■ AUSTRALIA
Goodbye, nasal twang
People who sound like Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin could soon be a relic of the past, a report said yesterday. Research shows the nasal twang — exemplified by the late Irwin and Crocodile Dundee actor Paul Hogan — will be phased out within a few decades as the country shakes loose its colonial roots and moves towards a standard national pronunciation, the Sunday Telegraph said. Citing a new book by Australian National University academic Bruce Moore, the paper said the change would come about as the need for Australians to distinguish themselves from their British forebears faded.
■ INDONESIA
Id-al-Fitr costs lives
At least 427 people were killed and more than 1,400 injured in traffic accidents across the country during the Id al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, media reports said yesterday. National police spokesman Abubakar Nataprawira said the figures were tabulated from reports between Sept. 25 and Saturday, with a total of 970 accidents involving 1,258 vehicles.
■ NEPAL
Trio jumps over Everest
Three skydivers made the first ever parachute jump over Mount Everest yesterday, organizers and participants said, culminating years of preparation. About 32 skydivers from more than 10 countries including Britain, Canada, the US and New Zealand have been in the Everest region since last week to jump from an aircraft flying 142m higher than the Everest summit. Yesterday, Wendy Smith of New Zealand, Holly Budge of Britain and British-Canadian Neil Jones made the leap, said Krishna Aryal, an official of the Explore Himalaya, the agency that arranged the logistics.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Mineworkers protest racism
Thousands of mineworkers marched to protest against racism in the mining and construction sectors on Saturday, the country’s largest mineworkers’ union said. The 320,000-strong National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said members marched to deliver a letter of complaint to the Chamber of Mines about racism and low levels of affirmative action, known as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). BEE is designed to include more blacks in the mainstream economy after decades of exclusion under apartheid. The NUM said it was also protesting about discrimination against women in the industry.
■ GERMANY
Boars threaten residents
Wild boars are breeding at a huge rate and wreaking greater havoc than in any other European country by destroying crops, killing pets and even attacking people, a new study shows. Findings by the Hanover-based Institute of Wildlife Research show that the boar population rose by 320 percent last year because of better access to food and bigger litters of young. Increasingly encroaching on suburban areas, boars have been reported attacking people, killing pets and digging up corpses in cemeteries.
■ AUSTRIA
Man torches step-parents
A man killed his parents-in-law by setting them on fire with a homemade flame-thrower, Austrian police said on Saturday. The 48-year-old man used a flame-thrower he had created from a propane gas container to set the elderly couple alight as they lay in bed late on Friday, chief police investigator Anton Kiesl said. The woman burned to death in her bed, while her husband’s body was found on a bench outside their home in the southeastern village of St Magdalena am Lemberg, Kiesl said. Both victims were in their 80s; the woman’s lower legs had been amputated due to diabetes-related complications. The man’s motive was not immediately clear. His wife — and the victims’ daughter — was in the house at the time of the incident, and escaped through a window, Kiesl said. The chief investigator said the man fled the scene and stabbed himself in the stomach.
■ ITALY
Mormons arrive in Rome
The Mormon Church will build its first temple in the country in Rome, and other new temples in Argentina, the US and Canada, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) said on Saturday. The LDS Church, the fourth-largest Christian denomination in the US and by far the largest denomination of the Latter Day Saint movement, has rapidly expanded in recent years, and constantly seeks growth. The LDS temple in Rome is the first for that nation, as well as the first in the Mediterranean region. LDS Church membership in Italy tops 25,000 followers over 102 congregations. Worldwide, there are more than 13 million Mormons.
■ EQYPT
Bus collision kills 11
At least 11 people were killed when an intercity bus collided head-on with a truck on a highway south of Cairo yesterday, and 23 others were injured, security and medical sources said. Security sources said the bus had been trying to overtake another vehicle when it hit a truck traveling in the opposite direction near the town of Beni Suef. The bus had been taking people from Giza, near Cairo, to Beni Suef following the Muslim Id-al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
■ HAITI
Death toll doubles
The number of deaths in the wake of four major storms in August and last month has more than doubled to at least 793, reports said on Saturday. A further 300 people were still missing, Civil Defense Director Marie Alta Jean Baptiste was quoted as saying by local media. Early last month authorities had estimated 326 deaths. Hundreds of bodies were found during clean-up operations after waters in flooded areas receded, Jean Baptiste said. The country was hit by tropical storms Fay and Hanna and hurricanes Ike and Gustav. A total of 22,702 houses were destroyed.
■ MEXICO
Overweight men team up
When critically obese, bedridden Jose Luis Garza pleaded for help in shedding a few hundred pounds, he landed the world’s biggest weight watcher. Garza is getting diet advice from Manuel Uribe, who has been fighting to lose his title as the world’s heaviest man. Both men live in the Monterrey area and neither can get out of bed. Although Garza has not been on a scale in years, doctors estimate he could weigh around 450kg. He got a call from Uribe after going on national television to plead for help. “Manuel inspires me with courage and the will to live,” Garza said. Uribe, 43, has shed about 250kg with the help of his fiancee, Claudia Solis. Garza said he has always been overweight, but his condition worsened nine months ago when both his parents died within 13 days of each other, plunging him into a cycle of depression.
■ VENEZUELA
Chavez promises free cars
Give up your gas-guzzler and get a free car: That’s President Hugo Chavez’s offer to citizens. Chavez said he would start a program next year to give away cars running on less-polluting natural gas to people who turn in old cars that consume “too much gasoline.” Chavez said he would even throw in one year of free fuel — though that’s a relatively minor bonus in a country where gasoline goes for US$0.03 a liter. He did not say what sort of cars would be offered or how many.
■ UNITED STATES
Giant pumpkin wins contest
A gigantic pumpkin weighing in at 697kg on Saturday broke California state records at a quirky festival celebrating the humble squash. The pumpkin came all the way from Port Alberni, Canada, and crushed the competition at the Giant Pumpkin and Harvest Festival in Elk Grove, California, ABC news reported. The pumpkin was grown by Jake van Kooten and transported from its Canadian island home by ferry. Elk Grove held its first harvest festival 14 years ago. This year’s theme was “The Giant Pumpkin Party,” a play on the Republican Party, also known as the Grand Old Party. “We’re having fun with democracy,” festival director Kristyn Staby told the Sacramento Bee.
■ UNITED STATES
Chicken dinners sicken 32
The government is urging consumers to thoroughly cook frozen chicken dinners after 32 people in 12 states were sickened with salmonella poisoning. The health warning by the Department of Agriculture cited frozen dishes in which the chicken is raw, but breaded or pre-browned, giving the appearance of being cooked. The agriculture agency said many of the people who became ill did not follow the package’s cooking instructions and microwaved the dishes. Microwaving did not heat the meals enough to kill the salmonella. The department said consumers should heat chicken products to an internal temperature of 74ºC.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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