■ AUSTRALIA
‘Prudie nudies’ strike again
A top nudist resort got into a tangle with its clientele yesterday over plans that the tropical north Queensland property announced for a month-long naked orgy in March. Nudist Federation president Lindsay Parkyns described the adults-only Port Douglas bash as a “recipe for disaster,” drawing a response from White Cockatoo Resort owner Tony Fox that the group was full of “prudie nudies” with “penis envy.” A prohibition on blatant partner-swapping imposed three years ago has been revoked in the wake of the global economic slowdown. “Tough times call for stiff measures,” Fox said. “It’ll be a hedonism resort where anything goes for a month.” The White Cockatoo, which operates as a nudist-only resort in the southern hemisphere summer, risks a boycott from Parkyns and other “prudie nudies,” complaining that a four-week sex romp sends the wrong message.
■ HONG KONG
English important as ever
Eleven years after it ceased to be a British colony, English remains the most important language to master in the territory’s business and professional world, a survey released yesterday showed. Written English was rated the most important language skill in a survey of more than 20,000 ethnic Chinese professionals, followed by the local language Cantonese and then spoken English. On a scale of one to six, written English was ranked at 5.08 in importance while Mandarin, the language spoken by the majority of people in China, was ranked at only 3.79.
■ INDIA
Sour milk kills six at school
At least six teenagers died from suspected food poisoning after drinking sour milk at their boarding school, an official said yesterday. Teachers panicked when the students started vomiting on Thursday and rushed them to a hospital on the outskirts of Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand state, state chief secretary A.K. Basu said. The students, aged 12 and 13, initially refused to drink the unpasteurized milk, complaining to a school administrator that it had soured, Basu said. But the official, Ram Jaleswar Sahu, encouraged them by drinking some himself. Sahu also became sick and was hospitalized, Basu said.
■ INDIA
Maoist-hit state holds vote
A part of the Maoist rebel-hit east voted in state elections yesterday, the first of a string of elections seen as a mini-referendum on the ruling Congress Party ahead of national polls next year. Security was tight in impoverished Chhattisgarh state, the base of ultra-leftist rebels described by the government as the biggest threat to internal security. The Maoists appeared determined to disrupt the polls, with three policemen escorting ballot boxes injured by a bomb hidden in a food box, officials said.
■ CHINA
Four students die after fall
Four college students in Shanghai fell more than 15m to their deaths yesterday after a fire broke out in their dormitory, state media reported. The blaze at the Shanghai Business School quickly blocked the corridors for the female students who were living in one of the rooms on the sixth floor of the dormitory, the China News Service said. The four were forced on to the balcony, and then over the top where they hung on to the balustrades and yelled for help for about one minute before they ran out of strength and fell, the report said, citing an unnamed witness.
■ AUSTRIA
Fritzl charged with murder
Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children by her, has been charged with the murder of one of them, Austrian authorities said yesterday. Fritzl has also been charged with rape, deprivation of liberty, coercion, enslavement and incest, the state prosecutor in St. Polten confirmed. The 73-year-old has been in custody since April, after police discovered that his daughter had been forcibly held by him for 24 years in a cellar of the family home. He has two weeks to appeal against the charge that he murdered a male twin soon after the boy’s birth in 1996.
■ GERMANY
Rail sorry for booting kids
The national railway company has come under fire from passenger groups after inspectors ordered children off trains because they did not have the right tickets. Deutsche Bahn has apologized for the embarrassing incidents that made headlines across the country. A 12-year-old schoolgirl was made to leave a train an hour’s ride from home because she could not pay a 40 euro fine. “It is purely foolish to react in such a way,” said Karl-Peter Naumann, director of the passenger organization Pro Bahn. Earlier, a 13-year-old and a 12-year-old were also forced to leave trains. One child had to carry her cello 5km home in the dark.
■ RUSSIA
Editor beaten unconscious
Activists in a suburb of Moscow say a newspaper editor who has criticized local authorities has been severely beaten and may not survive. A group called the Khimki Forest Defense Movement says Mikhail Beketov was hospitalized after a neighbor found him unconscious near his home in the Khimki district outside Moscow on Thursday. It said he had a serious head injury. The state-run RIA-Novosti news agency cited a hospital official as saying his condition was extremely grave. Beketov had often criticized Khimki authorities and had battled to protect forested areas. It said that his car was blown up last year and he had told colleagues of threats.
■ RUSSIA
Moscow, Kiev spar over film
Moscow and Kiev accused each other on Thursday of spreading misinformation over a film about the August war between Georgia and Russia, stirring further discord between the ex-Soviet neighbors. A Kiev hotel earlier this week canceled a showing of the Russian-made documentary War 08.08.08. The Art of Betrayal, which Ukraine described as anti-Ukrainian propaganda. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Ukraine’s decision to stop the film was an attempt to conceal Kiev’s support for Georgia in the five-day war fought over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia. The Kiev hotel that planned to show the film said it had canceled it for security reasons.
■ DR CONGO
Brown backs troop buildup
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Thursday he would support a UN plan to send 3,000 more troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), but said the force must have better leadership and equipment. “We have the means and the will to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and we will not shirk from our responsibilities,” Brown said in a statement. “Our support for that is subject to the force being properly equipped, enabled and led.” The UN Security Council is likely to review the rules of engagement being used by the peacekeeping force, a spokesman for Brown’s office said.
■ CANADA
Runaway wallaby dies
An intrepid wallaby that escaped from its pen at an exotic zoo and went on an 80km walkabout across eastern Canada was found dead on the side of a road on Thursday, zookeepers said. Wendell, a three-year-old Bennett’s Red Necked wallaby, was reported missing on Oct. 29 after a storm toppled a tree that destroyed the animal’s pen at a facility near the capital Ottawa. The animal, native to eastern Australia, and three others as well as a kangaroo, “just hopped out of their broken enclosure,” Carla Saunders, co-owner of Saunders Country Critters and Garden Center said last month. But only Wendell strayed very far, she said. On Thursday, Saunders said: “We found Wendell’s remains in an open field several kilometers from his pen.” A necropsy would be performed to determine the animal’s cause of death, she added. In recent weeks, Canadian media had traced the wallaby’s steps from its Kemptville, Ontario, zoo to nearby Smith Falls, Athens and Ottawa. Wendell sightings were reported almost daily, and Canadians monitored its adventures closely, but the animal eluded capture, despite a C$1,000 (US$820) reward for its safe return.
■ UNITED STATES
Designer guilty of assault
The Beverly Hills fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander was found guilty on Thursday of sexually assaulting seven girls and young women that he lured with promises of modeling careers, the Los Angeles Times reported. The verdict came after a two-month trial that offered a sordid portrait of the fashion world. Prosecutors accused the Indian-born Alexander of using the promise of modeling jobs to lure young women and girls as young as 14 to an apartment where he acted out sadistic fantasies.
■ UNITED STATES
Transgender man pregnant
A US transgender man is pregnant with his second child, he told television diva Barbara Walters in his first interview since he gave birth to baby Susan in June. Thomas Beatie, who is 34 and sports a beard, told Walters he did not go back on the male hormone testosterone after Susan’s birth because he and his wife Nancy wanted to have another baby. “I feel good,” he said in the interview. “I had my checkups with my hormone level ... everything is right on track,” he said, adding that the couple’s second child is due on June 12. In the interview with Walters, Beatie also spoke about the birth of Susan, describing how he was in labor for 40 hours and his wife, Nancy, cut the umbilical cord of their daughter, who was not delivered by Caesarean section. Thomas Beatie was born and grew up in Hawaii. Known as Tracy when he was a girl, Beatie entered the Miss Teen Hawaii USA beauty contest at age 14 and made it to the finals.
■ MEXICO
Free Viagra available
Mexico City is giving out free Viagra and other impotence drugs to men 70 and older. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard says the city is implementing the plan because sexuality “has a lot to do with quality of life and our happiness.” City Health Secretary Armando Ahued says the government will start handing out doses of one or two Viagra, Levitra or Cialis pills on Dec. 1. They will be distributed at three centers that specialize in sexual health for the elderly. The men will receive medical examinations before receiving the pills. Ahued says an estimated 112,000 men 70 or older live in the Federal District, which has a population of 8.7 million.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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