■ South Korea
Human egg sales probed
South Korean police said yesterday they had raided several Seoul hospitals and were questioning an alleged ringleader and others implicated in the selling of human eggs through the Internet. The Seoul police said a 28-year-old man had been arrested for allegedly brokering the illegal transactions online. Three women under questioning were suspected of selling their own ova, police said. The JoongAng Daily said South Korean college students were selling their ova to pay off credit cards and buy skiing vacations.
■ Hong Kong
Bomb injures one
A small bomb set off a minor explosion at a Hong Kong newspaper office yesterday, injuring a female employee, police and the editor of the paper said. The Chinese-language Ming Pao Daily received a threatening letter and a gift box containing an explosive that went off when a secretary opened it, said Cheung Kin-bor, chief editor at the paper. Cheung said the secretary was slightly injured and sent to hospital.
■ China
Thousands visit sex festival
More than 50,000 people flocked to the opening day of a racy sex festival in southern China in a sign the conservative nation is shedding its sexual taboos, state media reported yesterday. The three-day event, which began on Saturday in Guangzhou Province, featured lingerie shows and adult toy exhibitions as experts and local authorities sought to convey information about the dangers of unsafe sex. Experts worry that sex education in China has fallen behind over the past 25 years as economic development changed people's attitudes about sex.
■ Afghanistan
Attacker wounds himself
A would-be suicide bomber was wounded when he detonated a car bomb outside the office of the governor of the southern Afghan province of Helmand yesterday, the Interior Ministry said. "It was a major explosion in a Toyota car and happened in front of the governor's building just before the start of a meeting involving key local officials," a ministry spokesman said. He said only one person was hurt, apparently the attacker himself, who was rushed to the hospital. Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said the attacker was a local Taliban. "Our intention was to kill the officials who were meeting inside the building," he said by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.
■ Australia
Aspirin may avert cancer
The common painkiller aspirin, already found to be effective in reducing the risk of heart disease, may also help lower the incidence of skin cancer. According to a study undertaken by the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, regularly taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin could offer increased protection against skin cancer and sunspots. "We found that people who regularly used aspirin and other NSAIDs [non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs] had significantly lower risks of developing skin cancer than people who did not use them," researcher David Whiteman said. He said aspirin-type drugs shut down an enzyme known as cyclo-oxygenase which allows some types of skin cancer to develop.
■ Australia
Infant's leg reattached
Doctors worked for more than eight hours to reattach the leg of a one-year-old boy which was allegedly chopped off by his mother. The 17-month-old child was struck below the knee with an axe at his Melbourne home at 2am. His mother has been arrested and is undergoing psychiatric assessment. "As to what took place, we really don't know at this stage," police said. "There were other occupants in the house and they were asleep at the time and heard the commotion." A team of 11 doctors and nurses worked on the eight-and-a-half-hour surgery and the child is now in critical but stable condition, although it won't be known until the end of the week if the reattachment was successful.
■ Nepal
Search halted for climbers
Rescuers suspended the search for French and Nepalese mountaineers buried by a wall of snow and missing in Nepal since last month because of worsening weather. All of the climbers -- seven French and 11 Nepalese -- are believed to have died after they were swept away by an avalanche on the slopes of Mount Kang Guru in northwestern Nepal on Oct. 19. So far, only the bodies of two French climbers have been recovered. "It is practically impossible to search any more this season," said Bikrum Neupane of the Himalayan Rescue Association. Neupane said they would probably have to wait until the snow clears in the spring before recovering the remaining bodies.
■ Hong Kong
Dead people held for ransom
Robbers have stolen the ashes of three dead people from a cemetery and are demanding US$6,500 for their safe return. The urns were stolen from the Tsueng Kwan O permanent cemetery and a note left demanding the ransom money be deposited in a bank account, the South China Morning Post reported. On Sunday morning found the ransom note when he arrived for work.
■ United Kingdom
Charity trashes junk food
A heart charity launched a poster campaign yesterday to shock children away from eating cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets and hot dogs. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has hired billboards around Britain to show burger and hot dog buns filled with gristle, bones and connective tissue. The gory images are obscured by a "censored" stamp, but can be peeled back to reveal the true ingredients on the charity's Web site. "Kids have lost touch with even the most basic foods and no longer understand what they are eating," BHF director general Peter Hollins said.
■ Spain
Missing-link skull found
Palaeontologists excavating a dump outside Barcelona have found a skull dating back 14 million years that could belong to a common ancestor of apes and humans. The nearly intact skull, which has a flat face, jaw and teeth, may belong to a previously unknown species of great ape, said Salvador Moya, the chief palaeontologist on the dig. A routine land survey for a planned expansion of the Can Mata dump in Els Hostalets de Pierola turned up the first surprise in 2002: a primate's tooth. Since then, scientists from the Miquel Crusafont Institute of Palaeontology in Sabadell have unearthed nearly 12,000 fossils of primates and other animals that lived during the Middle Miocene era.
■ United States
Death row escapee captured
A death row inmate who slipped out of a Houston, Texas jail last week wearing street clothes was captured as he talked on a pay phone in Shreveport, Louisiana, authorities said. Charles Victor Thompson had a bicycle with him when Shreveport police, acting on a tip relayed by the US Marshals Service, approached him late on Sunday, Harris County Sheriff's Lieutenant John Martin said. "He was standing in front of a liquor store and appeared to be intoxicated," Martin said. When the officers asked his name, he said, "You know who I am," then identified himself as Charles Thompson, Martin said.
■ United States
Too many kids pre-diabetic
Roughly 2 million US children ages 12 to 19 have a pre-diabetic condition linked to obesity and inactivity that puts them at risk for full-blown diabetes and cardiovascular problems, government data suggest. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health examined the prevalence of abnormally high blood sugar levels after several hours without eating, a condition called impaired fasting glucose, that is measured in a blood test. One in 14 boys and girls in a nationally representative sample had the condition. Among the overweight adolescents, it was one in six.
■ Ethiopia
Opposition calls for strike
The main opposition party repeated its call yesterday for a week-long strike over election results it says were rigged, in a move likely to fuel fears for the country's stability. At least 42 people were killed in a week of clashes between riot police and opposition supporters apparently heeding a call made last month by the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) for renewed protests over a May poll. "This is a continuation of the protest measure we asked our supporters to follow to show the government cheated in the elections," a CUD official said.
■ United States
Foreign students up slightly
The number of new international graduate students enrolling in US universities appears to have rebounded slightly this autumn following three years of decline. The figure rose 1 percent compared to a year ago, the Council of Graduate Schools says in a new report. Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the numbers fell 8 percent in 2002, 10 percent in 2003 and 3 percent last year. "A 1 percent increase is suggestive of probably nothing more than that the large dips we saw over the last three years not occur-ring," said Heath Brown, director of research and policy analysis at the CGS.
■ Russia
1917 revolution marked
Communists held rallies across Russia yesterday to commemorate the Bolshevik Revolution, marking a long-sacred former holiday that was an official working day for the first time in decades. President Vladimir Putin signed a law late last year canceling the Nov. 7 holiday that used to mark the anniversary of the 1917 revolution and replacing it with the Day of People's Unity, a Nov. 4 celebration of the end of Polish intervention in 1612. Communists and their allies planned to march down Moscow's main street in the afternoon and demonstrate near a monument to Karl Marx.
■ Belgium
EU studies Iran offer
The EU is studying a call by Iran to resume negotiations over the country's nuclear program, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said yesterday. "We are analyzing the letter and we will see what is new in the letter," Solana said on arriving for a meeting of EU foreign ministers. "We will respond. We don't want to go any further at this point." Iran moved to defuse tensions over its nuclear program on Sunday, saying it had let UN inspectors visit a military complex and calling for a revival of EU talks on the issue. However, the EU has demanded that Tehran resume a freeze on uranium ore conversion before negotiations can resume.
■ United States
Pit bulls go on rampage
A 10-year-old Illinois boy was in critical condition on Sunday after three pit bulls escaped from a home and went on a rampage, attacking six people before police shot and killed them. The attacks started on Saturday afternoon when children going door-to-door for a fundraiser arrived at the home of Scott Sword, 41, who owned the dogs. The pit bulls attacked the two children, and when the dogs' owner tried to stop them, the dogs bit off his thumb. The dogs went after the boy's father, and another neighbor as well. Residents threw rocks at the dogs and honked car horns to try to distract them from attacking before police arrived and shot the animals.
■ United Kingdom
Firm downplays `safe' smoke
British American Tobacco (BAT) played down claims on Sunday that it is due to launch a "safe" cigarette brand. The company said that reports that it was developing a new type of cigarette which reduced cancer risk by 90 percent compared with normal cigarettes were "misleading." Emily Brand, of BAT, said that the company had a program of research to cut down the harm caused by cigarettes and admitted that there had been trials of a cigarette which used new "trionic" filters to remove more of the thousands of harmful chemicals in smoke. BAT claims that its new cigarettes significantly reduce the amount of toxic chemicals compared with normal cigarettes.
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