■AUSTRALIA
Doctors try to grow breasts
Scientists said yesterday they would test a revolutionary treatment that could allow women to regrow their breasts after cancer surgery. Doctors from Melbourne’s Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery said they had developed an implantable device that uses a woman’s own fat cells to grow back breasts following a mastectomy. “There is a dollop of fat that is put inside a device, a chamber, fed with the blood supply, and then this dollop of fat will grow into the space and essentially feel normal to the patient,” lead researcher Phillip Marzella said. Initial participants would have to undergo a second operation to remove the chamber, but a biodegradable version is planned. Trials on pigs were “very successful,” he said. Human trials will begin early next year, he said.
■AUSTRALIA
Missing sniffer dog found
A sniffer dog has been found alive and well nearly 14 months after going missing in an intense firefight in Afghanistan, officials said yesterday. Sabi, a black labrador who searches out roadside bombs for Australia’s Special Forces, appeared unharmed by her ordeal after being returned by an unknown Afghan man. “I nudged a tennis ball to her with my foot and she took it straight away. It’s a game we used to play over and over during her training,” her trainer said. “It’s amazing, just incredible, to have her back.” Sabi went missing in September last year when Taliban militants ambushed Australian, US and Afghan forces in Uruzgan Province, wounding nine people, including her handler.
■JAPAN
PRC activist stuck at Narita
A Chinese rights activist said yesterday he had been stuck in limbo at Tokyo’s Narita airport for nine days after his country denied him the right to return home. In a situation reminiscent of the stateless man portrayed in the movie The Terminal, Feng Zhenghu (馮正虎) has been camped out on a couch near the immigration checkpoint at Narita International Airport since Nov. 4. “I’ve been here for nine days, eight nights. I have not had a lot to eat or drink,” he said yesterday at Terminal 1. “I have a Chinese passport that is valid for three more years. I have a valid visa for Japan, but I do not want to stay in Japan. I want to go home.” Amnesty International lists Feng as a prominent activist who has been jailed in the past. He told a reporter that, after a stay of several months in Japan this year, he had tried to go back to China eight times. “Four times I was turned back by Shanghai authorities at the Pudong airport. They did not let me into the country,” he said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Canoe fraud wife to pay up
Lawyers for Anne Darwin said on Wednesday she had agreed to repay more than £500,000 (US$829,150) from a fraud carried out with her back-from-the-dead canoeist husband. Lawyers told Leeds Crown Court she would repay £591,838, while her husband John would repay a nominal sum of £1 because he has no financial assets, the Press Association reported. The pair were jailed last year for an elaborate insurance scam that saw them fake his death in a canoeing accident at sea in 2002, deceiving emergency services, police, a coroner and even their own sons. They fled to Panama to set up a new life, but John Darwin turned up at a police station in November 2007.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Noisy lover loses sex appeal
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