■ CHINA
Firm plans giant ferris wheel
You've climbed the Great Wall of China, now Beijing wants you to "fly" the Great Wheel of China. Higher than both the London Eye and the Singapore Flyer, which opens in March, the Beijing Great Wheel will be 208m tall when finished in 2009, executives said yesterday, which would make it the highest and largest in the world. The giant ferris wheel will have 48 air conditioned observation capsules, each of which can carry up to 40 passengers, and on a good day even the Great Wall is expected to be visible. Costing a total of around US$290 million, tickets are expected to sell for about 100 yuan (US$13).
■ CHINA
Tibetans' noses bleeding
Moisture has become a luxury in Lhasa where many locals are waking up to nosebleeds in the dry autumn, state media said yesterday as the region faces a growing threat of global warming. "As it stands, there is little water component in the air in city, which sits at 3,700 meters above sea level, making the weather extremely dry and things flammable," Xinhua news agency quoted the Lhasa Observatory as saying. "The weather has also caused many Tibetans to wake up to nosebleeds." The observatory has reported record low humidity in Lhasa since last month.
■ CAMBODIA
German suspect charged
A 61-year-old German man was charged yesterday with sexual abuse of four Cambodian children, the latest Westerner to be charged with similar crimes as Southeast Asia cracks down on pedophile tourists. Jopen Reimund Hubert of Cologne was arrested in a raid on his Phnom Penh hotel room. He was found with a 14-year-old girl, said the chief of the city's anti-trafficking unit. Police also said they confiscated scores of pornographic pictures stored in his computer. Hubert was charged with sexual abuse of the girls, which could land him in jail for up to 20 years. Hubert, who denied the charges, said: "I did nothing bad. ... I spent my own money to support those girls to go to school, buy food, and clothes. This all a mistake.
■ SEA HIJACKINGS
Taiwanese boat freed
Somali pirates released a Taiwanese fishing vessel yesterday, five-and-a-half months after it was seized, a US navy official said. The pirates left the Ching Fong Hwa 168 in skiffs that took them to shore, said Commander Lydia Robertson of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. The ship had two Taiwanese and 12 Chinese crew members on board when it was hijacked 220km northeast of Mogadishu in May. One of the crew was killed by the pirates during negotiations. Meanwhile, five US warships were escorting two South Korean vessels to Yemen yesterday after they were freed by other Somali pirates who hijacked them in May.
■ ITALY
Student autopsy complete
A coroner conducted an autopsy on Sunday on the body of a British university student found dead with a knife wound in her neck in her bedroom last week, and said the exam yielded "interesting" details without elaborating. The autopsy should help authorities determine if Kercher was sexually assaulted. Kercher was found dead on Friday in her rented room near a Perugia university 170km north of Rome when police came to return a cellphone that had belonged to her.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Women fund Suu Kyi piano
A group of prominent women has raised funds to send a piano to detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday. The newspaper said the group, led by actress Maureen Lipman, hoped to replace the broken piano owned by the music-loving democracy advocate, who has been under house arrest for years. Visitors have reported that Aung Sang Suu Kyi helped pass the time in detention by playing works by Bach and other composers. The Sunday Times said her piano had broken down through heavy use in Myanmar's climate. Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox, film producer Norma Heyman and arts fundraiser Joyce Hytner were among supporters.
■ ITALY
Truffle hunter ruffled
At dawn on Saturday, after a night of truffle-hunting, 58-year-old Dario Pastrone was driving to Asti for a meeting at the Caffe San Carlo, the town's unofficial truffle exchange, when he was forced off the road by another car. Three men jumped out, shouting that they were police officers and demanding to know: "Where are the drugs?" The thieves opened the trunk of his car and found what they were looking for: 400g of freshly collected truffles worth 2,000 euros (US$2,890). Top-class truffles have been selling this year for up to 8,000 euros (US$11,575) per kilogram, against a latest gold price of 17,862 euros (US$25,845).
■ KENYA
Blind baby rhino gets care
Conservationists are going to extraordinary lengths to save the life of a baby black rhino who is completely blind. The rhino, which has been named Max, is one of the rarest animals on the planet. But because of his total blindness he has been rejected by his mother. Now an animal charity is spending tens of thousands of dollars to ensure that Max can survive. A keeper sleeps in his enclosure and feeds him every four hours, including waking in the night, to keep his strength up. He is fed 17 liters of expensive Lactogen milk every day, funded by a British Airways community program.
■ ARGENTINA
Fire during escape kills 29
A fire apparently set as part of an escape attempt swept through a prison cellblock and killed at least 29 inmates, authorities said yesterday. The fire broke out late on Sunday in one of the cellblock complexes of a maximum security prison for men in the central province of Santiago del Estero, the province's justice minister Ricardo Daives said. Another 10 people were hospitalized for smoke inhalation and other injuries, Daives told the independent news channel Todo Noticias. Daives said inmates apparently set the fire in a bid to distract guards as part of plan to break out of the prison.
■ UNITED STATES
Study pans kids' TV shows
Arthur and Barney are OK for toddler TV-watching. But not Rugrats and certainly not Power Rangers, says a new study of early TV-watching and future attention problems. The research involved children younger than three, so TV is mostly a no-no anyway, according to the experts. But if TV is allowed, it should be of the educational variety, the researchers said. Every hour per day that kids under three watched violent child-oriented entertainment their risk doubled for attention problems five years later, the study found.
■ UNITED STATES
Mum places breast milk ad
A woman in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who does not want her breast milk to go to waste has taken out a newspaper ad in the hope of selling it. Martha Heller, 22, took out an ad in the Gazette newspaper offering 3 liters of her breast milk for US$200 or the best offer. Heller said her freezer is overflowing with breast milk she has pumped since August. Her four-month-old daughter will not drink from a bottle and the supply is piling up. Heller now donates to the University of Iowa's Mother's Milk Bank, but the 3 liters of milk she wants to sell were pumped before she went through the screening process for the bank and cannot be donated.
■ UNITED STATES
Students go olive picking
Students at the California Institute of Technology campus were able to forget rocket science for a day and harvest olives instead. Students and faculty put away their laptops on Friday to climb 5m-high ladders, perch in cherry pickers and grab the black and green fruit that would otherwise stain the university's walkways. Their goal is to make some 1,200 bottles of olive oil to raise money for scholarships, staff bonuses and student activities.Olive picking became a fall event at the campus after two students began plucking campus trees as a joke last year. President Jean-Lou Chameau, who saw them, told biology major Ricky Jones and physics major Dvin Adalian he would prepare them a home-cooked meal if they could figure out how to turn the olives into olive oil. They met the challenge using blenders, concrete blocks, window screens and a centrifuge.
■ BRAZIL
Plane crash kills eight
A twin-engine plane crashed into a house on Sao Paulo's north end on Sunday killing eight people and injuring two others, local media reported. Quoting police spokesmen local television and radio said seven bodies had been removed from the home. A woman and an 11-year-old girl were rescued and taken to hospital, the reports said. The ill-fated plane, a Learjet air taxi with a capacity of eight, bound for Rio de Janeiro, was believed to have had only a pilot and co-pilot aboard at the time of the crash. There was no immediate cause given for the accident.
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
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