■ China
Boss to be executed for duel
A Chinese boss who forced two of his employees to fight each other naked on a cold winter night and later beat and killed one of them has been sentenced to death, state media reported yesterday. Wang Lixin, who ran an automobile repair shop at Zhangjiakou in northern Hebei Province, ordered the duel last December after one of the employees broke the window of a car, the Procuratorial Daily reported. Wang forced the two employees to strip naked and beat each other while standing in a courtyard and poured hot water on them as they fought, the report said. After the employee who broke the window beat the other employee Zong Zhenjun to the ground, Wang grabbed a strip of rubber sealant and hit Zong until he foamed at the mouth.
■ Cambodia
Monks frequent prostitutes
Three Buddhist monks were arrested and disrobed after they were caught outside a local brothel and confessed to devoting their days to Buddha and their nights to beer and prostitutes, police said yesterday. Hin Kimhun, 20, Chea Saroeun, 23, and Lim Chantha, 24, were arrested when police became suspicious and questioned them about their shaven heads and eyebrows -- the marks of Buddhist monks. They confessed and were immediately taken to the chief monk, who disrobed them, Nup Sam Ol, deputy chief of Prey Nop police in the coastal municipality of Sihanoukville, 240km south of the capital told reporters.
■ New Zealand
Magnitude 7 quake strikes
A massive earthquake which shook New Zealand's South Island yesterday was the eighth of magnitude 7 or more on the Richter scale recorded in the world this year, the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences reported. The quake, which registered 7.2, rattled people living along the 1,000km length of the South Island from Stewart Island to Nelson, and toppled articles from shelves in a number of towns in the far south, though there were no reports of injuries or serious damage.
■ Japan
Women groped on trains
Nearly 64 percent of Japanese women in their 20s and 30s surveyed said they have been groped on trains, subways or at transit stations in Tokyo, according to a news report yesterday. Women polled by the Tokyo metropolitan government and railway operator JR East found almost two-thirds were fondled while commuting on the transit system, the national Yomiuri newspaper reported. Groping has long been a problem on Tokyo's crowded commuter trains and subways, during the morning and late-night rush hours. In recent years "women only" cars have been used in December, when trains are often packed with hordes of drunken and unruly male office workers on their way home from year-end company parties.
■ India
US warns of terrorist attacks
The US warned Monday that terrorist attacks on American interests may be imminent in the Indian cities of New Delhi and Mumbai and said it would temporarily close some diplomatic offices in Mumbai as a precaution. "Based on information received by the US government, terrorists may be planning attacks on US interests in India in the near future," the US embassy in New Delhi and consulate in Mumbai said in a notice to Americans. "Although not specific, the information suggests that an attack could be aimed at US interests in the cities of New Delhi or Mumbai," the missions said.
■ United Kingdom
Airport gets `naked' scanner
An x-ray security scanner that sees through people's clothes has been deployed at London's Heathrow Airport. The device, at Terminal 4, produces a "naked" image of passengers by bouncing X-rays off their skin. It means staff can instantly spot any hidden weapons or explosives -- but the graphic black and white images raise privacy concerns. In the US, officials are refusing to deploy the device until it can be further refined to protect passengers' modesty. The new scanner is on trial until the end of the year at Heathrow. If the trial goes well, it could be rolled out across all British airports. Passengers are picked to go through the body scanner on a random and voluntary basis. Those who refuse are subjected to an automatic hand search.
■ Netherlands
Church air unhealthy: study
A visit to church may be good for the soul but not so good for the lungs, a new study shows. Scientists from Maastricht University found that burning candles and incense in church can release dangerous levels of potentially carcinogenic particles, according to research published this week in the European Respiratory Journal. "After a day of candle burning we found about 20 times as much as by a busy road," said Theo de Kok, the author of the study. The air at a Maastricht basilica contained 20 times the EU limit of PM10 particles after a simulated mass ceremony. Tiny PM10 particles can be inhaled and are therefore a potential hazard.
■ United Kingdom
Dandruff leads to jail
A veteran British criminal received the longest prison sentence of his career Monday, after being caught because of the dandruff he had left behind at the scene of an armed robbery. Using a DNA profiling method, investigators identified Andrew Pearson as a suspect by examining 25 flakes of dandruff found in a stocking he had worn as a mask during the robbery 11 years ago. Pearson's two accomplices in the crime remain at large. Andrew Pearson, now 40, and the two other men escaped with ?38,000 (US$70,630) in cash after raiding a caravan company in the northeastern city of Hull in June 1993.
■ Croatia
`Prison' holidays planned
Croatia is to offer tourists one of the world's ultimate tough-guy vacations: being treated like a political prisoner, complete with hard labor and monotonous jail food. The idea is to turn a former communist-era prison on an Adriatic island into a holiday resort, a tourist official said. The jail is on the northern Adriatic island of Goli Otok (Naked Island), where hundreds of disidents were detained when Croatia was a part of communist Yugoslavia. "If you want to feel the misery that political prisoners went through on Goli Otok, turn up at the gate, pay and you will be treated like a prisoner," Josip Modric, a creator of the project, said.
■ Spain
Destruction therapy a hit
Stressed-out Spaniards are being offered the opportunity to smash their way back to inner peace with the aid of a sledgehammer and a scrapyard full of abandoned cars. They are calling it "destruction therapy," an innovative way to rid yourself of the tension caused by an over-deman-ding boss or complaining clients. The destructoterapia sessions take place at a yard near the town of Lubia, 160km northeast of Madrid.
■ Iran
Wives suicidal over shoes
All three wives of a 67-year-old Iranian man took overdoses in an unsuccessful triple suicide attempt after the youngest wife bought an expensive pair of boots, a news agency reported on Sunday. "My two other wives were very jealous after my 27-year-old wife bought a pair of boots for US$450," the husband was quoted as saying by the ISNA student news agency. "After they had an argument about the price, they all attempted suicide together," he added. All three women, now in stable condition in a hospital in Tehran, have separate apartments and cars.
■ Saudi Arabia
Bride beats up guest
A furious Saudi bride beat up a woman who used a mobile phone camera to photograph her at her wedding party, a local newspaper reported on Sunday. The bride "beat up the woman, completely destroyed her phone and pulled her by the hair in front of a big crowd of guests" for taking pictures in the women-only section of the wedding at Taif, in western Saudi Arabia, Al-Jazirah daily said. The bride was applauded by guests for her "vigilance," the paper added. Women and men are usually segregated at wedding parties in the deeply conservative Muslim country, allowing women to remove their veils without being seen by men.
■ United States
`Mozzarrella Mary' sold
A woman who said her 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich bore the image of the Virgin Mary will be getting a lot more bread after the item sold for US$28,000 on eBay. GoldenPalace.com, an online casino, confirmed that it placed the winning bid, and company executives said they were willing to spend "as much as it took" to own the 10-year-old half-sandwich with a bite out of it. "It's a part of pop culture that's immediately and widely recognizable," spokesman Monty Kerr told The Miami Herald. ``We knew right away we wanted to have it.'' Photos posted on eBay show what can be viewed as a woman's face emblazoned on the sandwich, a bite taken out of one end.
■ United States
Star officer caught stealing
A young Philippine army officer has been caught shoplifting in the US, where he was undergoing advance schooling, an army spokesman said yesterday. Second Lieutenant Rolly Joaquin, who was deported to Manila on Oct. 28, has been restricted to quarters pending an investigation on his alleged crime, according to Major Bartolome Bacarro. Bacarro said Joaquin could face court martial and administrative charges if investigators find strong evidence against him. Joaquin, valedictorian of the Philippine Military Academy class 2004, was attending a course at the US Army Infantry School in Fort Benning, Georgia.
■ Iraq
`Tomb raider' convicted
An expert on Iraq's postwar reconstruction was sentenced Monday to six months under house arrest and two years of probation for trying to smuggle into the US 4,000-year-old artifacts stolen from Iraq's national museum in the chaos after the US invasion. Joseph Braude, 30, pleaded guilty to smuggling and making false statements. Braude could have gotten 16 years in prison. Braude is a Middle East expert fluent in Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi. For years he had assisted the FBI and CIA with counter-terrorism efforts. When he returned from Iraq last summer, Braude was stopped by customs agents at Kennedy Airport after he failed to declare he was carrying three ancient seals.
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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
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