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■ PAKISTAN
Wife, `husband' arrested
Police arrested a wife and her husband -- who was born a woman and underwent sex reassignment surgery 16 years ago -- and accused them of lying about the husband's gender to a court. The case pits the bride's father, who wants to annul his daughter's wedding on the grounds that it is against Islam for two women to marry, against the couple, who said they married to protect the bride from being sold into marriage to pay off her uncle's gambling debts. The husband, Shumail Raj, 31, first brought the case to court, appealing for protection from harassment by their relatives. But earlier this month the Lahore High Court ordered the arrest of Raj and his wife, Shahzina Tariq, 26, for lying to the court. Raj told the court he is male.

■ CHINA
Cancer rates rising
Pollution and the excessive use of chemicals in foodstuffs are sending cancer rates soaring in the country, where it is already the No. 1 killer, state press said yesterday. Cancer was the most lethal disease in both urban and rural areas last year, the China Daily said, citing a recent health ministry survey. Ministry statistics showed that it has been the leading killer since at least 2002 but is now rising at an alarming rate. The survey, carried out in 30 cities and 78 counties, found the death rate from cancer rose by 19 percent in urban areas and 23 percent in rural areas, although the report did not give a timeframe.

■ INDONESIA
Man catches `fossil fish'
A fisherman has caught a coelacanth, an ancient fish once thought to have become extinct at the time of the dinosaurs, a fishery expert said yesterday. Yustinus Lahama caught the fish on Saturday in the sea off North Sulawesi Province, said Grevo Gerung, a professor at the fisheries faculty at the Sam Ratulangi University. After being told by neighbors it was a rare fish he took it back to the sea and kept it in a quarantine pool before it died. The fish was 131cm long and weighed 51kg, Gerung said.

■ MALAYSIA
`Stillborn' baby lives on
A baby girl declared stillborn by a hospital shocked her grieving parents when she started moving as they prepared to bury her, a report said yesterday. The father, Azmi Masiron, said he and other mourners in a village in northern Kedah state noticed a tiny movement from the baby as she lay on a funeral shroud, shortly after being declared dead on Sunday. "When my father-in-law placed the baby on the burial shroud, she suddenly moved, shocking about 200 villagers who had gathered for the funeral," Azmi was quoted saying by the New Straits Times. The 26-year-old father said he had been informed by the doctor of his daughter's death minutes after his wife, Nordewiyana Din, 28, delivered the baby prematurely.

■ VIETNAM
Elephant kills two handlers
An elephant has killed two handlers who had worked with the animal for almost 20 years, a local official said yesterday. Ha Van Hoang, 46, was killed on the spot and 42-year-old Le Van Lanh died in hospital after the elephant gored both of them with his tusks on Saturday, said Ngan Van Thiep, chairman of the Son Ha commune in Thanh Hoa Province. "We have caught the elephant, which had run away after the attack," he said. "It is now tied up deep in the forest, close to the border with Laos. We really don't know what to do with it now."

■ GEORGIA
Party leader shot dead
Guram Sharadze, a former member of parliament and the leader of the Faith, Motherland and Language party, was shot dead on Sunday in Tbilisi, the Imedi TV network reported. Police have detained Georgi Barateli, who was suspected of shooting the opposition leader five times. Barateli, born in 1977, had previously worked with Sharadze's son, who was killed several years ago, the network said. There was no information on a possible motive for the killing. Sharadze, 67, was as an arch-conservative who had led protests against closer ties with the West.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Stamps to feature Potter
This postage might not get letters delivered faster, but Britain's Royal Mail predicts fans will find its series of Harry Potter stamps magical. The post office will issue a series of seven stamps on July 17 depicting the covers of each of J.K. Rowling's books about the boy wizard. Millions of the stamps will be issued just before the series' final volume, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, goes on sale on July 21. The commemorative stamps are part of the post office's tradition of celebrating "social themes and important occasions central to our way of life," said Julietta Edgar, who is in charge of special stamps at Royal Mail. Rowling's fantasy series has sold more than 325 million copies worldwide.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Blaze damages `Cutty Sark'
A fire caused heavy damage to the clipper ship Cutty Sark yesterday, leaving one of London's proudest maritime relics a blackened hulk. Firefighters responded to an alarm at 4:45am at the ship's dry dock. The fire was out by 7am, and the cause was under investigation. The ship was the world's only surviving example of an extreme clipper, regarded as the ultimate development of a merchant sail vessel. Most of the original hull had survived since the ship was built for the 19th-century tea trade. Cutty Sark had been closed to visitors since last year for a ?25 million (US$50 million) renovation.

■ NETHERLANDS
Woman recounts ape attack
A 57-year-old Dutch woman who was attacked by a gorilla at a Rotterdam zoo said the ape was still her favorite even though she felt she was going to die when he bit her. "He is and remains my darling," the Telegraaf quoted the woman as saying from hospital, where she is being treated for bite wounds and a broken arm and wrist. The 11-year-old male gorilla burst out of its enclosure on Friday and went on the rampage in the zoo's cafeteria before being recaptured. "I stood by the small apes in the Africa section when I heard a thud behind me. I turned around and there he was. He gripped me, sat on me with his full weight and began biting me," the woman said.

■ IRAN
Tehran slams Cannes entry
Iran has sent a letter to the French embassy in Tehran protesting the screening of a movie about the country at the Cannes Film Festival, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported on Sunday. The movie under dispute is Persepolis, an animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel about growing up in Iran after the Islamic revolution. The film is competing for the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, and will have its official screening tomorrow. Cannes organizers said they had no immediate comment on the Iranian letter.

■ ECUADOR
Correa seeks to end criticism
The Ecuadoran president on Sunday invited the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and eight international press groups to visit the Andean country amid criticism the leftist leader is trying to limit freedom of expression. Last week, President Rafael Correa sued the Quito newspaper La Hora for libel over a March editorial in which the paper said he was leading the country with "mobs, rocks and clubs." The editorial was referring to a standoff between Congress and the courts, when police blocked 57 lawmakers from entering the capitol. Correa supporters also attacked the legislators, who had been fired by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in a dispute over the president's push to rewrite the Constitution.

■ UNITED STATES
Whales heading back to sea
A mother whale and her calf were headed through a deep water shipping channel toward the Pacific Ocean, nearly a week after taking a wrong turn and swimming inland 145km to California's capital, Sacramento, the US Coast Guard said. By 9pm on Sunday the whales had traveled 32km down the Sacramento River from the Port of Sacramento, where crowds had gathered to catch a glimpse of the humpbacks. As darkness fell, the Coast Guard escort that had followed the whales all day ceased trailing them so the vessels would not accidentally hit them. Vessels carrying Coast Guard officers and wildlife officials were to start following the whales again at 7:30am yesterday.

■ UNITED STATES
Authorities defend agent
An FBI agent who got into a confrontation with a Muslim student at the University of California, Irvine, earlier this month was trying to get a closer look at a "suspicious" truck at the time, federal authorities said on Sunday. The agent had followed the truck to the campus from a separate location as part of an investigation that was unrelated to the school or student activities, bureau spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. Student Yasser Ahmed, 21, had said the agent followed his truck near a protest against Israel on May 14. Ahmed said that after he got out of the truck and asked the driver to identify himself, the agent revved the engine and began pushing Ahmed back with the front bumper before driving off.

■ UNITED STATES
Vets in more to sex crimes
Military veterans in prison are more than twice as likely to have been convicted for sex offenses as non-veteran inmates, federal researchers say. They cannot say why. A study released on Sunday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics compared the populations of inmates who served in the military and those who did not. Veterans are half as likely to be incarcerated as those without service experience in the first place, researchers found, but 23 percent of the veterans in prison were sex offenders, compared with 9 percent of non-veteran inmates.

■ UNITED STATES
Bigamist keeps going
A traveling Georgia minister who served two years in prison on bigamy charges for having eight wives has been jailed again on accusations of trying to marry even more. At least four women claim Bishop Anthony Owens, 35, proposed to them after being released from prison in November 2005. Officials say there is no evidence he divorced the eight previous wives. A judge will decide whether he should go back to prison. Owens, who turned himself in on April 30, had no comment. But his new fiancees are not keeping quiet.


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