■ China
Monks mix business, prayer
The first group of monks to complete an MBA course have begun reflecting on their achievements, state media said yesterday. Shanghai's Jade Buddha Temple commissioned Jiaotong University to design a degree focusing on monastery management, to help its monks mix business with prayer. The monks proved to be better students than their lay brethren, five of whom failed to get the degree due to excessive absence from class or failure to submit essays, the China Daily said. "Jade Buddha Monastery needs management just like a company," Chang Chun, the temple's general manager and a newly minted MBA-holder, was quoted as saying.
■ Hong Kong
Loveless trio die together
Three women who died together in an apparent suicide pact left behind notes saying they had "nothing to love" in their lives, a news report said yesterday. The women -- aged 31, 38 and 39 -- were found dead in the living room of an apartment leased by the eldest of the three, according to the South China Morning Post. The three women, whose bodies were found on Tuesday, met at a psychiatric hospital where one of them was recovering from a previous suicide attempt.
■ Thailand
Thaksin pleads innocence
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra yesterday insisted that his party had done nothing wrong as prosecutors prepared to ask a top court to disband it and its main rival over vote fraud charges. Thaksin's ruling Thai Rak Thai party and the opposition Democrat party face separate claims of election irregularities in the run-up to snap polls held on April 2, which have since been invalidated by the Constitutional Court.
■ United Kingdom
Horse feels the heat
An albino police horse is being protected from the heat with large amounts of high-factor suncream, Humberside police in East Yorkshire said on Tuesday. Police horse Blue, whose nickname is Sunny, has a rare genetic condition which means that he has no melanin and therefore little or no pigmentation. The police issued an Internet appeal for help to get Sunny through the heatwave and the pharmacy chain Boots provided the police force with liters of factor 50 sun lotion in huge drums.
■ South Africa
Zuma to sue media
Former deputy president Jacob Zuma plans to sue the media for millions over coverage of his rape trial, news reports said on Tuesday. Among those targeted are newspapers, a radio station and award-winning cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro. Members of the Independent Newspapers group and their staff alone are being sued for 125 million rands (US$18 million), according to the Johannesburg-based Star newspaper, a member of the group. Zuma was widely criticized for comments he made during the rape trial. He was acquitted in May.
■ France
The Jackal loses appeal
The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday ruled that eight years of solitary confinement for Carlos the Jackal did not violate the jailed terrorist's rights or amount to inhumane treatment. The court's Grand Chamber upheld a ruling of a lower chamber in January last year that said the lengthy solitary confinement did not breach the European Convention on Human Rights. But the court awarded the Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, 10,000 euros (US$12,800) in damages because he was not allowed to contest his long solitary confinement in a French administrative court. Ramirez was held in solitary confinement from his detention in 1994 until 2002.
■ United States
Breast-fed kids dryer
Breast-fed children are less likely to wet the bed later on, researchers said yesterday, probably because they have a developmental edge. There is strong evidence that in many cases bed-wetting can "result from delayed neurodevelopment," said the report from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. Breast-feeding is beneficial because of the role that certain fatty acids passed onto the infant play in brain development, said the study published in the July issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
■ Uganda
Rebel may receive pardon
President Yoweri Museveni said he might grant amnesty to a rebel leader wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Museveni has agreed to begin peace talks in Sudan with the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group. If those talks go well, Museveni promised the group's leader, Joseph Kony, would not be arrested. The Ugandan rebels, who have set up rear bases in Sudan and eastern Congo, are the remnants of an uprising that began in 1986 after Museveni took power in Uganda. The Lord's Resistance rebels were once backed by the Sudanese government. But southern Sudan, which has its own administration, is preparing to rebuild after a 21-year civil war of its own. It is now eager to help end the conflict because it wants to stop Ugandan insurgents from killing, abducting and attacking civilians.
■ Canada
Bears behind bars
The town of Churchill in Canada's far north will expand its unique "polar bear jail" to house more wayward carnivores and reduce the threat of bear attacks, an official said on Tuesday. The facility will also be cooled now over the summer to make the furry inmates' incarceration "a bit more bearable," said Shaun Bobier of the Manitoba Conservation Department. Polar bears that wander into town in summer or autumn are now captured if they cannot be easily scared off. They are held in one of 23 cells divided by cinder block walls until ice forms on nearby Hudson's Bay and then released, Bobier said.
■ Spain
Serial killer on the loose
Police in Barcelona warned on Tuesday that a serial murderer was targeting old women living on their own in the city. Residents were told to be on the lookout for a middle-aged woman who befriends the elderly, before strangling them in their flats. The killer is thought to have struck three times in the past month, including twice in the past week. Late yesterday, the Cadena SER radio station reported that the killer may have tried to strike again on Monday night. The victim, an 84-year-old woman, passed out as she was being attacked on her doorstep. "Three women have appeared dead in their homes in the city of Barcelona whose killings fit the same profile," a police communique said.
■ Spain
Cornering at high speed
Spain's worst underground train crash in which 41 people were killed was caused by the engine going at twice the normal speed and the possibility the driver passed out, officials said on Tuesday. Black box data showed the train in Valencia on Spain's east coast was doing 80kph on a curve through a tunnel -- twice the authorized speed -- when it derailed on Monday, the city's transport chief Jose Ramon Garcia said in a statement. Officials were waiting for the result of an autopsy on the still unnamed driver to see if it would provide further information on how the crash occurred. "The train accident was caused by excess speed," said Garcia.
■ Italy
CIA probe nets officer
An Italian intelligence officer has been arrested as part of an investigation into the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003, an Italian news agency said yesterday. The Apcom news agency reported that Marco Mancini, a top official with Italy's military intelligence agency, had been arrested, but provided no other details. Mancini is the first Italian to be involved in the probe. Milan Prosecutor Armando Spataro, who has been leading the probe, declined comment on the report. Egyptian cleric and suspected terrorist Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was kidnapped on Feb. 17, 2003.
■ United States
Man devours 53 hotdogs
A 72kg wonder from Japan set a new record by devouring a sickening 53 3/4 frankfurters in 12 minutes to win the annual Independence Day hot dog eating competition on Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. The feat earned Takeru Kobayashi, 27, his sixth straight title in the event, held at the original Nathan's Famous hot dog stand on Brooklyn's seashore. Kobayashi broke his own record of 53 1/2 hot dogs, set at the same competition two years ago. Thousands of raucous spectators watched the competition and Kobayashi, a top-ranked eater who once ate 7.9kg of pan-seared cow brains to win US$25,000.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in