■ China
Defense official to visit US
A vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission has left for the US on the highest ranking military visit since a Chinese fighter jet collided with a US surveillance plane in 2001. Guo Boxiong (郭伯雄), who ranks second only to President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in the commission, China's top military body, left on Sunday for Washington at the invitation of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Xinhua news agency said. The visit was "the most important Chinese military exchange with another country this year," said Qian Lihua (錢利華) from China's Defense Ministry's Foreign Affairs Office.
■ china
Baby left dead in toilet
A young woman left her newly born baby to die in a Shanghai Internet cafe after she gave birth in a toilet, state press said yesterday. A cleaning woman found the dead baby in the bathroom of the Ruide Online Net Cafe in Jingan district mid-morning on Sunday, the Shanghai Daily reported. Police are on the lookout for a young woman named Shen, who is suspected to be the mother of the baby, it said.
■ vietnam
Highway to link to Yunnan
Vietnam plans to start building a highway next year that will link Hanoi with China's Yunnan Province, boosting trade between the countries, state media said yesterday. The project will cost more than US$1 billion. Construction is scheduled to start in June next year, Transport Ministry officials told state-run Vietnam News Daily. The 264km, six-lane highway would form part of a corridor between the city of Kunming in China and the Vietnamese port of Haiphong. The highway project is set for completion in 2010, the report said.
■ Japan
Fumes sicken three
Three people were rushed to two nearby hospitals yesterday after inhaling fumes at a restaurant in Tokyo's Ginza district, fire department officials said. One of the three people was unconscious, Tokyo Fire Department official Tsuyoshi Shiroshita said. He said the condition of the two others were not immediately known. The restaurant was closed yesterday, and officials were trying to identify the three and the cause of the incident. No other details were immediately available.
■ India
Husband unites wife, lover
In a scene which could have come from the Bollywood movie, Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam (I give you my heart), a husband in the east state of Orissa has allowed his wife to return to her lover, even hosting her second wedding with help from villagers. The incident happened in the village of Ishwarpur, police said. Niranjan Rout, 28 married a woman called Pinky on July 7 in an arranged match, local police officer Satish Chandra Ray said. However she confessed to her new husband that she loved Abhiram Das from the same village but could not marry him because of caste issues. Instead of becoming angry Rout decided to let her live with the man she loved, Ray said.
■ Malaysia
Couple makes leap of faith
A couple celebrated their 37th wedding anniversary on Sunday by jumping out of an aircraft at 2,700m in their first-ever parachute jump, a news report said. Cheah Sum Beng, 64, and wife Choo Kit Har, 61, earned themselves an entry in the Malaysia Book of Records as the oldest pair to skydive from a helicopter, the national news agency Bernama said. They went into a 30-second freefall before opening their parachute, Bernama said. It was a true leap of faith, because neither had skydived before, it said. Cheah, a company manager, told reporters that the curiosity and the will to face adversity made them take up the challenge.
RSS