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World News Quick Take

■ Hong Kong
Obesity on the rise
An obesity clinic is having to turn away patients because of the growing number of people seeking help as the population piles on the kilograms, a news report said yesterday. Doctors at the clinic claim that last year they carried out 180 surgical and non-surgical obesity treatments compared to two when the clinic first opened in 2001. Department of Health figures show that 1.6 million people are obese in the territory, which accounts for 23.4 percent of the population. A survey in 2004 found 240,000 people were morbidly obese.

■ Pakistan
Landslide hits van, 15 dead
At least 15 people were killed and three injured when a landslide triggered by heavy rains hit a passenger van in Pakistani Kashmir, police said yesterday. The incident occurred on Friday in a remote mountainous region, some 50km from the town of Kotli. "Rescue work is still underway because it was a huge landslide. We have recovered 15 bodies, including four women," local police official Mohammad Fareed said. However, he said it was still unclear how many people were travelling in the van.

■ China
Released panda beaten up
The only captive-bred giant panda to be released into the wild has gone missing after being badly beaten by a rival for territory, food or a mate. In a major setback for China's efforts to replenish the endangered species with animals reared in zoos, Xiang Xiang has broken at least one bone and could be in danger, a leading Chinese zoologist said. "Xiang Xiang has been badly hurt in a competition with other pandas," said Zhang Hemin (張和民), the director of the Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda.

■ Singapore
Hackers deface Web sites
Hackers broke into five Web sites, with one vandal leaving the message: "Israel = Terrorism," news reports said yesterday. The affected Web sites were those of Komatsu Engineering, an entrepre-neurial site run by Spring Singapore, the local campus of the University of Las Vegas, Quantun Learning Hub Education Centre and Fulbond, a Hong Kong-based company specializing in network equipment, the Straits Times said. No confidential information was stolen. Anyone convicted of unauthorized modification of computer material can be fined up to 10,000 Singapore dollars (US$6,535) and jailed up to three years.

■ South Korea
Robots used for training
With the birth rate at its lowest ever, medical students are resorting to robots to practice bringing babies into the world. Kyunghee University Medical Center in Seoul is the first institution in South Korea to use Noelle, a life-sized robot and her "newborn" to give obstetric students experience. "With this simulator training tool, we can conduct not only normal deliveries, but also complicated deliveries such as breech births [and] Caesarean deliveries," Professor Jung Eui said. "Students can practice in a very realistic situation with this mannequin." Students regularly crowd around Noelle as she gives "birth."

■ India
Dancers contest elections
Out-of-work bar dancers in the financial hub of Mumbai said on Friday they would contest elections to the city council in a bid to overturn a ban on their popular nightspots that robbed them of their livelihood. Authorities in Maharashtra state closed down hundreds of dance bars in 2005 saying they corrupted young men and bred crime and prostitution. The ban saw many of the estimated 75,000 bar girls go away to other states to find work and some reportedly turn to prostitution while many were left jobless. "We have had enough of begging and pleading for our rights," said Manjit Singh Sethi, president of the Mumbai Bar Owners' Association.

■ Vietnam
Dynamite ring busted
Police have charged three men with running an illegal dynamite ring that sold explosives to fishermen and black-market miners, state media reported yesterday. Authorities said the ring had sold nearly two tonnes of dynamite in northern Vietnam over the last four years, the Nhan Dan newspaper saud. The explosives were bought by unlicensed coal miners and fishermen. Fishermen sometimes use dynamite to kill fish, although the practice is illegal and often causes accidental deaths. Police have been investigating the ring since November last year, when they arrested Pham Minh Tuan, 36, who was carrying 986kg of dynamite from Hanoi to Ninh Binh Province.

■ Indonesia
Suharto faces lawsuit
The attorney-general's office plans to file a civil lawsuit against former president Suharto by the end of this month, the Jakarta Post reported yesterday. The Post quoted Attorney-General Abdul Rahman Saleh as saying his office was still calculating how much money it aimed to seize from Suharto. "I don't know the exact amount. One thing for sure, it's a lot of money," he said. The attorney-general's office dropped graft charges against Suharto in May because of his poor health. The graft charges relate to allegations of misuse of funds by seven charity groups once headed by Suharto.

■ United Kingdom
Brighton proves healthiest
Brighton is the healthiest city in Britain with the highest level of personal trainers, yoga clubs and health food stores, according to a survey released on Friday. The study, which looked at a range of 19 statistics covering health, fitness and environment, said the southern English resort had the highest number of residents who eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Bristol and London were the next healthiest cities, with Liverpool, Glasgow and Sheffield the least healthy.

■ Finland
Suspected poisoner caught
Police have arrested a 52-year-old man on suspicion of serving drinks tainted with industrial alcohol which killed several people and left 10 suffering severe poisoning in Kauhava, western Finland. "We have arrested a man who offered a poisonous drink to people," police lieutenant Olli-Pekka Punkari told reporters on Friday. Police gave few details and declined to confirm the number of dead. Finnish public broadcaster YLE reported three people had died and one was in intensive care after drinking some type of industrial alcohol, the kind used in anti-freeze and other liquids.

■ France
Prisoner snacks on cellmate
A prisoner who killed a cellmate and apparently ate part of his chest and lungs was in custody on Friday facing charges of premeditated murder and cannibalism, officials said. The 35-year-old prisoner -- named by the daily Le Parisien as Nicolas Cocaigne -- had confessed to the gory attack, confirmed by an autopsy, state prosecutor Joseph Schmit said in a statement. "I have been told that two sections of muscle had been removed in the thorax, and that the upper part of the left lung of the victim was missing," Schmit said. "The absence of these body parts -- which have not been found at the scene of the crime -- make the suspect's confession of an act of cannibalism very probable," he said.

■ Italy
Tropical disease cases rise
Sandwiched between temperate Europe and African heat, Italy is on the front line of climate change and is witnessing a rise in tropical diseases such as malaria and tick-borne encephalitis, a new report says. Italy was declared free of malaria in 1970, but it is making a comeback, said the Italian environmental organization Legambiente. Tick-borne encephalitis, a virus which attacks the nerve system, is also on the way back. While only 18 cases had been reported before 1993, 100 have been since, mostly around Venice.

■ United Kingdom
Protest leader found guilty
Umran Javed, 27, of Birmingham, was found guilty at the Old Bailey central criminal court in London on Friday of soliciting murder and stirring up racial hatred during a demonstration outside the Danish embassy in Knightsbridge, west London, in February last year. The protest had been called following publication of a number of cartoons in Denmark which portrayed Mohammed in various unflattering forms. Police took video footage of the protesters and Javed was arrested later after more than 100 complaints had been made by members of the public. "He addressed the crowd in terms which encouraged killing and incited racial hatred ... he said Denmark would pay with blood," prosecuting counsel David Perry QC said.

■ United States
Kids cause bad eating habits
Adults living with young children eat significantly more fat than grown-ups with no kids at home, a new study shows. Adults with kids consumed nearly 5 more grams of fat and 1.7 more grams of saturated fat every day, the equivalent of an individual pepperoni pizza a week, Helena Laroche of the University of Iowa in Iowa City and her colleagues found. Adults living with children younger than 17 also ate more salty snacks, cheese, beef, ice cream, cakes and cookies, pizza, and processed meats like bacon.

■ United States
Treatment for child debated
The parents of a severely disabled nine-year-old girl in Seattle given doses of estrogen in order to stunt her growth and a hysterectomy to prevent menstrual cycles defended their treatment decisions as necessary for their child's quality of life. The parents of Ashley, who cannot walk or talk and has the mental ability of a baby, made their first public statements about her treatment in a blog posting this week after her doctors detailed the growth-stunting treatment in a medical journal in October. Ashley's last name has not been disclosed.

■ United States
Criminal falls through attic
A search for an elusive criminal came to an unexpected end when the man crashed through a ceiling from his attic refuge and landed near police who had come to arrest him, officials said. "Normally you have to crawl up there and root them out," said Captain Tommy Rabon, head of the Police Department's Criminal Investigations Division. "But he came out on his own -- the hard way." Officers had gone to a home in Moultrie, Georgia, on Wednesday to arrest Danny Butts, 21, for a probation violation. They became suspicious when the brightly lit interior suddenly went dark. An occupant said Butts was not there, but officers spotted debris below an attic entrance. While they continued to question the woman, Butts fell through the ceiling onto a bedroom floor.

■ United States
Bra stops New Year's bullet
One woman discovered on New Year's Eve that her bra could do more than lift and support when the impact of a falling bullet was blunted by the bra strap on her left shoulder. Debbie Bingham, 46, an Atlanta resident visiting family in St Petersburg, Florida, was ringing in the New Year when she felt a sharp pain. Someone had fired a gun into the air and as the bullet fell back to earth, Bingham was struck. The bullet was removed when doctors cut the bullet from the strap.

■ United States
Army apologizes to families
The army said on Friday that it would apologize to the families of deceased and wounded officers that it mistakenly encouraged to re-enlist via letters sent out late last month. About 75 families of deceased officers and 200 families of wounded officers received such letters sent to more than 5,100 officers between Dec. 26 and 28, the Army said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the database used to address those letters contained names of officers who were killed in action or wounded," the Army said. "Army personnel officials are contacting those officers' families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters." The names of these soldiers had been removed from the database, but an earlier version of the list was mistakenly used, the Army said.

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