■ MALAYSIA
Sex is a popular pastime
Some 35 percent of Malaysians have sex at least three times a week compared with a global average of 10 percent of people, a report said yesterday. But 54 percent of Malaysians said sex thrice weekly was not enough against a worldwide average of 62 percent, the New Straits Times reported, citing the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey. The poll showed 62 percent of Malaysians were satisfied with their sex lives, placing the country in sixth place after Nigeria, Mexico, India, Brazil and China. The global satisfaction average was 50 percent. Surprisingly for a conservative country, 60 percent of those surveyed said they considered themselves uninhibited.
■ MALAYSIA
Woman castrates hubby
A woman cut off her husband's penis in a jealous rage because he had been paying more attention to his other wife, media reported on Tuesday. The unnamed couple, both Indonesians, were staying at a residence for construction workers in Pulai in Johor state when the incident happened on Saturday, police said, according to the Star. The husband, 43, was about to fall asleep next to his 48-year-old wife when she took out a knife and attacked him, the paper said. Abdul Aziz Ahmad, district police chief, said doctors were able to re-attach the organ.
■ PAKISTAN
Militants kill two people
Pro-Taliban militants killed two people after accusing them of working as US spies in the lawless tribal belt near the Afghan border, security officials said yesterday. The executions in North Waziristan were the latest in a series targeting people with alleged ties to US and NATO-led foreign forces battling the Islamic extremist Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The militants slit the throat of 35-year old Badshah Wazir overnight and dumped his body on a road in Mir Ali, a security official said. Authorities in the same area also found the body of an Afghan refugee believed to have been kidnapped three months ago, the official said.
■ MALAYSIA
Aquarium fish poisoned
Hundreds of fish and other sea creatures at an aquarium on the island of Langkawi were deliberately poisoned, officials and police said yesterday. Haizol Sam, marketing officer at Underwater World Langkawi, said about 600 marine creatures -- including fish, stingrays, barracudas and sharks -- were found dead in their tanks around closing time on Monday. Langkawi police chief Mohamad Ali Jamaluddin said initial investigations showed the fish were poisoned by a petroleum-based substance. "We smelled petrol near the tanks and believe it was the work of more than one person," Mohamad Ali was quoted saying by the official Bernama news agency.
■ CHINA
Sexy ads not allowed
The government has banned all sexually suggestive advertising on radio and TV, state media said yesterday. "Commercials featuring suggestive language or behavior or featuring scantily dressed women are detrimental to society," the China Daily said. The ban includes commercials and programs involving sex-related health supplements, sex toys and ads for products and operations to enlarge breasts. Earlier this month, 11 radio shows were forced off the air for talking too explicitly about sex or broadcasting material of an "extreme pornographic nature."
■ AUSTRIA
Israel lobbies nuclear group
Israel is lobbying nuclear exporting countries to lift restrictions that prevent them from doing business with the Jewish state, according to documents made available on Tuesday, in a move that could concern Arab nations which already consider their neighbor as the region's atomic arms threat. The push is reflected in papers Israel presented earlier this year to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group -- 45 nations that export nuclear fuel and technology under strict rules meant to lessen the dangers of proliferation and trafficking in materials that could be used for a weapons program.
■ ITALY
Pavarotti tribute planned
The death of tenor Luciano Pavarotti will be marked with a series of concerts, film screenings, photographic exhibitions and other commemorative events at Italian cultural centers around the globe, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday. The events begin the week of Oct. 6, a month after Pavarotti's death from pancreatic cancer. They include video clips of Pavarotti interviews in Lima; concerts in Hungary, Denmark and France; a Traviata performance in Uruguay and a series of Saturday screenings of Pavarotti operas in India. Over a career spanning four decades, Pavarotti was the best-selling classical artist, with more than 100 million records sold since the 1960s.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Investigators given photo
Investigators searching for missing toddler Madeleine McCann were given a photograph on Tuesday of a blonde girl snapped in northern Morocco a little over three weeks ago. "We do not comment on any individual sightings. However in this case the picture was passed to the relevant authorities as soon as it was received and Gerry and Kate are obviously keen for it to be analyzed as quickly as possible," the family's official spokesman Clarence Mitchell said. The photo shows a light-skinned, small girl being carried on the back of an elderly Moroccan woman, and was taken just over three weeks ago in northern Morocco by a Spanish woman.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Bluetongue emerges again
Experts on Tuesday confirmed a third case of bluetongue disease, a rare livestock virus which has added to a foot-and-mouth outbreak over the last two months. The new diseased cow tested positive on a different farm from the two earlier cases, which were found on Saturday and on Monday near Baylham in Suffolk, northeast of London. Movements of farm animals in Suffolk and the neighboring counties of Norfolk and Essex have been banned to prevent the disease spreading further, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said.
■ SWITZERLAND
Cholera reported in Iraq
More than 2,100 people in Iraq have cholera, which is spreading across the country, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. Although the number of laboratory-confirmed cholera cases has risen from 1,500 last Friday, the known death toll remains at 11, according to the UN health agency. "The case fatality rate is 0.52 percent and has remained low throughout the outbreak, although it [cholera] continues to spread across Iraq and dissemination to as yet unaffected areas remains highly possible," the WHO said in its latest update.
■ UNITED STATES
Leg found in auction item
A man who bought a smoker stove at an auction of abandoned items might have thought twice had he looked inside first. Maiden, North Carolina, police said on Tuesday the man opened up the smoker and saw what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg, cut off 5cm above the knee. The smoker had been sold at an auction of items left behind at a storage facility. Investigators found the leg belonged to John Wood who had had it amputated after a plane crash and kept it following the surgery "for religious reasons." Wood plans to drive to Maiden, about 55km northwest of Charlotte, to reclaim his amputated leg, police said.
■ UNITED STATES
Cathedral suffers damage
A graffiti tagger struck the landmark Crystal Cathedral shortly after the church held a community festival, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage, a church spokesman said. The cathedral's weekly service is televised and beamed to millions around the world as the Hour of Power. The soaring glass cathedral was built by the Reverand Robert Schuller, who moved to then-rural Orange County, near Los Angeles, in 1955 with his wife and began preaching at a drive-in movie theater. The tagger struck at around 8:30pm on Saturday and damaged the base of the famous glass spire and other buildings at the church, said Ben Rhodes, a cathedral spokesman.
■ DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Border patrol force deployed
The Dominican Republic has deployed a new 500-member force on its porous border with Haiti in an effort to stop the illegal trafficking of people and drugs, military officials said. Plans were announced in 2005 for the special force to patrol the countries' 362km border on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but delays in training and finding qualified personnel held up its deployment. Officials hope to add an additional 1,500 military, customs, intelligence and anti-drug agents to the Specialized Border Security Corps, or Cesfront, Armed Forces Secretary General Ramon Aquino Garcia said on Tuesday in a statement.
■ PERU
Fujimori to stay in jail
Prison doctors denied claims that former president Alberto Fujimori, detained awaiting trial on corruption and murder charges, is in poor health and should be transferred to a hospital. Fujimori was extradited from Chile on Saturday to face the charges. On Monday, Fujimori's daughter and defense attorney complained that the former president suffers from high blood pressure and is being held in a small room "with nowhere to move around." Prison doctors on Tuesday told journalists that Fujimori has "minor" blood pressure problems and needs to reduce his salt intake, but ruled out the need to move the former president to a hospital.
■ UNITED STATES
Rapper pleads not guilty
Rapper "The Game" pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to three felony charges filed after authorities said he pulled a gun during a casual schoolyard basketball game at a South Los Angeles school. The rapper entered the plea in Superior Court to making criminal threats, possession of a firearm in a school zone and exhibiting a firearm on the grounds of a facility for minors. The Game, whose real name is Jayceon Terrell Taylor, is free on US$50,000 bail. He could face more than five years in prison if convicted.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
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