■ VIETNAM
Floods kill 28 people
Floods in central Vietnam since the weekend have killed at least 28 people and left thousands facing starvation as winter nears, officials said yesterday. Although regional rivers have started to recede, more than 187,000 houses were still inundated, the national flood and storm control committee said. Tuoi Tre newspaper quoted a senior Quang Nam Province official as saying that continuous floods since last month had left thousands of people coping with cold and hunger. The flood and storm committee said hundreds of tonnes of instant noodles and rice had been sent to flooded areas, polluted water was being cleansed and houses and infrastructure were being repaired.
■ CHINA
Millions of partnerless men
China has 18 million more men of marriageable age than women, the result of sex-selective abortions in a country that has traditionally placed more value on boys, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday. The nation has about 119 boys born for every 100 girls, but that figure rises to about 122 in rural areas, Xinhua quoted National Population and Family Planning Commission Director Zhang Weiqing (張維慶) as saying. China has also warned that the gender imbalance -- the surplus of men is forecast to swell to 30 million by 2020 -- could raise the risks of anti-social and violent behavior among men who cannot find wives, contributing to instability.
■ JAPAN
Blind patient left in park
Hospital workers took a blind patient to a park and abandoned him, then made an anonymous phone call for an ambulance to take him away, a spokesman for the hospital in the city of Sakai admitted yesterday. The four men took the 63-year-old diabetes patient home, but then left him in a nearby park after his ex-wife refused to take care of him, the spokesman said. "We deeply regret this happened ... We find it difficult to understand why they did such a thing," he said, adding that they had no instruction to abandon him. The patient had refused to be discharged from the hospital al though he was fit enough to be treated as an outpatient, the spokesman said.
■ CHINA
Transmission station tested
The nation's largest cellphone service provider successfully tested a transmission station on Mount Everest on Tuesday, making it possible for climbers and those on next year's Olympic torch relay to make calls, Xinhua news agency reported. China Mobile had to hire yaks and porters to help transport equipment up to the station site at 6,500m, Xinhua said. The new station, along with two other China Mobile stations at 5,200m and 5,820m, would provide phone service along the entire Mount Everest climbing route, it said. It would also be put into use during the Olympic torch relay, which will take the flame to the 8,850m summit.
■ INDIA
Man marries dog
A man in the southern state of Tamil Naud married a female dog in a traditional Hindu ceremony to atone for killing two dogs -- an act he believes cursed him -- the Hindustan Times reported on Tuesday. P. Selvakumar married the sari-draped former stray named Selvi, chosen by family members and then bathed and clothed for the ceremony on Saturday, the Times said. Selvakumar, 33, told the paper he suffered leg and hand paralysis and lost hearing in one ear after stoning two dogs to death and hanging their bodies from a tree 15 years ago.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Security to be tightened
The government will boost security at rail stations, airports and other major targets for militants under plans that were to be unveiled by Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday. Other possible targets, such as restaurants, movie theaters, schools and hospitals, will also be instructed to improve security arrangements, the Sun reported yesterday. "Terrorism can hit us anywhere from any place," Brown wrote in the newspaper. The measures follow a review initiated after the attack on Glasgow Airport and the discovery of car bombs in London in June. The Sun said the measures would include boosting the use of properly trained door staff who could identify possible threats.
■ NORWAY
Erotic store must label food
The country's largest erotic chain store was forced to change the labeling on products such as penis pasta, candy cuffs and chocolate body painting to comply with food regulations. Food safety officials conducted a surprise inspection at one of the chain's stores and found several products that violated food labeling regulations, VG reported on Tuesday. "We were a bit surprised to have the food safety authority on inspection. Food is not really our core product," Kjersti Antonsen, a sexual adviser in the store, told VG, adding that the store would label all its food items.
■ ITALY
Antiques to be returned
Italy on Tuesday agreed to return 41 artifacts to Iran that were discovered at an ethnic antiques market near Milan two years ago, officials said. Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli and Iranian Ambassador Abolfazl Zohrevand signed documents at a press conference at the Culture Ministry officially returning the items to Tehran.The 41 objects, which include coins and decorated cups and bowls from the 13th and 14th centuries, were among 309 items seized at the market in May 2005. Several pieces from the stash have been returned to Pakistan, a senior Carabinieri officer said. A Pakistani and an Italian have been charged with dealing in illegal artifacts in connection with the seizure, he said.
■ SPAIN
Cartoonists fined
Two cartoonists who depicted Crown Prince Felipe having sex with his wife, Princess Letizia, and joking it was the closest thing to real work he had ever done were convicted on Tuesday of insulting the heir to the throne and fined 3,000 euro (US$4,370) each. Judge Jose Maria Vazquez Honrubia of the National Court said Manel Fontedevila and Guillermo Torres, who work for satirical magazine El Jueves, "had vilified the crown in the most gratuitous and unnecessary way." The drawing appeared on the magazine's front page in July and alluded to a new government measure designed to boost the country's low birth rate by offering 2,500 euros to families for each new child born or adopted.
■ DUBAI
Pitt, Jolie buy island
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have bought a man-made island in the shape of Ethiopia that is part of a luxury development in Dubai, the Emirates Today reported yesterday. They intend to use the island to showcase environmental issues and encourage people to live a greener life, the newspaper said. The couple's two-year-old daughter Zahara was born in Ethiopia.
■ ARGANTINA
Iran investigates officials
The government of Argentina on Tuesday dismissed Iran's investigation of five Argentine officials, in what is seen as a tit-for-tat after Interpol upheld Argentina's arrest warrants for five Iranian suspects in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center, court officials said. Chief federal prosecutor in the case Alberto Nisman said the five Argentine officials singled out by Tehran -- a former interior minister, former judge, two former prosecutors and the former head of a local Jewish group -- were already under investigation by Argentine courts and some were near trial. Iran's state news agency IRNA said on Tuesday that Iran has started legal proceedings against five Argentines in the bombing.
■ UNITED STATES
Thief chomped by gator
A suspected thief disappeared into an alligator-infested lake as he fled police only to turn up dead the next day with gator teeth marks on his upper torso, authorities said on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear how the man died, but a 2.82m alligator may have been responsible. The man was allegedly burglarizing a vehicle in a resort parking lot on Thursday and ran when police arrived, said Dexter Lehtinen, a Miccosukee Indian Reservation police adviser. The man's body was recovered on Friday by tribal police divers from the lake at the Miccosukee Resort and Convention Center.
■ UNITED STATES
O'Connor happy about date
The husband of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor struck up a romance with a fellow Alzheimer's patient after moving into an assisted living center, and under the circumstances, his wife is just glad that he is comfortable, her son told a TV station. The retired justice is not jealous about his relationship with the woman, Scott O'Connor told KPNX in Phoenix. He said it has dramatically changed the outlook of his father, John, toward being in the Huger Mercy Living Center. Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the US Supreme Court, cited her husband's illness and her need to take care of him when she retired in 2005.
■ UNITED STATES
Nazi dog handler deported
An 85-year-old man accused of being a Nazi dog handler has returned to Germany rather than fight to stay in the US, a federal prosecutor told a judge at a deportation hearing. Paul Henss was accused of training and handling attack dogs at the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. US Immigration Judge Dan Pelletier ordered him deported after a 30-minute hearing on Tuesday. Henss left Georgia on Friday for his native Germany. Henss acknowledged to reporters last month at his home in Lawrenceville that he had trained dogs but said he never set foot inside Dachau or Buchenwald.
■ UNITED STATES
Hitler's globe auctioned
A desktop globe a US soldier recovered from Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's residence in 1945 sold at auction for US$115,000 on Tuesday, a San Francisco-based auction house said. John Barsamian, 91, said he took the globe as a souvenir after entering Hitler's Berghof residence in Obersalzberg in southern Germany as a US Army soldier. San Francisco resident Robert Pritikin, 78, a former advertising executive who knows Barsamian, bought the globe. "How could you back away from it was his thought," said Matthew Davis, Pritikin's personal assistant. "This is one of the things that one of the most evil men in history studied and studied.
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