spokesman said Police were called to the scene and pulled the son and mother from the water. The man survived but the woman was certified dead in the hospital.
■ Norway
Expat BASE jumper killed
An Australian expatriate has been killed attempting to parachute off a notorious mountain peak in western Norway, his family said yesterday. Darcy Zoitsas, 39, died instantly on Tuesday when his parachute failed to open after he jumped off the the 1,000m Kjerag Peak, his father Dimitrious said. Zoitsas was reportedly the ninth person to die while jumping off the spectacular cliff since 1994. Zoitsas was an experienced practitioner of BASE jumping -- parachuting from high places like buildings, bridges and cliffs. BASE stands for buildings, antenna, span and earth. He was the third Australian killed in BASE jumping accidents in less than a year.
■ South Korea
Army on alert after attack
The army was on its highest alert along the east coast yesterday after two soldiers were robbed of their rifles while on patrol about 60km from the North Korean border. The alert was issued late Wednesday when three men attacked the soldiers with knife and fled with the rifles, 30 rounds of ammunition and a portable radio, the defense ministry said. The attackers, all in their 20s and in civilian clothes, approached the soldiers for directions before tying them up at knife point to steal their military gear, investigators said. They forced the soldiers into the trunk of a car and drove them to a navy base, where the soldiers were dumped.
■ Singapore
Blind date record pursued
Hundreds of college freshmen at a Singapore university met up with members of the opposite sex Wednesday in this record-obsessed country's latest wacky feat -- setting up blind dates en masse. Organizers at Nanyang Technological University paired 536 people into 268 couples who spent at least an hour together during a single 12-hour period. The accomplishment has yet to be submitted to Guinness World Records for verification. The previous record of 123 couples was set in London in 2001. The Singapore event was part of the university's orientation program and 50th anniversary celebrations. Last year, Singaporeans broke Guinness records for burger stuffing and cracker eating.
■ Australia
Diving pig goes for record
The country's most famous diving pig is bidding for immortality with a 5m jump that could land her in the Guinness Book of World Records, the owner of Miss Piggy. Tom Vandeleur, said yesterday. "There's no diving record for pigs anywhere," said. Miss Piggy is up for the high jump at the annual agricultural show in the far north city of Darwin. "Pigs are water animals. They love the water. They've got no fear of it. It's just the height problem they have to overcome ... She goes up the 5-metre ramp herself. She dives herself."
■ Spain
300 busted in lottery scam
Police have arrested more than 300 Nigerians suspected of running an international fake lottery scheme that swindled 20,000 people out of hundreds of millions of euros, officials said on Wednesday. More than 400 Spanish police participated in "Operation Nile," launched in April 2003. Authorities believe that the suspects may have defrauded people out of 100 million euros (US$120 million) a year over several years. Last year alone, 20,000 people from 50 countries including the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, the EU and the Arab world were hoodwinked into giving cash to the Nigerian ring, Spain's interior ministry said.
■ United States
Flaw may not stop shuttle
NASA will try to launch Discovery on the first space shuttle mission in more than two years next Tuesday, and may press ahead with liftoff even if there's a repeat of the fuel gauge problem that halted last week's countdown. Mission managers decided on Wednesday night to bypass another fueling test of Discovery and go straight for the real thing in an effort to understand and either fix or work around the fuel gauge failure. The most probable cause is an electrical grounding problem lurking inside the spacecraft. In what would be an almost certainly controversial move in the wake of the 2003 Columbia tragedy, NASA might also proceed with the liftoff if the fuel gauge problem recurs but is considered well understood.
■ Saudi Arabia
Envoy to US to step down
Saudi Arabia's high-flying ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, announced he was stepping down. The bon vivant diplomat was a key link in the alliance between the US and the conservative oil-rich monarchy, enjoying unusual Oval Office access and huddling with presidents at times of crisis. A close friend of the first president George Bush, Bandar was the dean of the diplomatic corps in Washington but time and time again showed he was more than an ordinary ambassador. At crucial moments he was at the White House: during the 1991 Gulf War, following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
■ United States
Daily showers could harm
Traces of magnesium found in household water could be sufficient to cause permanent brain damage to those who take a regular shower, according to a report published in the US journal Medical Hypotheses. John Spangler of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina and is team suggested that breathing in vapor containing manganese salts could be dangerous over the longer term.
■ United States
Crime leader charged
A Mexican who fled the US 10 years ago to avoid prosecution was charged in Denver on Wednesday with masterminding a scheme to provide illegal immigrants in major US cities with forged documents. Pedro Castorena-Ibarra, 42, of Guadalajara, Mexico, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Denver on counterfeiting and money-laundering charges after a five-year investigation by federal law enforcement agencies, authorities said. Prosecutors accuse Castorena-Ibarra of being the ringleader of a criminal enterprise that counterfeited Social Security cards, resident alien cards, drivers' licenses and even Mexican consular identification cards to illegal immigrants in Denver, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and other cities.
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
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HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was