■HONG KONG
Stewardess convicted
A former flight attendant who stole 168 items from the plane’s trolleys on a single flight was sentenced to community service yesterday. Kwong Man-fong, 43, purloined biscuits, beer, mineral water, wine, chocolates, a sewing kit, pens, instant noodles and shaving cream on the Cathay Pacific flight from Auckland to the territory on July 27. Two junior colleagues spotted Kwong, who had worked for the Hong Kong airline for 23 years, and reported her to the captain. She resigned and was prosecuted for theft by the airline. Kwong pleaded guilty to theft.
■MALAYSIA
‘Sex party’ plan condemned
Malaysian authorities have condemned rumored plans for a New Year’s Eve sex party at a remote beach, while police warned the “no-underwear” event could be a con job. Newspaper reports said the party for the under-40s, to be held in southern Johor state bordering Singapore, was being advertised through a Web site that asked for 250 ringgit (US$72) as an entrance fee. “A sex party is against our culture and religion and if it went on, it would damage the country’s reputation worldwide,” Tourism Minister Azalina Othman said according to the New Straits Times newspaper yesterday. Johor criminal investigation department chief Amer Awal warned that the sex party was likely to be a fraud designed to cheat potential partygoers out of the ticket price.
■CHINA
Dinosaur fossil site found
Scientists say they have discovered the world’s largest dinosaur fossil site in the eastern province of Shandong, state media reported yesterday. Scientists had recovered some 7,600 fossils from a 300m long pit near Zhucheng city over the past seven months, Xinhua news agency said. The finds included remains of a 20m hadrosaurus, which could be a record size for the duck-billed dinosaur, Xinhua said. Scientists had put down tools for the winter, but said further excavations could yield more fossils. Zhucheng, known locally as the nation’s “Dinosaur City,” has produced dinosaur fossils in some 30 sites, according to local media.
■HONG KONG
UFO group slams university
A UFO group has condemned the city’s largest university for canceling a course on ufology because, it said, of faculty objections to the subject. The course was set to begin last September as an optional subject for University of Hong Kong students in a joint project between the university and the Hong Kong Institute of Ufology, local newspaper Apple Daily reported on Monday. The course was delayed and discussions were held on offering it at a later date after some academics expressed reservations about its content, said Moon Fong (方仲滿), a committee member of the institute.
■AUSTRALIA
Topless sunbathing debated
A Christian lawmaker has proposed legislation that would ban women from sunbathing topless on Sydney’s beaches, where bare breasts have been a common sight for decades. Critics were quick to condemn the measure — first reported yesterday on the front page of the city’s the Daily Telegraph newspaper — as unnecessary and a distraction from real concerns. Leaders of the two major parties in the New South Wales state parliament, where the bill will be introduced in the coming weeks, have effectively killed it by arguing that local governments should be left to decide the boundaries of decent exposure.
■IRAN
Anti-Israel fighters wanted
A group of influential conservative Iranian clerics launched an online registration drive on Monday seeking volunteers to fight against Israel in response to its air assault on the Gaza Strip. About 3,550 people registered on Monday with the Combatant Clergy Society’s Web site. The weeklong online campaign gives volunteers three options on ways they can fight Israel: military, financial and propaganda. The group, which has considerable political and economic power in Iran, did not provide further details on the program, including how it would contact the volunteers or implement the program.
■AUSTRIA
Incest victims leave clinic
A lawyer says Josef Fritzl’s daughter and her children have left the psychiatric clinic where they were recovering from their incest ordeal. Christoph Herbst says the woman and six of the seven children he fathered with her while holding her captive for 24 years have moved into their own home at an undisclosed location. Herbst announced the family’s move in an interview on Monday with the Austria Press Agency. He could not immediately be reached for more details. Last month, prosecutors charged 73-year-old Fritzl with murder for refusing to arrange medical treatment for the seventh child, who died in infancy. He also faces charges of rape, incest, false imprisonment and enslavement and is expected to go on trial in March.
■UNITED STATES
Boy Scout earns 121 badges
A Long Island teenager has earned all 121 merit badges offered by the Boy Scouts of America. It’s an accomplishment the local arm of the organization calls “an almost unheard-of feat.” Oceanside resident Shawn Goldsmith earned his final badge — for bugling — in time for his 18th birthday last month. He far surpassed the 21 badges required to achieve the elite rank of Eagle Scout. He said he took about five years to earn his first 62 badges and then nearly doubled that number in a few months.
■UNITED STATES
Soldier alleges bias
An atheist soldier suing over prayers at military formations claims a larger pattern of religious discrimination exists in the military, citing attempts to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and an evangelical bias in a suicide prevention manual. The expanded lawsuit filed Monday by Dustin Chalker and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation in the US District Court in Kansas City also claims the military doesn’t take complaints of religious discrimination seriously enough. The US Defense Department has identified fewer than 50 complaints about alleged violations of religious freedoms during the past three years, with 1.4 million personnel in uniform, spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said. She declined to comment on a pending lawsuit but said that the military has policies against endorsing any religious view.
■UNITED STATES
Pay stub used in robbery
The robber’s threatening note made a Chicago bank job easy to solve: The FBI said the suspect wrote it on his pay stub. An FBI affidavit said the man walked into a Fifth Third Bank on Friday and handed a teller a note that read “Be Quick Be Quit [quiet]. Give your cash or I’ll shoot.” The robber got about US$400 but left half of his note. Investigators found the other half outside the bank’s front doors. Authorities said that part of the man’s October pay stub had his name and address. The suspect was arrested at his Cary home. A judge ordered him held without bond on Monday.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
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