■CHINA
Athlete bus in crash
Two people involved in a crash near the Olympic rowing venue have died, the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee said yesterday. A bus from the athletes’ village collided with a van on Wednesday while on the way to Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park. Two of the four passengers in the van died in a hospital. Two Croatian rowers, the doubles sculls team of Mario Vekic and Ante Kusurin, were on the bus but were not seriously injured. They competed later in the day and finished fourth in their semifinal. Australian rowing team doctor Greg Lovell was also on the bus. No one on the bus was seriously injured.
■NEPAL
Dozens of prisoners escape
More than 50 prisoners, including dozens linked to armed political groups and criminal gangs, overpowered their guards and escaped from a jail in the south, police said yesterday. One prisoner was shot dead and a police officer was hurt when the convicts escaped during roll-call on Wednesday night in Siraha District, 150km southeast of Kathmandu, police officer Kamal Katuwal said. “Around two dozen convicts affiliated with various political and criminal armed outfits in southern Nepal have fled,” Katuwal said. The 54 unarmed convicts overpowered 15 guards, police said. “We’ve caught five of them,” the officer said.
■AUSTRALIA
Evidence of affair on eBay
A woman has taken revenge on her husband by auctioning his mistress’ “size humongous” panties and his “size small” condom wrapper on eBay. The seller, “Anna” from Queensland, says next up for auction will probably be his Harley Davidson “at a start price of 99 cents.” A photograph shows the panties and wrapper she found in her bed when she came home early from work. The listing was initially taken down by eBay because of its policy against selling second-hand underwear, spokeswoman Inessa Jackson told Brisbane’s Courier Mail. “She’s now selling a photograph of the offending knickers,” Jackson said. “This is obviously very therapeutic for this woman and it must be a great channel for her views on cheating and the sanctity of marriage.” The photograph has received 47 bids, with the top offer standing at US$127.50.
■JAPAN
Bomb alert a mistake
A local government mistakenly broadcast a test alert of an imminent missile attack to 20 government buildings, an official said yesterday. “This is information about a ballistic missile attack. This area is being targeted for attack,” was the message government workers in Aichi Prefecture heard on Wednesday over office speakers, local government spokesman Masashi Aoyama said. The message was mistakenly put on air during a test at Nagoya City Hall, Aoyama said. People in about 20 government buildings heard the alert, which was cut off and a correction played shortly after.
■THAILAND
Rottweilers kill toddler
Two Rottweilers bought by a man to protect his house mauled his two-year-old daughter to death yesterday, police said. The dogs attacked Romklao Ploo in Nakorn Ratchasima, the Daily News reported. Jintana Ploo, the girl’s mother, said she had put her daughter on the ground to unlock the front door when the dogs dashed out and attacked. Jintana sustained bites trying to save her daughter. She said her Dutch husband, whose name was not given, bought the dogs after their house was burgled.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Too much of a coffee break
Two office workers have been suspended after having sex on a windowsill in full view of some 20 onlookers, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday. The couple were apparently unaware that they could be seen as they cavorted by the window in the Unity Partnership center in Oldham as onlookers cheered. “One of the police community support workers who had seen what was going on then went inside to let them know they were being observed,” one onlooker told the newspaper. “I don’t know whether they were given the message, but not too long after, they stopped. I personally thought it was funny. They were both naked.” Lee Robinson, managing director of Unity Partnership, was less amused: “The two individuals concerned have been suspended pending a full investigation. We do not wish to comment further since to do so would prejudice the investigation.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Models’ health tests dropped
London Fashion Week organizers have dropped plans that likely would have barred many size zero models from the catwalk, saying industry executives around the world felt they were not needed. Hilary Riva of the British Fashion Council said her international counterparts complained that proposals to make catwalk models pass a medical exam were expensive and intrusive. The idea of having such certificates grew out of an industry commission set up last year to address public concerns that excessive dieting damages the health of models and creates unrealistic expectations for young women.
■BULGARIA
Couple chained up son
A couple chained their seven-year-old son to the kitchen sink to prevent him from misbehaving while they were at work, Trud reported on Wednesday. Social services had to intervene after being notified by neighbors in the town of Gotse Delchev, who heard the boy’s father boast about how he was managing to control his son, the daily said. The chain was long enough to allow the boy to open the fridge and reach the terrace — but not to go to the toilet. His only company was the family’s dog Bucky, which was able to roam freely. His mother said her husband “was afraid his son would turn into a criminal,” Trud reported.
■NORWAY
Sunken ship to be removed
The government says it will remove the wreckage of the Russian cruiser Murmansk that sank off its northernmost coast 14 years ago and is suspected of causing pollution. The ship was being towed to India for destruction when it struck rocks in shallow waters a few hundred meters from shore in December 1994. The government says its decision was prompted by local protests following recent reports of possible radioactivity and pollution caused by the Murmansk. Environmentalists say the cruiser contains heavy metals and other polluting materials.
■FRANCE
T-shirts lead to detention
Police are investigating the sale of T-shirts bearing an anti-Semitic slogan and have detained the owner of a Paris shop that sold the clothing. The shopowner and her daughter told investigators they bought the shirts — bearing the words in German and in Polish “Entry to the park forbidden to Jews” — from a Chinese national, the official said on Wednesday. The National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism says such wording reproduces a pre-World War II sign in the Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland.
■UNITED STATES
Unabomber upset by exhibit
Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski has written a letter to a federal appeals court complaining about a museum exhibit of the tiny cabin where he plotted an 18-year bombing spree. Kaczynski, who is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole, says the display at the Newseum in Washington runs counter to his victims’ wish to limit further publicity about the case. The 3m-by-3.6m cabin is the largest of approximately 200 artifacts in the “G-Men and Journalists: Top News Stories of the FBI’s First Century” exhibit, which opened in June. Kaczynski said in the three-page handwritten letter that he learned of the exhibit in a June 19 newspaper ad in the Washington Post.
■UNITED STATES
Ride depicts waterboarding
Coney Island, the quaintly rotting amusement park frequented by millions of New Yorkers every summer, is accomplished at the art of shocking people. It was among its sideshows that the world’s tiniest lady once sat, and a stall still operating today invites visitors to shoot an airgun at a real human target. Now the park has acquired a new attraction: a sideshow dedicated to dark arts better associated with Guantanamo than with an entertainment complex. The stall is called Waterboard Thrill Ride and, as the name suggests, it invokes the torture technique applied by the CIA to a small number of suspected terrorists. “It don’t Gitmo better!” proclaims the sign outside the stall. The ride is intended as a spoof on the Bush administration’s attempt to argue that waterboarding — pouring water over a prisoner’s face to simulate the feeling of drowning — is not torture.
■UNITED STATES
Cocaine found in police car
Police in Providence, Rhode Island, say an unmarked car that officers had been driving for several years came with a surprise — a 225g of cocaine hidden behind the radio. Deputy Police Chief Paul Kennedy says the Ford Taurus was confiscated from a drug dealer in 2000. Kennedy says police search for contraband in confiscated vehicles but sometimes “miss stuff.” Three packages of cocaine were found behind the dash about three weeks ago by a repairman who was cannibalizing the car for spare parts. Police estimated the stash would be worth almost US$7,000 on the street.
■UNITED STATES
Man pays for truck in coins
A man who says he doesn’t trust paper money has delivered enough coins to cover half the price of a brand new pickup truck. Employees at a dealership in the Cincinnati suburb of Springdale say 70-year-old James Jones plunked down 16 coffee cans full of coins on Tuesday for a new Chevrolet Silverado. Salesman David Crisswell says employees spent 90 minutes counting the collection of dimes, quarters, half-dollars and dollar coins, which covered half the US$16,000 price of the pickup. Jones and his wife, Betty, wrote a check for the other half of the cost.
■UNITED STATES
Gay man runs for Senate
Jared Polis, a 33-year-old gay entrepreneur from Boulder, beat two opponents on Tuesday night to win the Democratic primary to fill Republican Mark Udall’s seat in Congress. If Polis were elected to replace Udall in the Senate in November, he would become the third openly gay or lesbian member of Congress. Polis, who poured more than US$5 million of his own money into the campaign, narrowly defeated Joan Fitz-Gerald, the former state Senate president, and Will Shafroth, a conservationist, winning just over 40 percent of the vote.
‘SHARP COMPETITION’: Australia is to partner with US-based Lockheed Martin to make guided multiple launch rocket systems, an Australian defense official said Australia is to ramp up missile manufacturing under a plan unveiled yesterday by a top defense official, who said bolstering weapons stockpiles would help keep would-be foes at bay. Australian Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy said the nation would establish a homegrown industry to produce long-range guided missiles and other much-needed munitions. “Why do we need more missiles? Strategic competition between the United States and China is a primary feature of Australia’s security environment,” Conroy said in a speech. “That competition is at its sharpest in our region, the Indo-Pacific.” Australia is to partner with US-based weapons giant Lockheed Martin to make
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
TIGHT CAMPAIGN: Although Harris got a boost from an Iowa poll, neither candidate had a margin greater than three points in any of the US’ seven battleground states US Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in the final days before the election, as she and former US president and Republican presidential nominees make a frantic last push to win over voters in a historically close campaign. The first lines Harris spoke as she sat across from Maya Rudolph, their outfits identical, was drowned out by cheers from the audience. “It is nice to see you Kamala,” Harris told Rudolph with a broad grin she kept throughout the sketch. “And I’m just here to remind you, you got this.” In sync, the two said supporters
Pets are not forgotten during Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations, when even Fido and Tiger get a place at the altars Mexican families set up to honor their deceased loved ones, complete with flowers, candles and photographs. Although the human dead usually get their favorite food or drink placed on altars, the nature of pet food can make things a little different. The holiday has roots in Mexican pre-Hispanic customs, as does the reverence for animals. The small, hairless dogs that Mexicans kept before the Spanish conquest were believed to help guide their owners to the afterlife, and were sometimes given
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