■CHINA
Doc played game, baby died
A five-month-old baby died in a hospital amid pleas for help from his parents while his doctor played video games online, health authorities said yesterday. An investigation showed Mao Xiaojun was playing an online version of “Go” on the night shift and did not take the parents’ pleas for help seriously, the Jiangsu Province health department said in a press release. “When efforts were being made to save the baby, the mother got on her knees in the doorway of the ear, nose and throat department and pleaded for help,” the statement said. The baby died the next morning, Nov. 4, from complications caused by an eye infection, the statement said. The department’s statement said Mao “covered up the truth” in an initial investigation. But more probing found that she had been playing “Go” on an instant messaging system, the statement said. Mao was stripped of her medical license and fired.
■HONG KONG
Cemetery in skeleton mix-up
The skeletons of at least two people have been jumbled up after casks of bones fell down a flight of stairs in an accident in a cemetery, a news report said yesterday. The skeletons of seven people were transported on a motorized trolley in the Catholic cemetery when the trolley toppled down a flight of stairs, the South China Morning Post reported. At least two of the seven stone casks broke open and the bones were jumbled in a pile on the ground, making it impossible to tell which bones were from which casket. The bones were being moved from graves to a crematorium, a common practice in Hong Kong where because of shortage of grave space skeletons are cremated after 10 or more years. Families of the deceased people whose bones were jumbled up may be offered compensation, a spokesman for the cemetery said, adding that it would depend upon “whether the bones can be sorted out.”
■SOUTH KOREA
Cops nab golf ball thief
A man who dived by night into water hazards at dozens of golf courses to collect lost balls has been arrested for theft, police said yesterday. The man identified only as Lee, a 42-year-old former golf club employee, is accused of stealing some 26,000 lost balls worth 13 million won (US$11,226), police said. Wearing a diving suit and an oxygen tank, Lee searched water hazards by night to retrieve the balls. Police said he either worked alone or teamed up with his niece or a friend.
■NEW ZEALAND
Flasher causes furore
A man who exposed himself to a woman on a bus in the city of Hamilton yesterday sparked a chain of events that led to the vehicle hitting a police station. A police statement said the flasher’s behavior terrified the woman, who began screaming. The driver headed for the nearest police station where he stopped and switched on the emergency door lock to trap the offender. Unfortunately, the bus was still in gear and rolled into the station’s entrance, cracking its windscreen and damaging the building. “No-one was injured in the incident and the man was arrested — in a flash,” a police statement said.
■AUSTRALIA
Woman packs meat
A 24-year-old caught with four steaks in her underwear pleaded guilty to stealing at Darwin Magistrates Court yesterday. The court was told that when the woman was stopped outside a local supermarket she had meat worth almost A$500 (US$460) in her underwear. “Her life had taken a turn for the worse,” her lawyer told the court.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Brits are the ugliest people
Britons are among the ugliest people in the world, a dating Web site that says it only allows “beautiful people” to join said. Fewer than one in eight British men and just three in 20 women who have applied to BeautifulPeople.com have been accepted, an e-mailed statement from the Web site showed. Existing members of the “elite dating site” rate how attractive potential members are over a 48 hour period, after applicants upload a recent photo and personal profile. Swedish men have proved the most successful, with 65 percent being accepted, while Norwegian women are considered the most beautiful with 76 percent accepted, the Web site said. The way that BeautifulPeople.com accepts new members is simple. A potential member applies with a photo and a brief profile. Over 48 hours, existing members of the opposite sex vote whether or not to admit them, the site said. Options are: “Yes definitely,” “Hmm yes, OK,” “Hmm no, not really” and “No definitely not.”
■GERMANY
Stolen lion returns home
A circus lion called Caesar was fighting fit again on Thursday after an ordeal that saw the van he was being transported in stolen by an unwitting thief, his keepers said. The Mercedes Transporter containing Circus Probst’s ferocious five-year-old feline star was recovered in the early hours of Wednesday morning in Wuppertal after crashing into a road sign, police said. Hours earlier it had been stolen from among the circus’s other vehicles, with the thief, who remains on the loose, apparently unaware of the nature of his stolen cargo. It was unknown whether the thief becoming aware of Caeser’s presence, perhaps through a hungry roar, had caused him or her to crash the vehicle and then abandon it with the engine still running.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Government fraudster jailed
A former far-right British member of the European Parliament who cheated on his expense money to buy fine wine and a car was jailed on Wednesday for two years. “This fraud was so blatant, I do not believe for one moment you were disadvantaged in understanding the system or that this fraud should be seen as falling into some gray area which you might not have fully comprehended,” Judge Geoffrey Rivlin said in sentencing Tom Wise, 61, a former representative for the fringe UK Independence Party. Wise, who represented the UKIP before becoming an independent, spent a year channeling £40,000 (US$66,080) in taxpayers’ cash into a bank account he secretly controlled. He maintained a £3,000 “secretarial assistance allowance” he received every month was for his researcher, but paid her just £500, while keeping the rest for himself, buying a car, expensive wines and paying off debts.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Police cancel bike guide
Police chiefs said on Thursday they would not go ahead with a planned 93-page guide telling officers how to ride their bikes, after its simplistic advice was mocked and its expense criticized. The Police Cycle Training Doctrine included advice such as not to tackle suspected criminals while still “engaged with the cycle” — on the bike — and has a diagram showing “deployment into a junction” — turning left or right. The draft document also explained how to balance so as not to fall off, how to brake, and urges officers to wear padded shorts for “in-saddle comfort,” and remember to “rear-scan” — look over their shoulders.
■VENEZUELA
Government crushes guns
Battling with one of the world’s highest murder rates, the government on Wednesday crushed more than 30,000 guns seized from the streets during police raids this year. Police used blow-torches to chop up some of the shotguns and pistols. They compacted weapons including home-made pistols into a 5 tonne block, Interior Minister Tarek Al Aisammi said. With 13,000 murders in 2007, the last time figures were published, violent crime consistently registers as a main concern in opinion polls. Gun laws are lax in the South American oil exporter. The government estimates there are 6 million firearms circulating among the population of about 28 million. The murder rate is about eight times that of the US.
■PERU
Metal found in stomach
Doctors in the north have removed almost a kilogram of nails, coins and scrap metal from a man’s stomach, a surgeon that operated on him said on Wednesday. “The patient came in with severe abdominal pains. After examinations we discovered that he had hundreds of nails in his stomach,” said Carlos Delgado, a surgeon at the hospital in the town of Cajamarca. Requelme Abanto Alvarado was admitted to the hospital on Friday. After a two-hour operation, doctors removed 900g of nails, coins and scrap metal from his stomach, as well as a small knife.
■UNITED STATES
House of horrors busted
A mother of seven is accused of running a house of horrors for pets at her suburban home, forcing her children to help torture them and burying at least 20 dogs in her backyard — animals neighbors now fear were beloved pets that mysteriously disappeared over the years. Sharon McDonough pleaded not guilty last week to six counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty on suspicion of abusing five dogs and a cat found crammed into cages, covered in feces and urine, their coats matted with filth. A judge has taken away custody of the 43-year-old woman’s six young daughters. McDonough’s neighbors began fearing their missing pets met a worse fate than the abused animals after her son led officials to a backyard filled with the shallow graves of 20 dogs.
■BOLIVIA
IDs relaxed for transvestites
Transvestites will be allowed to have their national ID pictures taken as women. Public defender Patricia Flores said that after three-years of negotiations, her office, Bolivian police and transvestite and transgender groups have agreed to grant people the right to be photographed looking however they want. Until now, police have forced transvestites to be pictured in keeping with their biological gender. The ID cards will still list their legal names. Flores said the initiative was inspired by claims of discrimination.
■UNITED STATES
Driver distracted by pelican
Police say a low-flying pelican distracted a driver in Texas, causing him to veer off a road and drive his US$1 million sports car into a salt marsh. La Marque police Lieutenant Greg Gilchrist said the man claimed he lost concentration while driving his French-built Bugatti Veyron on Wednesday because the bird swooped into sight. Gilchrist said the driver dropped his phone, reached down to pick it up and strayed into the brackish water in La Marque, about 56km southeast of Houston. Gilchrist did not know if the car could be salvaged, but said that “salt water isn’t good for anything.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing