■AUSTRALIA
Women prefer manly men
The recession has made beefy blokes like Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig more appealing than scented metrosexuals like Hugh Grant and Leonardo DiCaprio, an Australian sociologist said yesterday. “During the downturn, the theory is that women are concerned about safety, security and food supply, so their taste in men will shift from the androgynous, hairless metrosexual towards the more muscular, primal, hairy male,” demographer Bernard Salt told Australian news agency AAP. He predicted the desired body shape would “shift from hairless, sleek, a bit wimpy, to the more muscular” as economies sank deeper into recession. Film-star looks were likely to change too, with the androgynous Zac Efrons fading from view and the hirsute, sweaty Russell Crowes taking their place.
■VIETNAM
Mass grave discovered
Searchers discovered a mass grave of 35 North Vietnamese soldiers killed at a military airport during the 1968 Tet offensive, a military official said yesterday. The remains were discovered on Saturday in a search of the former Vinh Long army airport, said the head of the provincial military command’s political department, Vo Hieu Hoa. “We had the names and addresses of all of them, but could not identify who is who,” Hoa told reporters, adding that the search for the 35 began in the 1980s. He said several more bodies of soldiers killed by US troops when they tried to occupy the airport had still to be found.
■MALAYSIA
Detainees set free
The government yesterday freed 13 people detained under controversial security laws, police said, after new Prime Minister Najib Razak ordered their release. Najib was sworn in on Friday and announced in his maiden speech that he was revoking a ban on two newspapers and releasing 13 people held under the Internal Security Act, which allows for indefinite detention without trial. The 13, including two ethnic Indian leaders of a banned group, were greeted by family members and supporters as they left the detention center in northern Perak state where they were held. Najib had said their release was good for the country and denied it was a bid to win back support for the ruling party.
■INDIA
Bad moonshine kills 14
At least 14 people including two women were killed after drinking illegally brewed poisonous alcohol in India’s northeastern state of Assam, a news report said yesterday. The deaths occurred in the Saboti area in the Lakhimpur district, some 400km east of state capital Guwahati, on Saturday night, the PTI news agency reported. Thirteen villagers who were seriously ill after consuming the alcohol were admitted to different state-run hospitals in the area. Doctors said the death toll could rise.
■AUSTRALIA
Polio survivor turns 82
A polio victim confined to a Melbourne hospital and an “iron lung” respirator for the past six decades completed her 82 birthday yesterday. June Middleton, who entered the Guinness Book of Records three years ago as the person who had spent the longest time in an iron lung, had 160 well-wishers around her bedside. Middleton was rendered a quadriplegic when she contracted polio at the age of 22 — just a week before she intended to marry. Thousands of Australians died and tens of thousands were crippled in the polio outbreak of 1949. There are now few people confined to the telephone box-sized iron lung, which inflate the lungs.
■EGYPT
Court sentences swingers
A Cairo court sentenced a man to seven years and his wife to three years for setting up a swingers’ club, the press reported yesterday in a case that has angered conservative society. Tolba Abdel Hafez, a 48-year-old civil servant, and his wife Salwa Higazi, a 37-year-old schoolteacher, were sentenced by the Agouza Criminal Court on Saturday, the state-owned Al-Gomhuria reported. Extra-marital sex is illegal in the mainly Muslim country, where Islamic law is a principal source of legislation. The Cairo couple, who have children, used the pseudonyms Magdy and Samira on a Web site and in e-mails to organize wife-swapping parties and orgies.
■UNITED STATES
Dancer charged with assault
A dancer and choreographer featured on the FOX TV show So You Think You Can Dance was arrested Saturday on suspicion of sexually assaulting four of his dance students, police said. Alex Da Silva, 41, a well-known salsa dancer who teaches at several Los Angeles dance studios, was taken into custody after teaching a class at a Hollywood studio and booked for investigation of sexual assault, Detective John Eum said. Da Silva, who was being held on US$3.8 million bail, is scheduled to appear in court tomorrow.
■UNITED STATES
Police confiscate pillows
Detroit police officers nonplussed with the idea of an impromptu pillow fight in downtown Detroit have ruffled a few feathers by preventing it. The pillow fight, reportedly one of at least 50 across the world on Saturday organized by people on social networking Web sites, was shut down by officers stationed at Campus Martius Park. The Detroit News said officers in blue jumpsuits politely disarmed pillow-toting participants. Thirty-two-year-old Michael Davis of Hamtramck, who had his pillows snagged but his cases returned, said police told him he needed a permit. But 48-year-old Scott Harris of Ferndale wasn’t willing to simply roll over, saying, “It is not illegal to own a pillow.”
■MACEDONIA
Runoff election begins
The country began voting yesterday in a runoff election to choose a new president. Election officials said the polls opened at 7am, with no problems reported. First-round winner Gjorgje Ivanov, a government-backed conservative, is running against Social Democrat challenger Ljubomir Frckoski. The two sides are at odds over whether to compromise with neighbor Greece on a name dispute that has delayed the country’s bid to join NATO.
■UNITED STATES
Alaskan volcano erupts
The Mount Redoubt volcano had another large eruption on Saturday after being relatively quiet for nearly a week. Radar indicated a plume of volcanic ash rose 15,240m into the sky, making it one of the largest eruptions since the volcano became active on March 22, the National Weather Service said. The ash cloud was drifting toward the southeast and there were reports of the fine, gritty ash falling in towns on the Kenai Peninsula. Plans to transfer millions of liters of oil from an oil storage facility near Mount Redoubt were derailed when the volcano erupted and a tanker sent to get the oil had to turn back. The explosion caused a mud flow in the Drift River Valley. The slurry of meltwater, hot rocks, volcanic ash and other debris reached the area of the Chevron-operated Drift River Terminal, where 23.85 million liters of oil is stored in two tanks, said Rod Ficken, vice president of Cook Inlet Pipeline Co.
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.
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
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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