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World News Quick Take

■ CHINA

One-night stands not popular

A new survey of the first generation born under the one-child policy has found they are more open but still conflicted about sex, and don’t approve of one-night stands, the China Youth Daily said on Wednesday. The survey, carried out by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on people born between 1976 and 1986, found that their average age for first sexual experience was 22.8 years, the newspaper said. But more than 96 percent of the surveyed first had sex with their partner, rather than just a one-night stand. Nearly 20 percent first had sex before the age of 20. “The survey found that on the one hand they had sex earlier but on the other it was in a stable relationship,” the paper said. “This shows the contradictions felt in the first generation of single children towards sex.” Most did not approve of one-night stands, and almost three-quarters said they would never try homosexuality, the report said. More than 97 percent wanted children of their own and 61 percent said that in an ideal world they would like to have two children.



■ MALAYSIA

Trio charged in deaths

A 19-year-old man and his two cousins have been charged with murder for allegedly beating to death the young man’s parents in a bizarre ritual meant to cure them of smoking and other problems, officials said on Wednesday. A magistrate ordered Muhammad Nizam Mohamad Ibrahim and his cousins Muhammad Ilyas, 23, and Muhamad Fauzi Abdul Razak, 21, held for psychiatric observation for a month and set a trial date of Nov. 14. Muhammad Nizam’s 47-year-old father and 41-year-old mother were beaten to death with brooms and motorcycle helmets during a family gathering in an apartment in Kuala Lumpur early this month. A teenage girl was severely injured in the ritual and remains hospitalized. The couple were apparently willing participants in the ritual, which went awry as the beating became frenzied.



■ INDIA

Dalai Lama stays in hospital

The Dalai Lama is to stay in hospital for several more days to undergo checks following keyhole surgery last week to remove gallstones, a doctor said yesterday. “The Dalai Lama will be released not before Saturday as he prefers to stay here rather than check into a hotel and then report to us for periodic checks,” a doctor from the Sir Ganga Ram hospital in New Dehli said. “He is having a good time and is quite cheerful.”



■ SINGAPORE

T-shirt trio in trouble

Three people who showed up at the Supreme Court in T-shirts printed with a kangaroo dressed in a judge’s gown face contempt charges, They had “scandalized the judiciary by publicly wearing identical white T-shirts, imprinted with a palm-sized picture of a kangaroo dressed in a judge’s gown,” the attorney general said on Tuesday The three had appeared in court in May to watch opposition leader Chee Soon Juan (徐順全) cross-examine Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and his father Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) in a three-day hearing that saw the politicians hurl insults at each other.



■ CAMBODIA

Border skirmish halted

An army official says a gunfight that broke out between Thai and Cambodian troops on Tuesday night at a disputed border zone has stopped and talks were under way. Brigadier General Yim Pim said the fighting “has paused” and commanders from both sides were trying to negotiate a ceasefire.



■ UNITED KINGDOM

Man banned from cooking

A man discovered making kebabs near a corpse has been banned from managing food businesses and fined £3,800 (US$6,600), Wolverhampton City Council said on Tuesday. Jaswinder Singh, 45, was found by police making kebabs at Pappu Sweet Centre and Catering in Wolverhampton in August in a kitchen where a dead man was lying on a sofa. As well as the corpse, the policeman discovered another man smoking and spitting repeatedly on the floor, while in a room near the kitchen, a defrosting chicken oozing blood and juices was covered with flies. “We were called to reports of a sudden death,” said West Midlands Police spokeswoman Joanne Hunt. “A post mortem was carried out, but found the death was not suspicious, so the matter was referred to the coroner.”



■ GREEK

Man caught in museum plot

Police in Salonika, in the northern part of the country, have arrested an archeological museum employee suspected of peddling hundreds of illegally obtained antiques, a local police source said on Tuesday. The 41-year-old man and his 44-year-old alleged accomplice were caught on Monday by officers posing as buyers, the police said. The two suspects were allegedly selling a collection of more than 200 antiques, many of them looted from ancient graves and tombs, for the price of 400,000 euros (US$543,000). The collection included dozens of rare ancient Macedonian artefacts such as bronze jewelry and amulets dating from the seventh and eighth centuries BC. Two marble statue heads and 12 blade-shaped leaves made of gold were also confiscated. The 41-year-old was a full-time employee at the Dion archeological museum that borders an important ancient Macedonian sanctuary in Pieria, some 425km north of Athens.



■ CHINA

Russia returns half of island

Russia on Tuesday formally returned half of an island that was seized from the country in 1929 by troops of the former Soviet Union during a border skirmish. Chinese and Russian diplomats and defense officials held a ceremony to unveil new boundary markers on Heixiazi (Bolshoi Ussuriysky) Island in a border river, the government said. The two nations signed a final agreement in July on disputed areas along their 4,300km border, with Russia reportedly conceding 174km², including two small islands in the river. Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) on Tuesday said the border settlement could set an example for other countries on how to resolve “sensitive” and “complicated” issues.



■ ITALY

Mafia wants author dead

Police are looking into reports that the Naples mafia plans to carry out its threat to kill the author of the bestselling book Gomorra, which has been made into a hit movie about mafia brutality, by Christmas. Roberto Saviano, 29, has lived in hiding with 24-hour police protection for the past two years since the Camorra, as the mob in his hometown is known, decided to punish him for the huge success of his book, which is based on his own investigations. It has sold 1.2 million copies in Italy and been translated into 42 languages. Now that it has hit the big screen and is a candidate for the Oscars, the mafia is even angrier and wants Saviano and his bodyguards killed as soon as possible. “We’ve launched an inquiry to verify the truth behind this news,” said Franco Roberto, a coordinator of the local anti-mafia squad for Naples.



■ UNITED STATES

More poor families: study

Even before the collapse of major US banks and the Dow’s plunge, the rolls of the working poor grew as their piece of the economic pie shrank, the Working Poor Families Project said in a report on Tuesday based on government data collected as part of the American Family Survey. The percentage of working families who were poor rose to 28 percent, or 9.6 million families, in 2006, from 27 percent, or 9.2 million, in 2002, it said. “If we start factoring in what’s happened this year, we know the number will increase,” said Brandon Roberts, the author of Working Hard, Still Falling Short. By 2008 standards, the report defined working poor as a family of four living on less than US$42,400 in the 48 contiguous states, or slightly more in Alaska and Hawaii.



■ UNITED STATES

MySpace revamps KTV

MySpace on Tuesday launched an overhauled karaoke channel that lets amateur crooners post online video of themselves in all their vocal glory. The MySpace Karaoke redesign includes improved recording, upload and Web site navigation capabilities. In the six months since its launch the channel has attracted more than 4 million visitors and amassed a half-million recordings, “making it the largest karaoke venue in the world,” MySpace general manager Nimrod Lev said. MySpace has arranged licensing deals with music publishers to spare users of its karaoke channel from hassles regarding song copyrights. Those licensing restrictions have resulted in MySpace Karaoke only being available in Canada and the US.



■ UNITED STATES

Ill owner pleads for cats

Five veterinary clinics in eastern Alabama received 32 surprises in the last week: Healthy cats in containers and carriers, along with notes from an anonymous donor saying she is dying from cancer. The notes signed by “Miss R” beg the vets to find her pets new homes. “My time is very, very short,” the donor wrote. “There is not enough time to find homes for my children another way. I beg you not to let them die because I have to, please!” Veterinarian Kim Bond said she found three plastic containers poked with holes sitting at her clinic’s front door when she got to work at 7am a week ago. Each cat’s name, age, description and medical summary was written on its container. At least four other clinics received cats in Lee County, about 80km northeast of Montgomery. Most of the cats have found new homes already. The identity and location of the donor is unknown.



■ UNITED STATES

Iraqi puppy finds support

More than 10,000 people have signed an online petition urging the Army to let an Iraqi puppy come home with a US soldier, who fears that “Ratchet” could be killed if left behind. “I just want my puppy home,” Sergeant Gwen Beberg of Minneapolis wrote to her mother in an e-mail on Sunday from Iraq, soon after she was separated from the dog following a transfer. Beberg, 28, is scheduled to return to the US next month. Ratchet’s defenders are ratcheting up their efforts to save him. On Monday, the program coordinator for Operation Baghdad Pups, which is run by Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals International, left for a trip to the Middle East to try to get the puppy to the US. And last week, Beberg’s congressman, Democrat Keith Ellison, wrote to the Army urging it to review the case. Beberg and another soldier rescued the puppy from a burning pile of trash back in May.


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