■ AUSTRALIA
Brothels prepare for summit
Sydney's brothels are preparing for a business boom as thousands of delegates and journalists descend on the city for a major Asia-Pacific summit this week, local media reported yesterday. One well-known bordello is offering "The Presidential Platter" with a variety of pleasures or a "United Nations" double with women from a range of countries, according to the news and gossip Web site Crikey. A former tax office auditor turned legal brothel industry lobbyist, Chris Seage, wrote that Sydney's brothels had been fielding phone calls from overseas for the past two weeks.
■ AUSTRALIA
High court to hear appeal
The highest court agreed yesterday to hear an elderly Hungarian immigrant's appeal against extradition on war crimes charges. At a hearing in the capital, Canberra, three High Court judges agreed that a panel of at least five judges will hear 84-year-old Charles Zentai's appeal against a lower court's ruling that he can be extradited to Hungary over allegations that he murdered a Jewish teenager in Budapest in 1944. Zentai became an Australian citizen after immigrating to the country in 1950. Hungary's Foreign Ministry has been investigating him since December 2004 on suspicion that he killed Peter Balazs, 18, for failing to wear a yellow star identifying him as a Jew.
■ CHINA
Officials had mistresses
Nearly all of the 16 ministry-level officials recently sacked for corruption kept mistresses, including Shanghai's former top leader who had several, state press said yesterday. Most sacked officials engaged in illicit activities including exchanging "power for money" and "power for sex," the Beijing Times said, citing a just-opened exhibition on corruption in the capital. "Among the top 16 corrupt officials, 14 kept mistresses and some even kept many mistresses, like former Shanghai Communist Party secretary Chen Liangyu (陳良宇) and former Beijing vice mayor Liu Zhihua (劉志華)," the paper said.
■ HONG KONG
Ang Lee confesses stress
Oscar-winning director Ang Lee says filming the sex scenes in his new spy thriller Lust, Caution was so intense that it nearly caused him a mental breakdown, a Hong Kong newspaper reported yesterday. Lee was quoted by the Apple Daily newspaper as saying that the scenes were so emotionally charged that he had trouble letting go afterward. "Filming the sex scenes left me on the verge of nearly breaking down," Lee was quoted saying, adding that he was moved to tears when revisiting the set after filming. "We had just filmed sex scenes in that place. When I saw the empty house in the camera monitor, I couldn't stand it. It's the first time I reacted that way on a movie set," he said.
■ MALAYSIA
Taxi driver dress code issued
Taxi drivers are being told to put their best foot forward, with a shoe on it, and a sock. Or else. Authorities have warned taxi drivers of hefty fines if they are caught without socks, shoes and other proper attire prescribed by a licensing board, an official said yesterday. The Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board has threatened to crack down on taxi drivers for violating the dress code, which requires taxi drivers to tuck in their shirts -- which have to be white, not the beige that many have been wearing.
■ ISRAEL
Daycare center evacuated
Soldiers scrambled to evacuate babies from a daycare center in rocket-scarred Sderot yesterday after a projectile fired by Palestinian militants thudded into the courtyard. None of the 15 babies at the center was hurt. But frantic parents across the city -- already furious over the government's failure to protect them and their children from the near-daily rocket fire -- pulled their children out of schools on the second day of the academic year. The army said six rockets were fired at the southern city, which lies just a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip.
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