■ 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."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing