■ Australia
New twist on knickers
PHOTO: AFP
A grandmother sick of having her underwear peek over the top of the latest low-cut trousers has designed a pair of backless briefs. "You'll never have to pull your knickers out again," 44-year-old Jan Digney said of her revolutionary design which rides neither up nor down buttock cheeks. After a new pair of "hipsters" revealed a little too much of her underwear last Novem-ber, Digney decided some-thing had to be done. "I asked my daughters and
they said they wore micro-mini G-strings but some-times they didn't wear anything at all," she said.
"I was horrified. I didn't bring my daughters up like that." So five months, 50 prototypes and A$300,000 (US$213,000) of savings later, the grandmother of
two has come up with what she thinks is the answer.
The "Pert Backless Brief," patented in 123 countries, features two adjustable bra-like straps which extend around each thigh, sit under the buttock cheek and come together at the gusset.
■ New Zealand
Car thief picks wrong target
A thief who stole a car with
a four-year-old boy in the back seat in Coromandel soon discovered he had chosen the wrong town, the New Zealand Herald reported yesterday. Five drivers who had seen the incident gave chase and a cafe owner telephoned residents on the thief's escape route to organize road blocks. Finding his escape blocked the thief headed back toward town before a car driven by the boy's uncle drove the thief off the road. Police said
the 19-year-old thief had been watching when the child's aunt left the car with the boy and a nine-year old niece in the back seat. The girl escaped as the vehicle drove off.
■ Malaysia
Ritual killing suspects freed
A court yesterday acquitted three men charged with killing an American woman in an occult ritual to obtain lottery numbers. The remains of 35-year-old Carolyn Janice Ahmad were discovered in a shallow grave in June 2001. The Minnesota native was married to a Malaysian doctor and had lived in Malaysia since 1987. High Court Judicial Commis-sioner Balia Yusuf Wahi
said discrepancies in the testimony of key witnesses showed that prosecutors did not have a solid enough case against the three men.
■ Nepal
25 feared dead in crash
At least 25 people, including a number of foreign tourists, were feared killed yesterday when their bus plunged about 100m into a raging river in central Nepal, police said. The accident occurred near the town of Bhaisi Gauda, about 90km west of the Kathmandu early yes-terday, police said. The bus was traveling between Pokhara and Kathmandu when the driver apparently lost control, an official said.
■ Australia
Nike pulls TV ad
Nike withdrew a TV ad featuring young girls trying to impress a male tennis coach yesterday after morals groups complained it trivialized pedophilia. "We apologize to those who
have been offended by the television commercial," Nike Australia managing director Tony Balfour said in a statement.
■ United States
Olympian kills wife, self
Police believe a former Olympic athlete killed his neurosurgeon wife before committing suicide by jumping from a 10th-story dormitory window, a source familiar with the investigation said. Police were not releasing the name of the man who died early Saturday, but the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday, said he was Robert Howard, a University of Arkansas medical student who competed in track and field events in the 1996 and 2000 Olympics. Police arrived at the dormitory room and tried to talk to the man, but he jumped out the window about 20 minutes later.
■ United Kingdom
Blazing bunny spreads fire
A rabbit set alight by a bonfire at a British cricket club got its revenge when it ran burning into a hut and set it ablaze, destroying costly equipment, the club said on Friday. Members of Devizes cricket club in Wiltshire, western England, were burning dead branches when a rabbit caught up in the waste sped burning from the flames, spreading a fire which destroyed lawnmowers and tools worth US$110,000. "After it had been going 5 minutes, the rabbit shot out of the bonfire on fire and went into the hut which is our equipment store," club chairman John Bedbrook told Reuters. The rabbit's skeleton was discovered in the charred hut.
■ Mexico
5 killed in drug spree
In an especially gruesome 24 hour period, police discovered the bodies of five men and one woman who were killed and dumped around this violent border city in cases that all appear to involve drug-trafficking, authorities said Sunday. Police found four of the men strangled to death in the back of a Chevy Suburban abandoned in an urban parking lot. The bodies were wrapped in blankets and their hands and feet were bound with brown masking tape, both telltale signs the killers were professionals with links to drug pushers, said Mauro Conde, a spokesman for the attorney general's office of Chihuahua sate, which includes Juarez.
■ United States
Wildfires destroy homes
An out-of-control wildfire roared through an old mining town in the Northern California mountains, destroying 20 homes and forcing nearly 300 residents to flee, officials said. The day-old blaze quickly grew to 3,040 hectares on Sunday and was only about 10-percent contained. Nearly 100 homes and 20 other buildings were threatened in French Gulch, about 30km west of Redding. Another fire that began on Wednesday when a lawnmower struck a rock in dry grass cut through the pine and oak-covered hills of Shasta Lake, about 225km northwest of Sacramento.
■ Israel
Bread older than thought
People were making bread from wild grass flour 12,000 years before the birth of agriculture, according to new findings by scientists in the Middle East. A site on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in Israel has yielded evidence of wild barley being ground and turned into bread dough at least 22,000 years ago. The earliest signs of the domestication of wheat and barley date back do the Middle East 10,000 years ago. The new find is the first clear evidence that humans learned to reap and process wild cereals long before the start of organized farming, The team of scientists was led by Dolores Piperno from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
‘DOWNSIZE’: The Trump administration has initiated sweeping cuts to US government-funded media outlets in a move critics said could undermine the US’ global influence US President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday began making deep cuts to Voice of America (VOA) and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with the organization’s director saying all VOA employees have been put on leave. On Friday night, shortly after the US Congress passed its latest funding bill, Trump directed his administration to reduce the functions of several agencies to the minimum required by law. That included the US Agency for Global Media, which houses Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. On Saturday morning, Kari Lake, a former Arizona gubernatorial and US
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
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