■UNITED STATES
Celebrated sci-fi writer dies
Philip Jose Farmer, one of the most celebrated science fiction writers of the 1960s and 1970s, has died. He was 91. Farmer died on Wednesday in his sleep, his official Web site said. He wrote more than 75 novels, including the Riverworld and World of Tiers series. He won the Hugo Award three times and the Grand Master Award for Science Fiction in 2001. Farmer’s first published story, The Lovers, caught the attention of the science fiction world in 1952 with one of the genre’s first serious treatments of sexuality. The story inspired some of the greatest science fiction writers, including Robert Heinlein, whose classic Stranger in a Strange Land was dedicated to Farmer.
■UNITED STATES
Mystery object pierces roof
Police say an unidentified object dropped out of the sky with enough velocity to tear a hole through the roof and the second floor of a Dallas home. Senior Corporal Kevin Janse said on Wednesday the 2.7kg piece of metal with two drill holes in it fell on Tuesday evening when the person who reported the incident wasn’t home. Janse said there were no injuries. Officers couldn’t determine the source of the debris.
■UNITED STATES
Old bill foils safe-robbers
Authorities said an antique US$1,000 bill proved the downfall of three teenagers on the run in Michigan. The Kalamazoo County sheriff’s department said the trio stole a safe containing antique money from one of the youth’s parents. The Kalamazoo Gazette and the Birmingham News said they drove a stolen van to Birmingham, Alabama, where an 18-year-old tried to exchange the US$1,000 bill yesterday at a Service First Bank branch. The US Treasury stopped printing US$1,000 bills in 1945, so the bank called police. Officers arrested the teen and two 15-year-old companions. They remained in custody on Tuesday in Birmingham awaiting return to Michigan.
■UNITED STATES
Man has no claim on kidney
A court has rejected a surgeon’s claim that he should get US$1.5 million in his divorce settlement because he donated a kidney to his wife. Richard Batista held a news conference last month, saying he was entitled to the kidney compensation because Dawnell Batista was denying him visits with their three children. In a 10-page ruling, matrimonial referee Jeffrey Grob said Batista’s claim was without merit. The court ruled the kidney, donated in 2001, was a gift. Grob said a wide range of items were considered marital property — but donated organs would not be among them.
■MEXICO
Dog deaths cause outrage
The brutal deaths of more than two dozen dogs and cats kept for years in a cramped, feces-stained apartment have sparked outrage in the capital, where authorities and animal activists traded accusations on Wednesday over who was to blame. Both sides say assailants believed to be neighbors outraged by the smell and noise rammed down the door to the residence, but they disagree on how the animals died. “Masked men ... opened the door to my apartment and killed my dogs,” said Javier Cervantes, who kept 50 rescued dogs and 20 cats at the housing complex in the lower-middle-class community of Jaltenco, outside Mexico City. Cervantes, who was not home at the time, said sympathetic neighbors told him the assailants used “machetes and steel pipes” to hack and bludgeon the animals to death.
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