■ China
More dogs to be slaughtered
A second Chinese local government said it will launch a mass slaughter of dogs after 16 people died from rabies in the last eight months, Xinhua reported yesterday. Officials in the eastern city of Jining, in Shandong Province, said on Thursday they would kill all dogs within 5km of villages where rabies was found. The announcement came just days after Mouding County in Yunnan Province beat 50,000 dogs to death after three people died of rabies.
■ China
Officials wreak revenge
Two officials cut off power to a hotel after they were not invited to its opening party and forced managers to drink spirits before they would turn the electricity back on, a state newspaper said yesterday. The officials, who were subsequently fired by the power company in Hunan Province, said they would lessen the power outage by one hour for every bottle of baijiu -- a strong grain-based alcohol -- two female managers drank, the Beijing Times said. The loss of power also caused chaos and black-outs for surrounding residents, it added.
■ China
Poll reveals AIDS ignorance
City-dwellers in China are ignorant about their risk of contracting AIDS, according to an Internet poll scheduled for release yesterday. The Zogby poll shows more than a third of male respondents admitted they go to prostitutes and found that men and women alike rarely discussed AIDS with their sex partners. "The survey reveals some cause for concern, as respondents present a dangerous mixture of complacency and ignorance about sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS," Zogby International said.
■ Japan
A-bomb victims win lawsuit
Atomic bomb survivors seeking government recognition that they suffer from radiation sickness to boost their compensation for medical expenses have won a lawsuit in Hiroshima, a news report said yesterday. Kyodo News agency reported that 41 plaintiffs won the suit at the Hiroshima District Court. The plaintiffs were also seeking ¥3 million (US$26,075) in damages.
■ China
Acid spills into canal
A ship carrying more than 200 tonnes of concentrated sulfuric acid ran aground in east China, contaminating a 10th century canal, state media reported yesterday. Environmental officers poured 200 tonnes of liquid alkali into the waterway to neutralize the acid after the spill occurred early on Wednesday in a section of the Grand Canal near Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, Xinhua news agency said. Navigation along the polluted section of the canal was banned for nearly 12 hours. The vessel, which was two-thirds under water, was due to be removed from the historic canal yesterday, the report said.
■ Philippines
Film star drops by for coffee
Film icon Jackie Chan (成龍) visited the Philippines yesterday for a few hours to promote a coffee shop he plans to open in Manila. Chan landed at Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport in a chartered private jet, airport authorities said. The martial arts star came from Hong Kong, which was being battered by typhoon Pripiroon. The same typhoon pummelled the Philippines earlier in the week, killing eight people. "I had a very tedious flight, I risked my life," he told reporters. "I love the Philippines. Long live the Philippines." Chan was in Manila to drum up investors' interest for the Jackie Chan's Java Coffee, his new coffee shop chain.
■ Cambodia
HIV-positive rapist jailed
A court has jailed an HIV-positive man for 10 years for raping his wife without using a condom, the first conviction under landmark AIDS laws introduced in 2003, court officials said yesterday. Meas My, a 40-year-old sailor, was arrested in January last year after his wife complained to police about his refusal to use a condom during sex, even though he had been confirmed as having HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. When his wife refused to have sex with him, he beat her and then raped her, prosecutors said. Meas My's conviction was the first in Cambodia under laws passed in 2003 allowing courts to jail anybody for 10 to 15 years for infecting, or trying to infect, another person with HIV.
■ New Zealand
Man poisoned by meatballs
A man survived after eating meatballs prepared by a non-English-speaking worker who did not understand the word "poison" on a bag, according to the New Zealand Medical Journal quoted in news reports yesterday. Making the meatballs for the first time at an Auckland butchery, the worker added nearly 350 times too much preservative nitrate powder to minced meat, thinking he was adding flavoring, Radio New Zealand reported. The victim collapsed 30 minutes after eating two of the meatballs and spent three days in hospital, lucky to survive such a high level of poisoning, a health officer said. The butchery has pleaded guilty to an offence under the Food Act and was awaiting sentencing, which could send its boss to jail for a year.
■ United Kingdom
Police ask for God's help
Police in eastern England are looking to God to help them catch vandals and burglars. The Lincolnshire branch of the Christian Police Association is setting up a "prayer watch" scheme to alert Christians to local crimes. As well as encouraging worshippers to keep an eye out on their churches and each other, the police said the scheme would allow Christians to use prayer to help catch criminals. "It's largely geared to protecting congregations and church properties which are pretty vulnerable places, but with the added bolt-on aspect of prayer," a Lincolnshire police spokesman told reporters on Wednesday.
■ Germany
Wife seeks police sex help
Police in the city of Aachen received an unusual call for help late on Wednesday when a woman telephoned to complain that her husband was not fulfilling his sexual obligations. After the couple had been sleeping in separate beds for several months without intimate contact, the 44-year-old woman woke the husband, 45, in the middle of the night and demanded he satisfy her needs, police spokesman Paul Kemen said on Thursday. When her advances were refused, a row broke out and she called the police and asked them to intervene, he added. "The police officials did not feel able to resolve the dispute, let alone issue any kind of official order," Kemen said.
■ Poland
Death penalty demanded
Right-wing President Lech Kaczynski has been condemned across Europe after calling for the reintroduction of the death penalty. Kaczynski, a conservative who banned gay rights parades when he was mayor of Warsaw, warned that abolishing capital punishment had handed "an unimaginable advantage to the criminal." Many European leaders are concerned by the tilt to the right in Poland. Europe's human rights watchdog warned that the reintroduction of the death penalty would be a "retrograde step" that would place Poland in breach of the European convention of human rights.
■ United Kingdom
Terror case takes on twist
A man shot during an anti-terrorism raid by police in east London in June was arrested yesterday on Thursday on suspicion of possessing and making images of child sexual abuse. Mohammed Abdul Kahar was detained shortly after an official announcement that no officer would face charges for shooting him in the shoulder. The Independent Police Complaints Commission said the shooting had been accidental and that the officer had not meant to fire. During the raid, computers were seized at the house in Forest Gate, with images of child pornography on one that Kahar is alleged to have had access to.
■ United Kingdom
Magnate ordered to pay
An insurance magnate has been ordered to pay his former wife ?48 million (US$90.6 million) in what is believed to be the biggest divorce award in British legal history. John Charman, 53, was told that his argument that he should keep most of the couple's money because he had earned it was old-fashioned and anachronistic. But the owner of Axis, a global insurance company based in Bermuda, denounced the ruling as unfair and vowed to appeal. The ruling is likely to have ramifications for future divorce cases involving wealthy couples.
■ United States
Brief thief facing nine years
Panty thief Sung Koo-kim may face about nine years in prison for stealing thousands of pairs of underwear from college dorm rooms, laundry rooms and campus-area apartments. He was sentenced on Wednesday to an extra 18 months in prison, for a total of more than 11 years. Under the plea agreement he signed, he could get out after about nine years, given time off for good behavior and credit for the time he has spent in local jails since he was arrested in 2004. Kim, 32, pleaded guilty to college-area burglaries and underwear thefts in 2003 and 2004.
■ Bermuda
Marlin skewers fisherman
Fisherman Ian Cord was recovering on Thursday after an encounter with a giant marlin, which leapt from the sea, skewered him close to the heart, and dragged him into the Caribbean. Card's tangle with a 4m marlin weighing more than 450kg was watched by his father Alan who was skippering the boat they were on. After Ian Card hooked the marlin the fish suddenly rose from the sea. "It impaled him with its bill, about two-and-a-half feet [76cm] long," Alan Card said. "The fish flew across the cockpit and took him out of the boat ... The marlin was on top of him. He had his arms wrapped around the fish and it was pushing him under." Ian, 32, managed somehow to wrench himself off the spike and resurfaced about 16m from the boat.
■ United States
Arnie to take on 80-year-old
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has agreed to play an 80-year-old table tennis champion who said he would donate to the Republican's re-election campaign only if he agreed to a match. "He should practice a bit," said Byng Forsberg, who has won nearly every table tennis trophy available to the senior set. "It'd be nice to have the ball go back and forth a few times." The former owner of a pest control company responded to a fundraising letter, offering his support with the challenge. Forsberg said he was not intimidated at the thought of playing the 59-year-old Schwarzenegger, whose competitive drive is legendary.
■ United States
Rock star dies
Arthur Lee, the eccentric singer/guitarist with influential 1960s rock band Love, died in a Memphis hospital on Thursday after a battle with leukemia, according to a Web posting by his manager. He was 61. Lee, a Memphis native who referred to himself as "the first so-called black hippie," formed Love in Los Angeles in 1965, emerging from the same scene as groups like the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Doors and the Mamas and Papas. The first multiracial rock band of the psychedelic era, Love recorded three groundbreaking albums fusing traditional folk rock and blues with symphonic suites and early punk.
■ United States
Child abuser charged
A single mother living with her family in a lakeside cabin in northwestern New Jersey has been arrested and charged with starving four of her five children so badly that one of them, an eight-year-old girl, weighed only 16kg, the authorities said on Thursday. The woman, Estelle Walker, 47, was charged on Wednesday with child endangerment and is being held in the Sussex County jail on US$200,000 bail, said William Fitzgibbons, the first assistant county prosecutor. Last week, the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services received a tip that Walker was abusing her children.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion