■ China
Topless presenter says sorry
A TV presenter issued a public apology after posing topless with two other women in hospital advertisements for women's health, the Beijing News said yesterday. Chen Dan, a presenter on Changsha TV's "Women's channel" in Hunan, drew fire from Internet chat-rooms and station bosses after her "Clever Girls Love Themselves More" advertisement appeared at bus stops and on billboards in Hunan's capital, Changsha. Chen, who was suspended from presenting duties, said it was a "public interest advertisement," the Beijing News said. "My intentions were good," the paper quoted her as saying. "I hoped to draw people's attention to women's health, but because the format was inappropriate it caused a huge backlash. In future I will choose more suitable ways of publicizing women's health."
■ Singapore
STIs on the increase
Sexually transmitted infections among men and women have increased dramatically in the last five years, the Straits Times newspaper reported yesterday. More than 3,600 women were infected last year, according to the Ministry of Health. This represented an increase of more than 150 percent over the 1,426 such cases reported in the year 2000. The highest increase was among women aged 20 to 24 years -- up from 376 in 2000 to 1,111 last year. The number of cases among men increased about 53 percent in the last five years -- from 4,825 in 2000 to 7,377 last year, according to the department of sexually transmitted infections control. Priya Sen, deputy head of the department at the National Skin Center, attributed the rise to the fact that more are coming forward to be tested.
■ Brunei
Three jailed for royal insult
Three men have been jailed for a year each for insulting members of the royal family by posting fabricated mobile phone video clips, police said yesterday. The three offenders, aged between 32 and 49, pleaded guilty in court on Monday and were the first to be charged under the oil-rich sultanate's Sedition Act. Details of the postings were not released in court but the video clips made it appear it was members of the royal family who were speaking, police said. The video clips were forwarded to others in November via mobile text messages and police were alerted.
■ Australia
`Murdered' runaway in court
A woman who hid for four years in her boyfriend's house and was thought to have been murdered by a notorious serial killer appeared in court yesterday charged with prompting a false police investigation. Natasha Ryan, 21, and her boyfriend Scott Black, 28, are facing trial before the Rockhampton Magistrates Court in Queensland state for failing to stop a massive police manhunt that began when Ryan ran away from home in 1998. A series of investigations costing up to A$500,000 (US$371,000) failed to uncover Ryan's whereabouts, and convicted serial killer Leonard Fraser was eventually charged with her murder. Police discovered Ryan hiding in a cupboard in Black's home following an anonymous tip during Fraser's trial in 2003.
■ Malaysia
Man shoots friend in tree
A 53-year-old man climbing a fruit tree in a village in northern Malaysia had a narrow escape when he was shot and wounded by a friend who mistook him for a monkey, a report said yesterday. Yahya Ahmad from the northern state of Kedah was putting protective coverings on jackfruits in an orchard owned by his friend, the Bernama news agency quoted police as saying. "The suspect was tracking a monkey which he said had been causing damage to his fruit trees that morning and saw the branches of the jackfruit tree shaking. He shot at the spot and hit Yahya instead," an officer said.
■ Japan
Thief returns cash, interest
A Japanese man who robbed a post office returned more money than he stole and turned himself in after deciding to come clean for the sake of his girlfriend. The 33-year-old stole ?340,000 (US$2,300) at knifepoint from a post office in western Tokyo in March. Ridden with guilt, he went back to the post office at the end of May and left ?350,000 in an envelope on the counter before running off. On Sunday, he turned himself in to the police, Asahi TV quoted the man, who works as a gardener, as saying: "I didn't want to get arrested when I took the money back, but I talked to my girlfriend about it and thought I should clear things up quickly for her sake."
■ Singapore
Nigerian jailed for scam
A Nigerian man was jailed for three years for cheating a Singaporean businessman who fell for his multimillion dollar Internet scam, court officials said yesterday. Ronald Emmanuel Emeka, 30, promised in April to give businessman Ng Yong Ngee a 30 percent share of a non-existent US$8.5 million commission for helping to transfer funds from a finance firm in Britain. In return, Ng would first have to come up with almost US$31,000 to help pay for the banking fees to transfer the funds to Singapore. Ng suspected something was amiss when payment of his commission was delayed repeatedly.
■ Guinea
Soldiers fire on protesters
At least nine people were killed and more than a dozen wounded when soldiers opened fire on student protesters in Guinea on Monday, police and witnesses said, as a general strike gripped the poor West African country. President Lansana Conte's government blamed the opposition for stirring violence during the student protests against the suspension of exams due on Monday. The general strike, which began on Thursday, is the latest action by unions leading opposition to Conte's ruinous economic record in mineral-rich Guinea.
■ France
Dog owners beware
Dog owners face a clampdown on keeping dangerous animals after two children died and a third lost an eye in a series of attacks. In other incidents, a 10-year-old girl was seriously injured when a rottweiler pounced on her in the street and an 89-year-old woman taking an evening stroll was injured by a dog. Last week Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy announced a tightening of the law covering dangerous dogs. "These dogs are real weapons. I'm in favor of zero tolerance and going as far as possible towards banning people from owning these type of dogs," he told a press conference.
■ United States
Coffee lowers cirrhosis risk
Drinking as little as one cup of coffee a day could help protect you from liver disease caused by alcohol, according to research published yesterday. People who drink one cup of coffee are 20 percent less likely to have alcoholic cirrhosis than those who abstain from doing so. And the protective effect increases with the more coffee you drink: People who drink two or three cups a day are 40 percent less likely to contract cirrhosis, while those who drink four or more cups are 80 percent less likely to suffer the disease. The findings, conducted by researchers at the Kasier Permanente, in Oakland, California, are thought to be the largest study to look at the inverse relationship between coffee and cirrhosis.
■ Germany
Fat saves man in accident
A 200kg German man discovered that being overweight can be good for your health -- if you get run over by a car. Police said that extra body mass prevented the 30-year-old man from suffering potentially fatal injuries when a Volkswagen Polo drove over him after he braked suddenly on his bicycle at a crossroads and fell off in front of the car. "It certainly helped him in this case," said Sven-Marco Claus, a spokesman for police in the western town of Gifhorn on Monday. "Someone smaller would probably not have been so lucky," he said.
■ European Union
EU starts talks with Turkey
The EU pushed forward with enlargement plans on Monday, conducting a first round of membership negotiations with Turkey and Croatia and signing a pre-membership agreement with Albania. The talks with Turkey proceeded after a compromise was reached over a demand by Cyprus that Ankara open its ports and airports to trade with new EU member states, including Cyprus, as it had agreed to do last July. The EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxemburg on Monday, urged Turkey to do just that, or face delays in its application. Cyprus then dropped its objections to the start of talks, and Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul departed for Luxembourg to join the meeting.
■ United States
Suspect's nephew detained
The nephew of a Chinese-American engineer charged in a scheme to send sensitive information about Navy warships to China was ordered detained after prosecutors called him a flight risk. A judge denied bail on Monday to Yui "Billy" Mak, 26, and ordered him held until trial begins Nov. 7, Assistant US Attorney Greg Staples said. Mak, a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, was arrested on Wednesday and indicted on charges of making false statements and failing to register as an agent of a foreign government.
■ Chile
Students create commission
Student protest leaders, days after ending a three-week strike for greater public spending in the classrooms, said they had named a "parallel commission" to advise a presidential council charged with drafting key education reforms. The students held a weekend assembly in which they decided to shadow the government's official 73-member council with their own student-chosen panel that would proffer its own suggestions for overhauling the nation's schools, student leaders said on Monday. New socialist President Michelle Bachelet, three months into power, saw her political honeymoon cut short by student marches, rallies and school sit-ins.
■ United States
Bag of food shuts airport
A food writer's bag containing recording equipment, honey, an oyster shell and seasoning rub was blamed for a three-hour shutdown and evacuation of Tallahassee's airport, authorities said. The electronic gear and organic material looked suspicious to five Transportation Security Administration officers who examined X-ray images of the bag, Quinten Johnson, TSA's security director at the airport, said on Monday. The way that the honey, electronic gear and batteries were positioned looked like an improvised explosive device, he said. Todd Coleman, food editor for New York-based Saveur magazine, was detained but later released.
■ United States
Storm lashes Florida
Tropical Storm Alberto, the first Atlantic hurricane of 2006, slammed into the north-west coast of Florida yesterday where thousands of residents had received the order to evacuate. With sustained winds reaching 110kph, the National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane warning along Florida's Gulf Coast on Monday. Florida Governor Jeb Bush ordered thousands of residents in low-lying areas to evacuate their homes and make their way to shelters. The eye of the storm was expected to make landfall after dawn yesterday near Florida's Big Bend, where the peninsula meets the panhandle of the state on the Gulf of Mexico.
■ United States
Head-on collision
Two police officers patrolling a beach near Oxnard, south of Los Angeles, in a sports utility vehicle ran over and killed a sunbather, authorities said. The officers did not immediately realize they ran over the woman and continued driving, police Commander Tom Chronister said in a statement. The officers, who were not immediately identified, had stopped on a small dune to watch a swimmer whom they believed to be in distress. When they saw the swimmer was fine, they drove over the dune and apparently over the woman's head, authorities said on Monday.
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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