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World News Quick Take

■ CHINA
`Coarse' slogans replaced
Authorities has managed to erase most "coarse" slogans on walls in rural areas urging people to have fewer children and replaced them with "civilized" and "warm" ones, Xinhua news agency said on Friday. The offending signs promoting China's strict one-child policy include lines like "Houses toppled, cows confiscated if abortion demand rejected" and "One more baby means one more tomb". Another reads: "Raise fewer babies but more piggies." The slogans are painted on walls and houses across Chinese villages, but now officials have managed to take down or erase more than 76 percent, Xinhua said.

■ JAPAN
Officials go on `samurai' diet
Overweight local government officials have slimmed down with a three-month "samurai" diet, soldiering on despite a fellow samurai's death. The mayor of the city of Ise and six officials joined forces as the "Seven Metabolic Samurai," after Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai movie, to fight the so-called metabolic syndrome -- excess belly fat, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. The program took an unexpected and unfortunate turn when one of the samurai, a 47-year-old city official, died in August from heart failure while he was jogging, a spokeswoman for Ise's public health department said.

■ JAPAN
Mental stroller developed
Researchers say they have found a way to let people stroll through the virtual world of Second Life using their own imagination, in a development that could help paralysis patients. Previous studies have shown people can move computer cursors through brain waves, but the team says it is the first to apply the technology to an Internet virtual world. The technology "would enable people suffering paralysis to communicate with others or do business through chatting and shopping in a virtual world," said Junichi Ushiba, associate professor at Keio Univesity's rehabilitation center.

■ PAKISTAN
Vigilante violence erupts
Islamic militants publicly beheaded six alleged criminals and lashed three others in an outbreak of vigilante violence on Friday, officials and witnesses said. The incidents were the latest in a series blamed on hardliners who are seeking to emulate Afghanistan's 1996 to 2001 Taliban regime. In the lawless Mohmand tribal district, pro-Taliban rebels decapitated six members of a kidnapping-for-ransom gang after a blood-soaked feud, a government official said. It started when militants on Thursday night raided the house of the gang's chief in connection with the death of one of their colleagues. The gang leader killed four of the militants, but they later killed him and five of his family members, burned down his house and seized another six of his followers.

■ VIETNAM
Bomb unearthed after floods
Police and military engineers were trying to defuse a large Vietnam War-era bomb unearthed after floods caused by a typhoon last week, a police officer said yesterday. The 500-pound bomb was found near a pier on the Ham Rong bridge which links the country's north with central and southern part of the country, said Nguyen Van Nam, a police officer in Hoang Hoa district in Thanh Hoa Province, some 150km south of Hanoi. Authorities spotted the bomb when it was unearthed by receding flood waters triggered by Typhoon Lekima, Nam said. The bomb was dropped by a US plane in the early 1970s, he said.

■ RUSSIA
ISS has first female chief
US astronaut Peggy Whitson climbed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for a stint as its first female commander after a two-day trip from Earth and a textbook docking accompanied by Malaysia's first space traveler, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko. "Everything is great," Malenchenko told Mission Control shortly after the ship locked onto the station about 350km over Central Asia. Whitson, a 47-year-old biochemist from Iowa, was selected as an astronaut in 1996 and spent six months on the ISS in 2002. She will formally assume the command from orbit, a Mission Control representative said.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Gatecrashers beat family
A teenager was airlifted to hospital and his father had his nose broken when gatecrashers went on the rampage at a 16th birthday party after details were posted on YouTube, Wiltshire police and media reports said on Friday. More than 100 uninvited teenagers descended on the family house, stole whisky and champagne, smashed windows and started fighting, reports said. David Worthy, 53, was punched in the face when he tried to turn away a group of youths, while his son Stephen, 18, was badly beaten. A police spokesman said Stephen was taken to hospital in Bath with suspected spinal injuries.

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Sex not a problem
One microscopic organism has thrived despite remaining celibate for tens of millions of years thanks to a neat evolutionary trick, researchers said. Asexual reproduction has allowed duplicate gene copies of the single-celled creatures -- called bdelloid rotifers -- to become different over time. This gives the rotifers a wider pool of genes to help them adapt and survive, the researchers said in the journal Science. "It is like having a bigger tool kit," Alan Tunnacliffe, a molecular biologist at the University of Cambridge, said in a phone interview. "You can do the same job but better."

■ UNITED KINGDOM
Alleged attacker charged
An inmate at a high security jail in northern England has been charged with attacking a high-profile al-Qaeda prisoner earlier this year, police said on Friday. Dhiren Barot, 35, serving 30 years in jail for planning "dirty bomb" attacks in Britain and plotting to blow up US financial institutions, had boiling water and oil poured over his head during the incident in July, his lawyer has said. Durham police said they had charged a 22-year-old man from Sunderland with wounding and assault occasioning actual bodily harm over the attack. The unnamed accused man is due to appear before magistrates on Oct. 23.

■ SIERRA LEONE
Russian caught in murder
A Russian diamond dealer has been arrested on suspicion of murder after quarrelling with his Russian boss, whose body was found buried near a beach, police said on Friday. The body of Alexander Fedorenko was found on Monday at a village 20km from Freetown after passers-by saw a white hand poking from a shallow grave. Police arrested Serguei Tigranian, and detectives expected to charge him with murder. According to Detective Inspector Samuel Williams, Tigranian said Fedorenko fell on a sharp edge, hit his head and died. However, Williams said he expected the post-mortem to confirm two gunshots to the head.

■ COLOMBIA
Senator escapes attack
A senator narrowly escaped an attack on Friday when left-wing guerrillas attacked his convoy while he was campaigning with one of his party's candidates for this month's local elections. Guerrillas set off explosives and opened fire on bodyguards escorting a caravan transporting Senator Luis Fernando Velasco and a Liberal Party candidate as they traveled in Caqueta Province about 350 km south of Bogota, the senator and police said. "An explosive went off in the middle of the road, we managed to pass though and then there was an exchange of gunfire," Velasco told reporters. A soldier and a civilian were wounded in the attack.

■ MEXICO
Priest punches policeman
A Mexican priest briefly ended up behind bars after punching a policeman who caught him driving drunkenly through the streets of the northern city of Monterrey. Priest Manuel Raul Ortega, who was not wearing clerical dress but was clutching a prayer book when captured, launched himself at the traffic cop who pulled him over earlier this week. "The individual became very violent because they were going to tow away his car. He attacked a policeman and was taken away," said transit department spokesman Hector Lozano on Thursday. Ortega's papers identified him as a priest. He was released a few hours after his arrest after paying the fines for his offenses.

■ HAITI
Floods kill at least 45
At least 45 people have died in the poverty-stricken island of Haiti as homes were swept away in floods triggered by heavy rain, the interior ministry said on Friday. Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime said 23 bodies had been found on Thursday in Cabaret, just north of the capital, and 12 were missing after floodwaters hit their hillside homes, sweeping them away in the current. "The water carried off people living in houses built on the hillside, sweeping them into the town," the minister said. More than 6,000 people have had to leave their flooded homes in Cabaret.

■ UNITED STATES
Officer drops lawsuit
A Florida police sergeant who slipped and fell while trying to rescue a 1-year-old boy has dropped her lawsuit against the infant's family. Sergeant Andrea Eichhorn was criticized for the litigation and the department placed her on leave on Thursday in response. Eichhorn's lawyer, David Heil, announced the latest move, but offered no details for the decision. Joey Cosmillo nearly drowned in a pool Jan. 9, and there was water on the floor at his home when police arrived. Eichhorn slid on the wet floor, broke her knee and missed two months of work. The boy suffered brain damage and can no longer walk, talk or swallow.

■ UNITED STATES
Intruder bites off man's ear
A crazed 27-year-old attacker broke into a man's home, beat him with a karaoke machine and bit off his ear, police said. The 64-year-old Uniondale, New York resident attempted to defend himself with a vacuum cleaner hose, said Nassau County police Officer Mary Verna. Doctors were unable to reattach the ear, but the injuries were not considered life-threatening. The attacker did not flee the scene of the violence Thursday but instead crouched in the hallway until police arrived. "This guy just randomly picked this house," said police Sergeant Anthony Repalone. "There's no connection between the victim and the subject. Obviously, his behavior was such that there may have been some drug involvement."


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