■ NEW ZEALAND
Judge orders name change
A judge has ordered a name change for an embarrassed nine-year-old girl called Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii, a local newspaper reported yesterday. The girl was so embarrassed that she had not revealed the name given by her parents to friends, who simply knew her as K, the Taranaki Daily News said. Family court judge Rob Murfitt said in a judgment made in February — but not released until yesterday— that oddball monikers created social hurdles as children grew up. The judge discovered parents had given their children some other unusual names including two pairs of twins that were called Benson and Hedges and Fish and Chips.
■ HONG KONG
Teen robbers jailed
Three teenagers have been jailed for more than three years for the armed hold-up of a jewelry shop, a newspaper said yesterday, with the court saying the stiff sentence was in the public interest. Disguised with masks and caps, the two boys and one girl, all aged 14, threatened staff at the shop with knives last September, grabbing gold necklaces, bracelets and pendants valued at more than HK$1 million (US$128,200). Sentencing the three, now aged 15, the judge said the offense was too serious to warrant a training center term despite the age of the three, the South China Morning Post said.
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AUSTRALIA
Rabbit saves couple
A pet rabbit was credited with saving a couple from a fire that swept through their home in Melbourne early yesterday. The family pet named scratched at the couple’s bedroom door as they slept and woke the man up, Metropolitan Fire Brigade commander Mick Swift said. The husband, whose identity was not released, discovered a fire in a back room and smoke spreading quickly through the house. Thanks to the rabbit, the couple was able to escape unharmed, he said.
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CHINA
Heaviest rains in 450 years
Twelve people are dead or missing after the heaviest rain in centuries hit parts of Hubei Province, state media reported yesterday. A total of 10 people are confirmed dead after the week-long rains, while two are missing, and more than 100,000 have been evacuated, the Xinhua news agency reported. Since early this week, the area around Xiangfan has experienced the biggest downpour in 450 years, the Chutian Metropolitan News said on its Web site. In a 48-hour period on Monday and Tuesday, the region saw 30.8cm of rain, affecting 1.1 million people, according to the paper. The 450-year timeframe may be more than mere hyperbole, as local chroniclers of the past often kept meticulous records of unusual events, such as freak weather phenomena.
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CHINA
Aftershock hits Sichuan
At least three powerful aftershocks hit southwest China’s quake area yesterday, killing one elderly person and injuring more than a dozen, the Xinhua news agency said. More than 69,000 people have been confirmed dead and some 18,000 are still missing over two months after a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit the mountainous province of Sichuan on May 12, the deadliest in the country since 1976. A 5.6-magnitude aftershock struck Qingchuan County in northeastern Sichuan in the early hours yesterday, killing a 60-year-old, Xinhua said. At least four people were injured in the adjacent Ningqiang County in Shaanxi province, including a man who jumped from the second floor of a hotel and suffered a fracture on his left arm, Xinhua said.
■ ITALY
Fake executions popular
Visitors to a Milan fair are jumping at the chance to perform mock executions, watching as a highly life-like dummy shakes and grimaces in an electric chair, La Repubblica reported on Wednesday. The attraction at the fair at Idroscalo in the east of the city is similar to one in Las Vegas. After paying US$1.60, visitors see the mannequin, naked from the waist up, tremble and convulse while strapped in the chair, and its hair begin to burn, images shown on news channel Sky24 showed. The newspaper quoted manager of the fair Yuri Simone as saying there were around 50 “executions” a day.
■ FRANCE
Bruni first in record sales
First lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy shot to the top of the charts with her latest album in its first full week on sale, the SNEP, a music industry body that tracks record sales, said on Wednesday. The album — Comme si de rien n’etait (As if nothing had happened) — has generated massive interest because it is the first by the Italian-born former model turned pop star since her whirlwind romance with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Bruni-Sarkozy has said she wrote the lyrics of the new songs partly before she met Sarkozy and partly since they fell in love. One of the songs’ lyrics — “You are my drug, more lethal than heroin from Afghanistan and more dangerous than Colombian cocaine” — caused a minor diplomatic incident between France and Colombia.
■ ZIMBABWE
No paper to print money
The government is struggling to find enough cash to pay its workers and the military after it was forced to cut back on printing money because sanctions have severed its supply of banknote paper from Europe. Paper money is already in short supply because the state-run Fidelity Printers & Refiners in Harare cannot keep up with demand created by the hyperinflation and rapid devaluation. The problems became acute after Munich-based Giesecke & Devrient cut off deliveries of watermarked banknote paper last month under pressure from Berlin. The government is looking to Malaysia as an alternative source of paper but it now fears the license for the specialist software supplied by Jura JSP, which is based in Budapest and Vienna, will be withdrawn as part of the boycott of Robert Mugabe’s regime.
■ RUSSIA
Bears eat two workers
Up to 30 hungry and desperate bears have attacked and eaten two men in the wild far eastern region of Kamchatka and have trapped a group of geologists at their remote site. The bears — apparently starving — killed the men last Thursday, Russian agencies reported. The bears had surrounded a local platinum mining company. Both victims worked at the mine as security guards. About 400 geologists and miners have refused to return to work, afraid of further attacks. Attempts by local officials to fly to the scene by helicopter and shoot the bears have so far failed, because of bad weather, agencies reported.
■ FRANCE
Workers contaminated
Electricity company EDF says that 100 employees have been “slightly contaminated” by a leak at a reactor site in the south. It was the third incident countrywide at a nuclear site in recent weeks and the second at the huge Tricastin site. An EDF spokeswoman said the employees were exposed to radiation far below permitted levels and went home, but will be tested.
■ GERMANY
Court rules for transsexual
The constitutional court ruled on Wednesday that a man seeking legal recognition as a woman will be allowed to stay married to his wife in a landmark decision that further strengthens the rights of transsexuals. The Karlsruhe-based court ruled unconstitutional a requirement that married transsexuals first get divorced before their new gender could be legally recognized. The court said that law violated a person’s basic rights. The court ruled in favor of a man who was born in 1929 who has three adult children and had been married for 56 years. He underwent a sex-change operation in 2002 and wanted to be legally recognized as a woman, but could not until a divorce took place. The wife of the transsexual also did not want the marriage to be dissolved, the court heard. The court ruled the country’s transsexual law must be changed by August next year. It has made other rulings in favor of transsexuals in recent years.
■ CANADA
Taser kills teenager
Winnipeg police say a teenager has died after being shot with a Taser gun while he was brandishing a knife at officers. Constable Jacqueline Chaput said on Wednesday that a 17-year-old boy who refused to comply with repeated requests from the officers to put his knife down was shot with an electronic stun gun. She says the victim allegedly broke into a car and stole items. He was followed by two citizens who flagged down police. The teen was taken in critical condition to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead on Tuesday night. Autopsy results are pending.
■ UNITED STATES
Bubble show loses bubbles
The bubble might have burst for off-Broadway’s Gazillion Bubbles Show. Someone has stolen the show’s specialized soapy bubble solution, which takes two months to make. A show spokesman says 3.4 tonnes of bubble solution and 6,000 toys went missing in the June 10 break-in at a warehouse in nearby Hoboken, New Jersey. The show has only six weeks worth of solution on hand to make the air-filled globes of soapy film. The interactive show was created by renowned bubble artist Fan Yang. It features dazzling light effects, lasers and lots of bubbles — some so intricate or big they have smoke, other bubbles or even people inside them. Yang has put up to four children in one bubble. Yang and his wife, Ana Yang, also have a bubble show in Las Vegas.
■ URUGUAY
Rare toilet under guard
An antique porcelain toilet valued at nearly US$800,000 has been put under police guard by the mayor of a local town, while residents are calling for the pricey potty to be sold. Mayor Carmelo Vidalin took the precaution of round-the-clock toilet protection after the newspaper El Pais reported on Wednesday its estimated value, quoting antique historian Enriqe Costa. A toilet alarm system was installed immediately. The toilet was manufactured in 1887 in France, with blue patterns, and was said to be only one of four of its type still in existence. It was brought to Durazno, 180km north of the capital, by an Italian doctor, Emilio Penza. The toilet is in a house purchased by the town several years ago for less than US$80,000 and the town plans to open it for public viewing in the near future. But some residents are pushing for sale of the costly loo, saying the profits could be used to build public housing.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion