■ China
Compulsory condoms
The capital of a remote province has laid down the law for prostitutes, insisting on 100 percent condom use to stop the spread of AIDS, the China Daily said yesterday. "The program makes condoms compulsory for all sex workers in the city at all times and in every entertainment venue," the China Daily said. "The goal is to reduce HIV/AIDS infections among high-risk people." It did not say how the rule would be enforced or how those who ignored it would be penalized.
■ China
`School' exploits students
A dance school in the southeastern region of Guangxi was under fire after state media reported it had arranged for its teenage students to work as bar girls in nightclubs, the China Daily newspaper reported yesterday. Xinhua news agency earlier reported the Guilin Intermediate Vocational Dance School sent 22 students to work in bars and nightclubs last month. According to the report, a 16-year-old girl who had never had alcohol before said she was forced to drink eight glasses of wine and some of her classmates returned to the dormitory inebriated and tearful.
■ China
Pearl River climate fears
The densely populated and heavily industrialized lowlands of southern China are vulnerable to a severe blow from climate change if investors and policy makers don't start preparing now, a Hong Kong think tank warned in a report released yesterday. Businesses operating in the booming Pearl River Delta region must consider the future risks and damage that could be caused by flooding from a raised sea level, heavy rainfall and more intense typhoons, the report said.
■ Thailand
Monk cuts off own penis
A Buddhist monk cut off his penis with a machete because he had an erection during meditation and declined to have it reattached, saying he had renounced all earthly cares, a doctor and a newspaper said on Wednesday. The 35-year-old monk, whose name was withheld for privacy reasons, allowed medical staff at Maharaj hospital, 780km south of Bangkok to dress his wound, but refused reattachment, hospital chief Prawing Euanontouch said.
■ India
Leap kills father and son
A man died after trying to break the fall of his suicidal father who had leaped from the eighth floor of their apartment building in New Delhi, a newspaper reported yesterday. Sudhir Chand Garg, 47, died in hospital after trying to catch his father Kailash, the Hindustan Times said. "His father took the plunge and Sudhir tried catching him. We heard a loud thud and saw the father-son duo lying in a pool of blood," a neighbor was quoted as saying.
■ Japan
Homeless woman killed
An elderly woman has died and several others were injured in a series of apparent gang attacks against homeless people in central Japan, an official and news reports said yesterday. Miyoko Hanaoka, 69, was found dead on Monday near the Oto river in Okazaki City, in Aichi Prefecture, a local police official said. She died of loss of blood from broken ribs and a ruptured internal organ, he said. The official also said that the police were looking into several other cases in which homeless people were attacked, but refused to give details. Kyodo News agency reported that a resident witnessed four youths speeding away on bicycles near the river several hours before Hanaoka's body was found.
■ United States
Cosmonaut shanks shot
Mikhail Tyurin smacked a golf ball into orbit off the International Space Station on Wednesday to raise money for the Russian space program. However, NASA officials in Houston, Texas, said Tyurin shanked his shot. Tyurin, who has only played golf twice, made a one-armed swing with a gold-plated six-iron to send the lightweight ball on a journey estimated to take it around the Earth at least 48 times before it burns up in the atmosphere. He spent 16 minutes setting up the shot with the help of US astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and flight controllers. Canadian golf club maker Element 21 Golf Co paid the cash-strapped Russian space agency an undisclosed amount of money for Tyurin's swing to promote its new golf club that includes a space-program-derived metal.
■ United Kingdom
Northern Ireland bill passed
Britain's parliament has passed legislation allowing the Northern Ireland Assembly to be dissolved in January and an election held weeks later in hopes that a new mix of political leaders will revive a Catholic-Protestant administration. The bill, which spells out the government's intention to end the assembly on Jan. 30, completed its passage through the House of Commons and the House of Lords late on Wednesday night. It allows a new assembly to be elected March 7, three weeks before the hoped-for resurrection of power-sharing. The bill passed despite warnings that there is still no agreement on how to run the province's police force and the courts.
■ France
Sarkozy condemns clash
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday condemned violence during a protest by firefighters that pitted them against police and promised punishment for those responsible. Police said 15 police officers were injured, two seriously, during Tuesday's protest in Paris, and a police vehicle and another car were set on fire. However, a federation of firefighters' unions called for regional demonstrations on Dec. 5 and said there could be a second protest in Paris if demands are not met.
■ Netherlands
Big smoke-in canceled
A plan to roll and smoke the world's largest joint was canceled at short notice in Amsterdam when the organizers realized they could be breaking the law. The group had wanted to roll a 1.5m long pure-weed joint, stuffed with 500g of marijuana and smoke it in a bar. It had initially thought the attempt would be legal if 100 people each brought along the 5g of the drug tolerated by authorities for personal use. A police spokesman said: "We would definitely have investigated this. If you make a single joint with half a kilo of cannabis in it, it would cross the line."
■ Italy
Berlusconi trial a go
The trial of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and the estranged husband of Britain's culture minister will take place as planned after a higher court ruled on Wednesday it would not remove the trial judge from the case. Berlusconi and British lawyer David Mills face charges of false accounting, embezzlement and tax fraud in the purchase by Berlusconi's Mediaset empire of TV rights for US movies. The judge requested a ruling on whether he should remove himself from the trial to avoid a potential conflict of interest because he has acted as a judge in other cases involving Mediaset.
■ United States
Fake botox on market
A Florida couple who went to a doctor for Botox in 2004 and instead received injections of botulin, the deadly toxin that causes botulism, may have received almost 3,000 times the estimated lethal dose of the toxin, according to a new report in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The couple got botulism but survived. The report said regulators should tighten the rules surrounding sales of this toxin. "The issue we have is that there is an amount of toxin which one could buy fairly freely that could be used in illegitimate ways," said Christopher Braden, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and one of the authors of the report. "There is quite a market for this stuff."
■ United States
Workers cruise in Zambonis
Two employees of an ice skating rink in Boise, Idaho, have been fired for making a midnight fast-food run in a pair of Zambonis. An anonymous tipster reported seeing the two big ice-resurfacing machines chug through a Burger King drive-thru and return to the rink shortly after midnight on Nov. 10. The squat, rubber-tired vehicles, which have a top speed of about 8kph, drove 2.4km. The Zamboni operators, both temporary city employees whose names and ages were not released by officials, had to drive through at least one intersection with a traffic light on their late-night expedition from Idaho Ice World.
■ Bolivia
Energy plans uncertain
President Evo Morales said on Wednesday that conservative lawmakers' plans to boycott Bolivia's senate could prevent the approval of contracts signed last month by foreign companies as part of the government's natural gas and oil nationalization program. Senators from the conservative party Podemos said on Tuesday night they would boycott the Senate in order to block a sweeping land-reform bill proposed by the president. Podemos holds 13 of the Senate's 27 seats and needs only one more senator to join the boycott in order to prevent the body from reaching its quorum of 14 seats.
■ United States
Marine charged with murder
A Marine accused of killing his newborn son after his wife died of childbirth complications was charged four days after the three-month-old's death. Lance Corporal Robert Quiroz, 20, was charged on Wednesday with murder, two felony counts of assault on a child causing death and corporal injury to a child, Assistant District Attorney Robert Ellis said. He is accused of beating his son, Roman Quiroz, to death. Quiroz was jailed on Monday and is being held at the Fresno County Jail in lieu of US$1 million bail. He was scheduled to be arraigned on Monday morning. Authorities have not disclosed a motive for the slaying.
■ United States
Baby has heart operation
Using a piece of Gore-Tex fabric to make their repairs, doctors performed corrective surgery on a baby born with his heart outside his chest, and said that the youngster should be able to lead a close-to-normal life. Naseem Hasni underwent surgery to put his heart inside his chest hours after being delivered by Cesarean section on Oct. 31 at Holtz Children's Hospital. He remained in critical but stable condition on Wednesday.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was