■CHINA
Panda bites spectator
A panda at the Beijing zoo bit his third tourist in two years — and this time, his jaws had to be forced open to free the man, who had jumped in to retrieve his son’s toy. Gu Gu, a 110kg panda, mauled the man’s legs and refused to let go until zookeepers pried his jaws open with tools, said a zoo spokeswoman. Gu Gu first made news in 2007 when he bit a drunken tourist who jumped into his pen and tried to hug him. The tourist retaliated by biting the panda in the back. In October, Gu Gu viciously bit a teenager who climbed into his exercise area out of curiosity. The Beijing News said the latest victim, Zhang Jiao of central Anhui Province, suffered damage to major ligaments and is recovering from surgery. The newspaper quoted tourists as saying Zhang appeared to first look around to see if pandas were nearby before jumping in to get his five-year-old son’s toy. Pandas, a national symbol often seen as being cute and cuddly, can be violent when provoked or startled.
■CHINA
Zhang photos spark debate
Photos of Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) cavorting with her Western fiance on a beach have sparked a heated online debate, with many netizens roasting her for shaming the nation, but others defending the star. The paparazzi pics, which cropped up on Chinese Internet portals this week, showed Zhang, 29, sunbathing topless on a Caribbean beach as her Israeli billionaire beau Vivi Nevo touched her intimately. “Zhang Ziyi is really shameless. She is with a foreigner, but should remember certain conduct is expected of Chinese women,” said an entry in a forum on the popular portal Sina.com. Because of the global fame some Chinese film stars enjoy, they come under close scrutiny and often fierce criticism online — the main public mode of expression for many — for actions deemed shameful to the country.
■NEW ZEALAND
Woman struck with arrow
A woman had emergency surgery after being hit in the face by an arrow fired from a neighbor’s crossbow, police said yesterday. The woman, 42, from suburban Auckland, had a severe head injury after a neighbor fired the loaded weapon on Thursday afternoon from a distance of about 30m, police official Stan Brown said. The woman was watering a plant on the verandah of her home when she was hit. She was found with a 40cm arrow partially embedded in the front of her skull, just above the right eye, he said. The woman had emergency eye surgery and was in stable condition yesterday. Police are investigating and trying to determine whether criminal charges are warranted, Detective Brown said.
■AUSTRALIA
Man dumps ‘Jungle Jane’
A man broke into three adult shops, had sex with blow up dolls named “Jungle Jane” and then dumped his plastic conquests in a nearby alley, local media reported on Wednesday. “It’s totally bizarre. It’s a real concern that someone like that is out on the street,” said one of the owners of the adult sex shops in Cairns in northern Queensland state.
■AUSTRALIA
Trooper attacked with car
An outback policeman was pelted with rocks and beer bottles and his stolen patrol car was used to try and run him down, police said on Wednesday. The officer was attacked by five people on Tuesday night at an Aboriginal camp near the desert town of Alice Springs.
■SENEGAL
Activist convicted of gay act
Nine men, including a prominent activist, have been convicted of homosexual acts and sentenced to eight years in prison, their lawyer and a gay rights group said on Thursday. Diadji Diouf, who heads an organization that provides HIV prevention services to gay men in the country, and the others were arrested last month in a raid on Diouf’s apartment. The nine convicted men were sentenced for unnatural acts and criminal conspiracy, said Joel Nana, Africa research and policy coordinator with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in Cape Town, South Africa. “This is the first case that we’ve heard of in Senegal where people actually got sentenced,” he said, calling the punishment long and harsh.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Tourism boss pans hotels
Grumpy staff and poor value for money blight the nation’s hotels, deterring foreign visitors when the economy needs them most, the tourism chief was quoted as saying on Thursday. Tourists have to put up with a failure to provide basics such as soft towels and fresh bars of soap, said Christopher Rodrigues, chairman of VisitBritain. “We’re now in an environment where you have to do quality. Poor value for money and poor service costs jobs and will cost more jobs in a recession,” he told the Independent.
■SPAIN
Drug lord shot dead
A convicted Colombian drug baron with links to two major smuggling cartels was shot dead in a Madrid hospital on Thursday, officials said. Leonidas Vargas, who was convicted of drug trafficking, was murdered in a hospital bed where he was being treated for lung disease, a police spokesman said. Police and hospital officials said at least one person entered the 60-year-old’s room at Doce de Octubre hospital and fired four shots. Vargas was arrested in Madrid in July 2006 and convicted of possessing 500kg of cocaine, a police spokesman said on condition of anonymity. Vargas had been sentenced to 19 years in prison and was transferred to the Madrid hospital for medical treatment on Jan. 2.
■GERMANY
Cat joins weather forecast
A cat wandered onto the set of a live weather forecast by the nation’s leading meteorologist Joerg Kachelmann and waved its tail in front of the camera as it rubbed up against his leg. Kachelmann had just started his two-minute forecast after the news on Tuesday when the cat appeared. Without missing a beat, he scooped Lupin up and finished his forecast while the cat pointed a paw at the weather map. “I don’t know how he got into the studio,” Kachelmann said, adding that Lupin belonged to a staffer who was out of town. “I noticed him when he rubbed against my leg and thought people might wonder what was happening,” he said. “I figured it would be easier to control the cat by picking him up. Cats get annoyed if they feel ignored. So I made sure he didn’t feel ignored.”
■NIGERIA
Bikers wear fruit shells
Police have arrested scores of motorcycle taxi riders with dried fruit shells, paint pots or pieces of rubber tire tied to their heads with string to avoid a new law requiring them to wear helmets. The regulations have caused chaos around Africa’s most populous nation, with motorcyclists complaining helmets are too expensive and some passengers refusing to wear them, fearing they will catch skin disease or be put under a black magic spell.
■UNITED STATES
Spider-Man to meet Obama
President-elect Barack Obama will be “nerd-in-chief” when he takes office this month, according to Marvel Comics, which is putting him on the cover of its next Spider-Man comic. The special edition of the weekly Spider-Man comic features a six-page story about the superhero saving the day when an impostor tries to take Obama’s place as president. It is due to hit newsstands next Wednesday. Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada said the idea for the “Spidey meets the President!” edition came from a statement from Obama’s campaign listing 10 little known facts about Obama. “Right at the top of that list was he collected Spider-Man comics,” Quesada said on Thursday.
■CANADA
Woman surprised by birth
A Canadian woman rushed to hospital on New Year’s Eve for what she believed was a kidney stone gave birth to a boy instead, Ottawa media said on Thursday. “This is some kidney stone, isn’t it,” the woman, cradling the newborn in her arms, told Canwest New Service. Juanita Stead, 36, said she did not suffer morning sickness or put on weight during her pregnancy, and continued to menstruate and so she had no idea that she was pregnant. A hospital X-ray on New Year’s Eve for back pains revealed the truth. Nicholas was born soon afterwards.
■UNITED STATES
Craig abandons legal fight
Former senator Larry Craig has ended his effort to void the guilty plea he made following his 2007 arrest in a men’s toilet sex-sting operation, his lawyer said on Thursday. The Minnesota courts have denied the Idaho Republican’s appeals asking that he be allowed to withdraw his disorderly conduct guilty plea, which was processed by mail much like a traffic ticket. Another appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court would have been fruitless, because the case did not raise significant or novel issues, Craig’s attorney Thomas Kelly said. The three-term Republican’s term ended this week, and he has returned to Idaho, Kelly said. Craig was arrested at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport on June 11, 2007, by an undercover police officer who said the lawmaker peeked at him repeatedly through a crack in a stall door, sat down in the stall next to him and used hand and foot signals to indicate he was soliciting sex. Craig, 63 and married, denied he was trolling for sex.
■CHILE
Fake grandma caper foiled
A man attempted to steal US$80,000 from his 82-year-old grandmother by disguising his 21-year-old girlfriend as the elderly woman and having her withdraw money from a Santiago bank, but the plot was foiled. The man falsified his grandmother’s identity card and his girlfriend wore a latex mask. They might have gotten away with it if it weren’t for a bank worker who called the grandmother’s home and learned she was visiting relatives in Venezuela.
■CHILE
Yachtsman rescued again
Less than 36 hours after a dramatic rescue after capsizing in treacherous waters off Cape Horn, French round-the-world yachtsman Jean Le Cam had to be rescued again. Le Cam was sailing to Ushuaia in southern Argentina on Wednesday aboard the yacht of Vincent Riou, who rescued him after he was trapped in his upturned hull for hours, when the mast snapped and the engine failed. The accident left the pair drifting 138km southeast of Port Williams in Chile’s far south. Chile’s navy sent a vessel overnight to rescue the two yachtsmen.
IDENTITY: A sex extortion scandal involving Thai monks has deeply shaken public trust in the clergy, with 11 monks implicated in financial misconduct Reverence for the saffron-robed Buddhist monkhood is deeply woven into Thai society, but a sex extortion scandal has besmirched the clergy and left the devout questioning their faith. Thai police this week arrested a woman accused of bedding at least 11 monks in breach of their vows of celibacy, before blackmailing them with thousands of secretly taken photos of their trysts. The monks are said to have paid nearly US$12 million, funneled out of their monasteries, funded by donations from laypeople hoping to increase their merit and prospects for reincarnation. The scandal provoked outrage over hypocrisy in the monkhood, concern that their status
The United States Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it plans to adopt rules to bar companies from connecting undersea submarine communication cables to the US that include Chinese technology or equipment. “We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement. “We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats.” The United States has for years expressed concerns about China’s role in handling network traffic and the potential for espionage. The U.S. has
A disillusioned Japanese electorate feeling the economic pinch goes to the polls today, as a right-wing party promoting a “Japanese first” agenda gains popularity, with fears over foreigners becoming a major election issue. Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the Sanseito Party has widened its appeal ahead of today’s upper house vote — railing against immigration and dragging rhetoric that was once confined to Japan’s political fringes into the mainstream. Polls show the party might only secure 10 to 15 of the 125 seats up for grabs, but it is
Trinidad and Tobago declared a new state of emergency on Friday after authorities accused a criminal network operating in prisons across the country of plotting to kill key government officials and attack public institutions. It is the second state of emergency to be declared in the twin-island republic in a matter of months. In December last year, authorities took similar action, citing concerns about gang violence. That state of emergency lasted until mid-April. Police said that smuggled cellphones enabled those involved in the plot to exchange encrypted messages. Months of intelligence gathering led investigators to believe the targets included senior police officers,
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