■ Australia
More troops may go to Iraq
Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday he would consider increasing troop deployment to Afghanistan. Australia sent 150 special forces troops to Afghanistan as part of the US-led war that ousted the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in late 2001, but now has only one soldier there helping land mine clearing operations. Earlier this week, Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah called on Australia to send more troops and help stem a rising tide of violence in his country. Afghanistan's ambassador to Australia, Mahmoud Saikal, also asked Canberra to send more troops and help bolster security ahead of Sept. 18 parliamentary elections there. Howard said the request would be considered by the Cabinet next week.
■ China
Mall attack injures 27
A bomb injured 47 people after a man threw it into a crowded shopping center in an apparent revenge attack. Police arrested Ma Yuanxi, who was also wanted for murder, after the blast at the two-story Zhengde shopping center on Wednesday. Ma had been on the run since he was suspected of murder at a mine he ran in Hebei Province. He returned to Liaoyang to take revenge on a man identified only by his surname, Bian. He threw the bomb when he spotted someone he believed to be Bian in the shopping center. The force of the blast blew out all the windows at the shopping center, and many of the injured were rushed to local hospitals.
■ China
Idiot's guide to sex needed
Chinese are more ignorant about sex than any other subject, a sex expert said yesterday. "In the survey we conducted, not only youngsters but many grown-ups are sex idiots, which is really dangerous and woeful," Xu Tianming, president of the China Sexology Society, told a seminar. "More Chinese are ignorant about sex than about other knowledge, even including those having received higher education and experts of other fields," he said. Xu demonstrated a unique understanding of the subject, saying people could only enjoy a normal sex life until the age of 25. "Parents and society should allow them to have normal contacts with the opposite sex, such as dancing, and to read some books with certain sex descriptions," Xu said.
■ Japan
Three fall in elevator shaft
Three people fell 1.5m when an elevator failed to appear on the ground floor of an apartment building in Nagoya. When the elevator doors opened the two men and one woman stepped forward and promptly fell. With only slight injuries the three climbed out and reported the malfunctioning elevator, which was stuck on the third floor of the five-story building.
■ China
Minister put on trial
A minister in an underground Protestant church was put on trial yesterday on charges of running an illegal business after being detained with 200,000 copies of unauthorized Christian publications. Cai Zhuohua, his wife and two relatives were detained last year in what activists said was a crackdown by Communist officials on independent religious activity. A trial for the four began yesterday morning and adjourned after four hours without a verdict. and it might resume in three or four days. The four denied illegally operating a business. "Mr. Cai has no business to run, so the charge of illegally running a business is unreasonable," lawyer Gao Chusheng said. "The books were not for sale. They were to be given away for free."
■ Burundi
Former rebels win polls
President Domitien Ndayizeye conceded defeat on Wednesday to former rebels, who now face the challenge of cementing efforts to break an 11-year cycle of conflict. Provisional results released Tuesday showed the former rebel Forces for the Defense of Democracy winning 58 percent of the vote in Monday's parliamentary elections. Ndayizeye's Front for Democracy in Burundi came in second with 22 percent of votes for the 101-seat National Assembly. A former ruling party from the Tutsi minority, the Union for National Progress, came in third with 7 percent. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan congratulated the transitional government and people of Burundi for the successful and peaceful conduct of the elections.
■ Dagestan
Explosion hits railroad
An explosion hit a section of railroad in the troubled Russian region of Dagestan early yesterday, disrupting rail traffic for several hours but causing no injuries. The blast occurred outside the regional capital, Makhachkala, just after midnight as a freight train was passing. Near-daily explosions and attacks on police have rattled Dagestan, which borders war-wracked Chechnya, raising fears of widening violence in the Caucasus.
■ Germany
Plane lands on Porsche
A pilot and driver escaped unhurt when a one-seater plane landed on top of a speeding car in Bitburg at a little-used airport. "It was a miracle that no one was hurt. There was considerable damage done to the plane and the car," said police. The driver was racing at 160kph with 11 other members of a local Porsche club at the airport when the single-engine plane accidentally landed on his roof. The shocked driver slammed on the brakes, sending the plane crashing to the ground. The pilot faces possible charges of negligence.
■ Italy
Opinion penalty changed
The lower house of parliament voted to modify the penalties for certain crimes of opinion -- allowing for fines of up to 6,000 euros (US$7,147) or 18-month prison terms for people who propagandize or instigate hate crimes. Passage of the bill came after legislators defeated an amendment proposed by the often xenophobic Northern League to soften the propaganda penalty further. The National Alliance, the league's ally in the ruling center-right coalition, voted with the opposition to doom the amendment.
■ Sudan
Interim constitution passed
The National Assembly unanimously passed an interim constitution that steps away from complete Islamic rule and paves the way for a Christian former rebel leader to be inaugurated as first vice president later this week. Amid shouts of "Allahu akbar," or God is great, and ``Hallelujah, hallelujah!'' 286 lawmakers stood with their hands in the air to pass the constitution, the first Sudanese charter to lay out freedoms of religion and expression as human rights. "The State of Sudan is an embracing homeland, wherein races and cultures coalesce and religions conciliate," reads the first sentence of the document. Although Islamic law remains the basis of the law, the constitution, to be signed tomorrow, says it will not be applied in the mainly Christian and animist south, and removes a requirement that the president be Muslim.
■ Peru
Military still evade justice
For the first time in the nation's history, civilian courts are calling scores of military men to account for the torture and murder of civilians, including 118 ordered detained this week for one of the worst massacres during the height of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. But human rights advocates and a top court official complain that police are not carrying out arrest orders -- a reflection of the country's long domination by the armed forces. "The judicial police are not obeying court orders and will have to assume their responsibility if they continue like this," said Judge Pablo Talavera, president of Peru's national criminal court.
■ United States
Former FBI chief Gray dies
L. Patrick Gray, the Watergate-era FBI chief whose turbulent year at the agency was sullied by the scandal that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation, is dead at age 88. Gray died On Wednesday at his home in Atlantic Beach, Florida, of complications from pancreatic cancer, said his son, Ed Gray. With the recent revelation that his former deputy, Mark Felt, was the secret Washington Post source known as Deep Throat, Gray ended more than three decades of silence about his role in the scandal. The former Justice Department official and Navy captain was appointed by Nixon as acting FBI director in 1972 after the death of J. Edgar Hoover. Six weeks later, on June 17, five burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex.
■ Mexico
Woman has sextuplets
A woman in northern Mexico has given birth to six girls and all are doing well, her doctor said Wednesday. Joana Elizabeth Sanchez, 25, gave birth by Caesarean section on Monday to babies that weighed between 1.12kg and 1.3kg at a private hospital in Monterrey, said Dr. Victor Manuel Pina. The girls, with a gestation of 32 weeks, were born without problems "and now have passed the most difficult stage," he said. He said Sanchez had been taking medicine to stimulate ovulation. Her husband, Juan Gabriel Moreno, is a sales agent.
■ United States
Jobs consoles victim's dad
Apple Computer chief executive Steve Jobs has telephoned a bereaved father whose teenaged son has become the first person murdered in an iPod robbery, a report said Wednesday. The New York Times said Jobs called Errol Rose on Monday as he prepared to bury his 15-year-old son, Christopher, who was stabbed to death on Saturday in Brooklyn during a fight over one of the emblematic music players. "He told me that he understood my pain," Rose told the newspaper. "He told me if there is anything, anything, anything he could do, to not be afraid to call him. It really lightened me a bit." An Apple spokesman refused to comment on the report.
■ Canada
Canadian kids getting fatter
Canadians have grown much heavier in the past quarter century, according to a government survey, by eating too few fruits and vegetables, watching too much television, playing video games and not exercising enough. Obesity rates among children have climbed almost threefold to 8 percent (500,000 kids) from 1978 to last year while almost twice as many adults as before or 5.5 million people are now considered overweight, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
CHINESE ICBM: The missile landed near the EEZ of French Polynesia, much to the surprise and concern of the president, who sent a letter of protest to Beijing Fijian President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere called for “respect for our region” and a stop to missile tests in the Pacific Ocean, after China launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Katonivere recalled the Pacific Ocean’s history as a nuclear weapons testing ground, and noted Wednesday’s rare launch by China of an ICBM. “There was a unilateral test firing of a ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean. We urge respect for our region and call for cessation of such action,” he said. The ICBM, carrying a dummy warhead, was launched by the
As violence between Israel and Hezbollah escalates, Iran is walking a tightrope by supporting Hezbollah without being dragged into a full-blown conflict and playing into its enemy’s hands. With a focus on easing its isolation and reviving its battered economy, Iran is aware that war could complicate efforts to secure relief from crippling sanctions. Cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah, sparked by Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year, has intensified, especially after last week’s sabotage on Hezbollah’s communications that killed 39 people. Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon followed, killing hundreds. Hezbollah retaliated with rocket barrages. Despite the surge in
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