■ INDIA
`Sex lighters' not for kids
Police in the south said they arrested a man on Tuesday for selling adolescents a "sex lighter" that displays a nude woman when ignited. S. Sreejith, superintendent of police in Kottayam in Kerala, said the arrest happened after a parent complained that a boy had given his daughter one of the lighters as a gift. Sreejith said the man, who has not been identified, could face a one-year prison term.
■ CHINA
Students boycott canteens
Students at universities in the south are boycotting school canteens to protest against rising food prices, students said yesterday. Students at Sun Yat-sen University, one of the top universities in Guangdong, called for a boycott of canteen food. "There are a lot of complaints from students about food, such as the price is too high, the quantity is too small and the food itself is not tasty," a senior-year student said by telephone. Other universities, including South China University of Technology, launched similar boycotts this month, a student said.
■ AUSTRALIA
Sexcapade break-in solved
It was a stick up of a different kind for one intruder, who broke into a neighbor's house and played sex games in the bathroom with a bottle of toilet detergent and a vacuum cleaner. A court in the northern city of Brisbane heard how 27-year-old Jamie Lacey, high on drugs, broke into the house in September 2004, scattering pornographic magazines around the bathroom and making a sex toy from a bottle of detergent, a piece of wood and a rubber glove, the Brisbane Times reported. Lacey was arrested after police matched his DNA to that on the rubber glove, according to the Australian Associated Press. Lacey was sentenced to 12 months' community service.
■ UNITED STATES
Seattle welcomes the `SLUT'
Officially it's the South Lake Union Streetcar. Within Seattle's old Cascade neighborhood, part of the area to be served by the new line, it is popularly known as the South Lake Union Trolley -- or SLUT, also an offensive term for a promiscuous woman. At Kapow! Coffee, 100 T-shirts bearing the words "Ride the S.L.U.T." sold out in days and another 100 are on order. "We're welcoming the SLUT into the neighborhood," Jerry Johnson, 29, a part-time bartender, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper. Trolley tracks have been laid downtown and project officials say the US$50.5 million project should be completed and streetcars running in December.
■ UNITED STATES
Alcohol ban lifted
For the first time in more than a century, beer and wine by the glass will go on sale in a small, conservative city in Michigan with the granting of a liquor license to a pizzeria. "We could be serving in six to eight weeks," Vitale's Pizza co-owner Ryan Snyder told the Grand Rapids Press for a story on Tuesday. Zeeland is a 6,000-member community with a conservative Dutch heritage, about 32km southwest of Grand Rapids. In November, voters approved an end to the 104-year-old alcohol sales ban, 1,425 to 1,385. Turnout was 73 percent.
■ UNITED STATES
Sex blamed for car crash
A 22-year-old carnival worker in Moscow, Idaho, blames two friends having sex in the back seat of his car for an accident in which the car struck a telephone pole. Joshua Frank pleaded guilty on Monday to a misdemeanor charge of failing to notify a police officer of a traffic accident. He left the vehicle at the site of the crash. He was fined US$188, the Lewiston Tribune reported. According to a probable cause affidavit, Frank told police the actions in the backseat caused the car, which "was top heavy anyway," to become "tippy" and lose control. Frank had a minor head wound. The two in the backseat were treated for injuries.
■ UNITED STATES
Granny arrested over lawn
A 70-year-old woman in Orem, Utah, arrested in a dispute over her brown, unwatered lawn, pleaded not guilty. "I ask the citizens of Orem: How many of you would like to have your great-grandmother taken from her home with bruises and blood and placed in handcuffs for failing to water her lawn?" attorney Gloria Allred said. "Let's bring sanity back to law enforcement," she said. Betty Perry is charged with resisting arrest and failing to maintain her landscaping, both misdemeanors. She was arrested on July 6 after failing to give her name to a police officer who visited her home. During a struggle, Perry fell and injured her nose. She spent more than an hour in a holding cell before police released her.
■ UNITED STATES
Stock broker loses his cool
A Wall Street stock broker has been charged with assault after he became enraged during a cycling class at a posh health club and slammed a fellow member and his bike against a wall, according to a complaint. Christopher Carter, 44, a broker at Maxim Investments Group, was at Equinox gym taking a spin class, a high-impact workout using stationary bikes. He apparently became so fed up by member Stuart Sugarman's hooting and grunting during the workout that he picked up Sugarman and his bike and hurled them into a wall. "This is spin rage," said Samuel Davis, Sugarman's attorney.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of