■AUSTRALIA
Women prefer manly men
The recession has made beefy blokes like Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig more appealing than scented metrosexuals like Hugh Grant and Leonardo DiCaprio, an Australian sociologist said yesterday. “During the downturn, the theory is that women are concerned about safety, security and food supply, so their taste in men will shift from the androgynous, hairless metrosexual towards the more muscular, primal, hairy male,” demographer Bernard Salt told Australian news agency AAP. He predicted the desired body shape would “shift from hairless, sleek, a bit wimpy, to the more muscular” as economies sank deeper into recession. Film-star looks were likely to change too, with the androgynous Zac Efrons fading from view and the hirsute, sweaty Russell Crowes taking their place.
■VIETNAM
Mass grave discovered
Searchers discovered a mass grave of 35 North Vietnamese soldiers killed at a military airport during the 1968 Tet offensive, a military official said yesterday. The remains were discovered on Saturday in a search of the former Vinh Long army airport, said the head of the provincial military command’s political department, Vo Hieu Hoa. “We had the names and addresses of all of them, but could not identify who is who,” Hoa told reporters, adding that the search for the 35 began in the 1980s. He said several more bodies of soldiers killed by US troops when they tried to occupy the airport had still to be found.
■MALAYSIA
Detainees set free
The government yesterday freed 13 people detained under controversial security laws, police said, after new Prime Minister Najib Razak ordered their release. Najib was sworn in on Friday and announced in his maiden speech that he was revoking a ban on two newspapers and releasing 13 people held under the Internal Security Act, which allows for indefinite detention without trial. The 13, including two ethnic Indian leaders of a banned group, were greeted by family members and supporters as they left the detention center in northern Perak state where they were held. Najib had said their release was good for the country and denied it was a bid to win back support for the ruling party.
■INDIA
Bad moonshine kills 14
At least 14 people including two women were killed after drinking illegally brewed poisonous alcohol in India’s northeastern state of Assam, a news report said yesterday. The deaths occurred in the Saboti area in the Lakhimpur district, some 400km east of state capital Guwahati, on Saturday night, the PTI news agency reported. Thirteen villagers who were seriously ill after consuming the alcohol were admitted to different state-run hospitals in the area. Doctors said the death toll could rise.
■AUSTRALIA
Polio survivor turns 82
A polio victim confined to a Melbourne hospital and an “iron lung” respirator for the past six decades completed her 82 birthday yesterday. June Middleton, who entered the Guinness Book of Records three years ago as the person who had spent the longest time in an iron lung, had 160 well-wishers around her bedside. Middleton was rendered a quadriplegic when she contracted polio at the age of 22 — just a week before she intended to marry. Thousands of Australians died and tens of thousands were crippled in the polio outbreak of 1949. There are now few people confined to the telephone box-sized iron lung, which inflate the lungs.
■EGYPT
Court sentences swingers
A Cairo court sentenced a man to seven years and his wife to three years for setting up a swingers’ club, the press reported yesterday in a case that has angered conservative society. Tolba Abdel Hafez, a 48-year-old civil servant, and his wife Salwa Higazi, a 37-year-old schoolteacher, were sentenced by the Agouza Criminal Court on Saturday, the state-owned Al-Gomhuria reported. Extra-marital sex is illegal in the mainly Muslim country, where Islamic law is a principal source of legislation. The Cairo couple, who have children, used the pseudonyms Magdy and Samira on a Web site and in e-mails to organize wife-swapping parties and orgies.
■UNITED STATES
Dancer charged with assault
A dancer and choreographer featured on the FOX TV show So You Think You Can Dance was arrested Saturday on suspicion of sexually assaulting four of his dance students, police said. Alex Da Silva, 41, a well-known salsa dancer who teaches at several Los Angeles dance studios, was taken into custody after teaching a class at a Hollywood studio and booked for investigation of sexual assault, Detective John Eum said. Da Silva, who was being held on US$3.8 million bail, is scheduled to appear in court tomorrow.
■UNITED STATES
Police confiscate pillows
Detroit police officers nonplussed with the idea of an impromptu pillow fight in downtown Detroit have ruffled a few feathers by preventing it. The pillow fight, reportedly one of at least 50 across the world on Saturday organized by people on social networking Web sites, was shut down by officers stationed at Campus Martius Park. The Detroit News said officers in blue jumpsuits politely disarmed pillow-toting participants. Thirty-two-year-old Michael Davis of Hamtramck, who had his pillows snagged but his cases returned, said police told him he needed a permit. But 48-year-old Scott Harris of Ferndale wasn’t willing to simply roll over, saying, “It is not illegal to own a pillow.”
■MACEDONIA
Runoff election begins
The country began voting yesterday in a runoff election to choose a new president. Election officials said the polls opened at 7am, with no problems reported. First-round winner Gjorgje Ivanov, a government-backed conservative, is running against Social Democrat challenger Ljubomir Frckoski. The two sides are at odds over whether to compromise with neighbor Greece on a name dispute that has delayed the country’s bid to join NATO.
■UNITED STATES
Alaskan volcano erupts
The Mount Redoubt volcano had another large eruption on Saturday after being relatively quiet for nearly a week. Radar indicated a plume of volcanic ash rose 15,240m into the sky, making it one of the largest eruptions since the volcano became active on March 22, the National Weather Service said. The ash cloud was drifting toward the southeast and there were reports of the fine, gritty ash falling in towns on the Kenai Peninsula. Plans to transfer millions of liters of oil from an oil storage facility near Mount Redoubt were derailed when the volcano erupted and a tanker sent to get the oil had to turn back. The explosion caused a mud flow in the Drift River Valley. The slurry of meltwater, hot rocks, volcanic ash and other debris reached the area of the Chevron-operated Drift River Terminal, where 23.85 million liters of oil is stored in two tanks, said Rod Ficken, vice president of Cook Inlet Pipeline Co.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
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