■ China
Striptease funerals banned
Striptease send-offs at funerals may become a thing of the past after five people were arrested for organizing the intimate farewells, state media reported on Wednesday. Police swooped last week after two groups of strippers gave "obscene performances" at a farmer's funeral in Donghai County, Jiangsu Province, Xinhua news agency said. The disrobing served a higher purpose, the report noted. "Striptease used to be a common practice at funerals in Donghai's rural areas to allure viewers," it said. "Local villagers believe that the more people who attend the funeral, the more the dead person is honored."
■ China
Centenarian gets pacemaker
A 107-year-old woman has become the oldest person in the country to be fitted with a pacemaker, state media said yesterday. Zhai Xiuying, whose heart rate was only 20 beats per minute, had the operation on Saturday in Xian, home to the terracotta warriors and capital of Shaanxi Province. Song Qinggang, who performed the operation, said Zhai's heart rate had increased to 60 beats per minute. "She was able to sit up for a chat with us yesterday," Song told the news agency. The patient's daughter said a sense of humor, healthy appetite and exercise had contributed to her long life.
■ China
Softer line on drugs mooted
The government is considering forbidding state drug rehabilitation centers from physically punishing or verbally humiliating drug addicts in an effort to adopt a more humanitarian approach in its anti-drug policy, state media said yesterday. The ban is part of a draft anti-drug law currently being reviewed by the legislature.
■ Australia
Rapist's dad hired `hitman'
The father of a rapist was jailed for 14 years yesterday for paying a "hitman," who was actually an undercover police officer, to kill his son's teenage victim. During his trial, the prosecutor said Chaouki Bou-Antoun, 51, had paid an undercover police officer a deposit of A$3,000 (US$2,280) to kill his son's 16-year-old rape victim, reported local media. The father and son planned to pay the "hitman" a total of A$23,000 to have the girl raped then shot, the prosecutor said. The son, Khater Bou-Antoun, was jailed in May for rape and for attempting to arrange his victim's murder. When he was arrested he recruited his father to hire a "hitman" to murder the girl and secure his son's release before trial.
■ Cambodia
Foot-and-mouth thwarted
About 1,000 cattle have been infected with foot-and-mouth disease since an outbreak began in late June, but most of the cows have since recovered, an official said yesterday. Only 20 have died of the disease in northeastern Kartie Province, said Kao Phal, the animal health director at the agriculture ministry. Hundreds more cattle have been infected in eastern and northeastern parts of the country, he said. "But most of the infected cows have recovered. Only a small number of them are still sick," Kao Phal said. "The situation is not so serious, but it has affected farming activities in some places," he said.
■ Philippines
Marines kill militant
One Muslim militant was killed and four Marines wounded in a clash on Jolo, an official said yesterday. Troops out on patrol ran into an undetermined number of Abu Sayyaf militants near the town of Patikul at dawn, triggering the fighting, Marine spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ariel Caculitan said. One gunman was killed, while four soldiers were wounded, Caculitan said, adding that troops were conducting follow up operations in the area. The Abu Sayyaf is on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations and is blamed for the Philippines' worst terrorist attacks. It is also responsible for a spate of kidnappings, killings and bombings targeting foreigners and locals.
■ Myanmar
Prison visits may resume
The International Red Cross said yesterday it hoped to win permission from military rulers to resume visits to prisons and labor camps which were suspended by the junta late last year. Patrick Vial, the representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), met Home Minister Major General Maung Oo in the new jungle capital of Nay Pyi Taw, spokeswoman Fiona Terry said. "I can't say for sure before they get back to Yangon [tomorrow] afternoon, but I'm optimistic about the outcome of their meeting with the Home Minister," said Fiona Terry, an ICRC spokeswoman.
■ India
Pretty woman for Gere
Bollywood star and former Miss Universe Sushmita Sen,30, will co-star with Richard Gere in a new movie titled The Expat, the actress said. "I have already signed [up for] the film. And yes, Richard Gere plays the male lead," Sen told the Times of India in an interview published yesterday. The film will be directed by US-based Sutapa Ghosh, she said. Sen will play the title role of a foreigner living abroad. Sen was crowned Miss India in 1994, and went on to win the Miss Universe pageant.
■ Austria
Robber holds up town hall
A would-be robber was arrested after he tried to hold up his local town hall, mistaking it for a bank, police said on Wednesday. Wearing a mask and waving a toy pistol, the unemployed man burst into the town hall in the village of Poggersdorf in the south and shouted: "Hold-up, hold-up!" The building has a sign signaling there is a cash point on the outside wall, police said. He realized his mistake when an employee explained to him where he was, police said in a statement, adding he fled to a nearby wood. The 34-year-old man was arrested when he came back later to pick up his motorbike.
■ Astronomy
Pluto a planet no more
Pluto was stripped of its status as a planet yesterday when scientists from around the world redefined it as a "dwarf planet," leaving just eight classical planets in the solar system. Discovered in 1930, Pluto has traditionally been considered the ninth planet, and furthest from the sun, in the solar system. However, the first definition of a planet approved after a heated debate among some 2,500 scientists and astronomers drew a clear distinction between Pluto and the other eight planets. The need to define what it takes to be a planet stems from technological advances that enable astronomers to look further into space and better measure objects.
■ Sudan
Ruling party rejects UN plan
The country's governing party has rejected as unacceptable a draft UN resolution on the deployment of peacekeepers to the strife-torn region of Darfur and issued a sharp warning to its sponsors, the US and Britain. "The draft resolution is worse than previous ones as it is an attempt to impose complete tutelage on the Sudan," National Congress Party Chairman Ghazi Salah Eldin Atabani was quoted as saying after a meeting on Wednesday. "Any state that sponsors this draft resolution will be regarded as assuming a hostile attitude against the Sudan," said the official, describing the draft as "unacceptable and not negotiable."
■ United Kingdom
Monkey kidnapper arrested
A man was arrested by London police yesterday over the theft of "Sponge Bob," a squirrel monkey stolen from Chessington World of Adventures last month. Two-year-old Bob, described as curious and friendly by his keepers, was taken from the Monkey and Bird Garden at the theme park southwest of London on July 17. He was discovered two days later when a member of the public spotted him being played with by children in Clapham, south London, and took him to a nearby police station. Detectives said they had arrested a 22-year-old man from Brixton, near Clapham, in connection with the theft.
■ France
Greenpeace outfoxed
Several tuna fishing vessels at dawn yesterday surrounded Greenpeace's flagship Rainbow Warrior II off the southern French port of Marseille to prevent the environmental activist group's vessel from docking for a second day. A reporter on board one of the boats saw a tuna vessel approaching the Rainbow Warrior II at 03:50 GMT, closely followed by a second. An hour later five boats were surrounding it, while others were approaching. Fishermen in Marseille on Wednesday started using Greenpeace's own tactics against it to prevent the flagship from docking.
■ Peru
Former president in hospital
Former president Valentin Paniagua, who led Peru back to democracy after the collapse of the corruption-ridden regime of Alberto Fujimori in 2000, has been hospitalized with breathing problems, a spokesman for his Popular Action party said on Wednesday. Paniagua, 69, who governed as interim president for eight months, was being treated at San Felipe Clinic for a "serious respiratory complication," Alberto Velarde, the party's secretary general, said. Luis Solari, Paniagua's doctor, said the former president was hospitalized on Tuesday night and was operated on for "inflammation of the membrane surrounding his heart."
■ United States
Escaped tiger shot
A rare Sumatran tiger was shot and killed by the head of a Florida zoo after it escaped from its cage and charged at a veterinarian, zoo officials said. Enshala, an 81kg female tiger, was being put into her night house when she slipped past an unlocked latch and headed toward a public area on Tuesday. A veterinarian shot Enshala with a tranquilizer dart but she then charged at him, and zoo president Lex Salisbury killed her with a shotgun. "I feel sick to my stomach," Salisbury, head of the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, told the St Petersburg Times. He said he felt he had to shoot to protect the veterinarian.
■ United States
Apnea may hurt kids' brains
When children have sleep apnea -- that is, brief but frequent episodes during the night when their breathing becomes blocked -- they may be at risk of more than just a poor night's sleep. Findings from a new study provide what researchers believe is the first evidence that untreated sleep apnea in children can cause neuronal brain injury. "This should be a wake-up call to both parents and doctors that undiagnosed or untreated sleep apnea might hurt children's brains," lead author Ann Halbower, from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said in a statement.
■ United States
Toll worker accused of theft
In what prosecutors said was a case of "highway robbery," a toll collector faces charges of stealing more than US$2,000 in tolls over eight months. While working at the Queens Midtown Tunnel, Robert Applegate allegedly stole US$2,077 on 64 occasions between December last year and last month, prosecutors said on Wednesday. Transit officials discovered the theft when they compared the number of vehicles that traveled through Applegate's toll lane with the money he collected at the end of each of his shifts, according to a news release from the Queens district attorney's office.
■ Venezuela
Mayor lashes rivals
A stream of insults during a city meeting left one local official vowing to file charges against a close ally of President Hugo Chavez, raising tensions ahead of December national elections. "I've never heard somebody bring up my mother so many times," Henrique Capriles, mayor of a small Caracas district, told a news conference on Wednesday. Capriles was responding to a tirade the day before by Caracas Mayor Juan Barreto, who unleashed a string of epithets at Capriles and another district mayor that lasted for minutes, calling them "cowards" and "fascists" and even suggesting one of them was prone to acts of bestiality. Capriles vowed to file charges against Barreto for "inciting hate."
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
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.
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