UNITED STATES
Zombie Jesus provokes
A suburban Cincinnati man’s zombie-themed Nativity scene has caused quite a stir in his neighborhood, with some considering it a holiday treat, while others see it as a nightmare before Christmas. Responding to two anonymous complaints, officials in Ohio’s Sycamore Township said they have ordered Jasen Dixon to take down his display by today because it violates local property maintenance codes. Dixon, who manages a haunted attraction in Indiana, faces a US$1,000 fine if he does not remove the 3m by 3m structure he built three weeks ago. He said he made the models for the zombie Mary and three wise men, and borrowed props to make the Joseph and Jesus zombie figures. The baby Jesus is pale with totally white eyes, while the other life-sized figures are partly skeletal.
UNITED STATES
Santa shot to protect: lawyer
A man dressed in a Santa Claus suit accused of shooting two men over the weekend at a Detroit gas station was acting in defense of a coworker who was dressed as Mrs Claus, his attorney said. Marcus Weldon, 26, faces multiple assault charges, including assault with intent to murder, as a result of the shooting, which wounded two men early on Sunday. Weldon’s attorney, Gabi Silver, pleaded not guilty on his behalf at a hearing on Tuesday. Silver said Weldon and his coworker were dressed as the Clauses for a party at the MGM Grand Casino in downtown Detroit, where they both work. “They were just getting off work, no alcohol was involved,” Silver told reporters. Violence erupted when Weldon got into a heated verbal exchange with one of the men, a gas station customer, prosecutors said. Weldon fired several shots, wounding the man and a passenger in his car, prosecutors said.
UNITED STATES
Police look for head’s body
An aerial search for the embalmed body of a woman whose head was recovered this month by an isolated rural road was due to begin this week, police in western Pennsylvania said. Police in the borough of Economy, 35km northwesth of Pittsburgh, said they were exploring a number of theories as to how the head wound up on the roadside, including the possibility of a grave robbery or that the body was intercepted on its journey from a funeral home to a cemetery. They have received no reports of missing bodies or disturbed graves, Economy Borough Police Department Chief Michael O’Brien said. A sketch done by an Edinboro University art professor showed how the woman might have looked in life: She appeared to be about 50 years old, with short gray hair that had been styled, police said.
CHILE
Fresh donkey milk for sale
Ricardo Alegria is a different sort of milk man. For a quarter-century or more, he and his brother Marco have led donkeys through the streets of Santiago, milking them on the spot for customers. It is a rare job, but a very old one. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates recommended donkey’s milk for some ailments and at least some claim that Cleopatra bathed in it for her skin. The use of donkey’s milk has persisted in some parts of the world. Even Pope Francis has said he drank it as a boy in Argentina, prompting an Italian company that produces the milk to give him two donkeys recently. The Alegrias sell shot-sized cups of the milk for about US$2. A half-liter, the most they say a donkey produces in a day, goes for about US$20.
HONG KONG
Cash spillage sparks frenzy
Boxes filled with more than US$2 million in cash spilled out of an armored van onto a major highway on Wednesday, sparking a frenzy as drivers and passers-by tried to get their hands on the notes. Traffic ground to a halt on Gloucester Road as taxi drivers rushed out of their cars to make a grab for the hundreds of banknotes scattered over the busy highway. TV footage showed pedestrians dashing in from the sidewalk to join in the Christmas Eve melee. Police, some of them armed with shotguns, helmets and bulletproof vests, rushed to the scene to secure the area. More than HK$15.23 million (US$1.96 million) spilled onto the road, police said. It was not clear how much officers managed to retrieve and how much had been pocketed by members of the public. “Any person who finds the relevant bank notes should return them to police as soon as possible, or they may be committing a theft,” police warned in a statement. Police said the driver of the van made it all the way to his destination, oblivious to the fact that his back door was open and the cash boxes had fallen out.
CHINA
Man scoffs 160 eggs
A competitive eater who marked the Christmas season by consuming 160 eggs in one sitting said he was in good health and planned more extreme stunts. Pan Yizhong (潘一中), 46, sported a red and white Santa hat as he gobbled 150 quail eggs and 10 chicken eggs in less than 40 minutes on Tuesday to promote a restaurant in Hunan Province. The Chinese word for Christmas — shengdanjie — contains a character which is a homophone for “egg” and Pan said it “seemed like an appropriate time to eat eggs.” Quail eggs are significantly smaller than chickens’ eggs and pictures showed him shoving several into his mouth simultaneously. “At the time I got to 160, I was becoming tired of the flavor so I stopped. It wasn’t because I was full,” he said. Pan has previously dispatched 147 dumplings in a single sitting and once polished off 40 bowls of noodles in 15 minutes. “Now I’m back to normal, I’ve had ice cream and barbequed meat since,” Pan said. “As a competitive eater, I want to test my limits eating all kinds of food.”
CHINA
Collapse exposes panty thief
A man who stole hundreds of pieces of ladies’ underwear had his secret exposed after an emergency exit ceiling where he had been storing his hoard collapsed, state media reported. The man, surnamed Tang and in his 30s, admitted to having mental problems since he was young and that he did not know how long he had been obsessed with women’s undergarments, reports said. Police in the city of Yulin said they found more than 2,000 panties and bras in the roof where he had stuffed his collection. Residents in the housing complex where Tang lived had complained about the mysterious vanishing of their undergarments. Tang used a master key for the apartments in the complex to sneak in and steal the underwear when residents were not there, reports said.
BELGIUM
PM doused in fries and mayo
Anti-austerity protesters got close enough to the prime minister this week to splatter him with a helping of the national dish — fries and mayo. Pictures from a business event in Namur showed Charles Michel, 39, smiling as a woman squirted sauce over his suit. His spokesman said he would not press charges and declined comment on the breach of security around the prime minister of a country that has been a major recruiting hub for militants fighting in Syria.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the