■POLAND
Pope’s sainthood in balance
The promoter in the case of Pope John Paul II’s sainthood says doctors are still analyzing a supposed miracle attributed to him in which a French nun was allegedly cured of Parkinson’s disease by praying to the late pope. The Reverend Slawomir Oder said on Tuesday that special care is being applied to the analysis to preclude any possible future doubts. A confirmed miracle is a condition for sainthood. There have been reports that some of the doctors are not sure if the nun suffered from Parkinson’s — the illness that also afflicted John Paul — or if she was wrongly diagnosed. Pope Benedict XVI put John Paul on the fast-track for possible sainthood weeks after his 2005 death by waiving the customary five-year waiting period.
■IRAQ
Looted artifacts returned
Hundreds of artifacts looted from museums and archeological sites across the country have been returned. More than 500 pieces were on display at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, including a 4,400-year-old statue of a Sumerian king discovered in the 1920s at the ancient city of Ur, in the south of the country. The headless statue was stolen from the National Museum during the looting and chaos that followed the 2003 US-led invasion. The display is part of Iraqi efforts to repatriate its looted cultural heritage. Among the youngest pieces of the country’s past returned was a chrome-plated AK-47 with a pearl hand grip bearing Saddam Hussein’s image. It was taken to the US by a US soldier as a war trophy.
■BELGIUM
Man fries up a storm
A Belgian maker of French fries, the country’s proud national dish, has set a new world record for non-stop fries-making after frying mountains of potato strips for 83 consecutive hours. The record by 53-year-old Chris Verschueren, owner of a French fries business, beat by 11 hours a previous record of 72 hours set in 1987 by a Briton chip chef. “My fingers are burnt, my feet are sore and my wrist is painful,” he told Belga national news agency. “But it doesn’t matter, I’m going to party now.” From the time he turned on the heat on Friday morning in his village of Kastel till he ran out of steam on Monday night, Verschueren cooked up 1,500kg of fries, taking a 100-minute break after 20 hours for a shower and a stretch. His bid to set a new record for the amount of fries sold — 1,500 bags — failed however. The new world record-holder embarked on the challenge in order to raise funds for a children’s hospital as his own five-year-old has been ill since birth.
■UNITED STATES
Woman stung 500 times
Fire officials say a Massachusetts woman who fell onto a yellow jackets’ nest in her yard was stung more than 500 times. Captain Tim Birch says firefighters used a carbon dioxide chemical fire extinguisher to blast the swarm of insects away on Sunday, but it wasn’t enough, according to the Sun Chronicle newspaper. Three firefighters were treated for stings. Birch tells the Sun Chronicle that even paramedics and emergency room personnel at Sturdy Memorial Hospital had to fight off the yellow jackets, which are also known as wasps. He says the 53-year-old victim remains hospitalized. He did not have further information on her condition. Firefighters went back to the Attleboro home to look for the hive but couldn’t find it. They believe it is underground.
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
TIGHTENING: Zhu Hengpeng, who worked for an influential think tank, has reportedly not been seen in public since making disparaging remarks on WeChat A leading Chinese economist at a government think tank has reportedly disappeared after being disciplined for criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in a private chat group. Zhu Hengpeng (朱恆鵬), 55, is believed to have made disparaging remarks about China’s economy, and potentially about the Chinese leader specifically, in a private WeChat group. Zhu was subsequently detained in April and put under investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported. Zhu worked for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) for more than 20 years, most recently as the Institute of Economics deputy director and director of the Public Policy Research Center. He
‘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
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