Chinese woman welcomes baby son after becoming first to receive birth permit for second child
The Chinese government announced it would relax its one child policy last year, allowing a second baby in families where one of the parents was an only child
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Chinese woman welcomes son after becoming first to get birth permit for second child
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A Chinese woman has welcomed a baby son after becoming the first to receive a birth permit for a second child.
Li Yan gave birth to a healthy baby boy on Sunday at a hospital in Hefei, Anhui province.
The family obtained a permit in the province earlier this month, local media reported.
The country's top legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, passed a resolution allowing couples to have two children if either parent is an only child.
Politicians also approved a proposal to scrap re-education through labour camps, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
The policy changes were unveiled following a meeting of top Communist Party officials last month and have already been piloted in parts of the country.
China introduced its one-child policy at the end of the 1970s to keep a lid on rapid population growth.
However, the country's leaders now fear China's ageing population will reduce the labour pool and exacerbate elderly care issues.
By 2050, more than a quarter of the population will be over 65.
The FBI believed the legendary fight between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston was FIXED by mob bosses, secret documents revealed on the 50th anniversary of the bout reveal.
Then world champion Liston took on brash young Ali - known at the time as Cassius Clay – at the Miami Beach Convention Centre on February 25, 1964.
The challenger, just 22, was a rank outsider as a 7-1 underdog but pulled off a stunning victory after Liston, battered and bruised, failed to come out for the seventh round.
Now newly found documents released under America's Freedom of Information Act reveal the FBI suspected the fight may have been fixed by Las Vegas mob bosses.
The memos, so classified they were addressed directly to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself, show agents suspected Ash Resnick, a Sin City gambler with organised crime connections, of fixing multiple boxing matches, including the first of Ali and Liston's two fights.
The allegations were found in an memo dated May 24, 1966, that details an interview with a Texan gambler named Barnett Magids, who described to the FBI his discussions with Resnick before the fight.
The Houston-based punter said Resnick strongly advised him against betting on Liston winning despite him being odds on favourite.
The memo also claimed Resnick and Liston reportedly made over $1 million (£600,000) each betting against the champion in the fight.
“On one occasion, Resnick introduced Magids to Sonny Liston at the Thunderbird, [a Las Vegas hotels controlled by organised crime],” the document stated.
“About a week before the Liston and Clay fight in Miami, Resnick called and invited Magids and his wife for two weeks in Florida on Resnick.
“Magids‘ wife was not interested in going, but Magids decided to go along, and Resnick was going to send him a ticket.
“Two or three days before the fight, Magids called Resnick at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami to say he could not come.
“On this call, he asked Resnick who he liked in the fight, and Resnick said that Liston would knock Clay out in the second round. Resnick suggested he wait until just before the fight to place any bets because the odds may come down.
“At about noon on the day of the fight, [Magids] reached Resnick again by phone, and at this time, Resnick said for him to not make any bets, but just go watch the fight on pay TV and he would know why and that he could not talk further at that time.
“Magids did go see the fight on TV and immediately realised that Resnick knew that Liston was going to lose,” the document stated.
“A week later, there was an article in Sports Illustrated writing up Resnick as a big loser because of his backing of Liston.
“Later people ‘in the know’ in Las Vegas told Magids that Resnick and Liston both reportedly made over $1 million betting against Liston on the fight and that the magazine article was a cover for this.”
Although they evidence provided no concrete proof the fight was fixed it was enough to lead agents to believe Resnick had fixed the fight.
“[Ash Resnick] is the fix point of two heavyweight title fights — both Liston. He had always been and will continue to be a corruption source for professional sports until he is stopped,” one such report states.
The memo claimed Ali played had no knowledge of any such scam but the FBI failed to prove it ever existed.
The fight, named the fourth-greatest sports moment of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated, famously led to Ali jumping and waving his hands, yelling ‘I’m king of the world! I’m king of the world!’ when he won.
Both were seen as controversial sportsman. Liston was an ex-con with ties to the mob, while Ali had joined the Black Muslims weeks before the fight.
Early in the fight Ali was in trouble early, losing his vision at one point, before he came back to convincingly beat Liston.
The most feared man in the world
Boxing: World Heavyweight Title: Muhammad Ali in action after first round knockout of Sonny Liston at St. Dominic's Arena.
Charles "Sonny" Liston's became one of the greatest heavyweight champions of all time despite a troubled upbringing.
He was one of 25 children by his father and with little education often found himself in trouble with the law.
He served several prison terms and was introduced to boxing by a prison chaplain.
Liston rose to become the most feared man in the world, until Ali arrived on the scene and knocked him out twice, ending his championship days and his reputation as the "World's Baddest Man.”
He died under mysterious conditions on December 30, 1970 of what police concluded was a heroin overdose.
By the time of his death Ali had already become known as “The Greatest”.
Ever since winning Olympic gold in 1960 he dominated the division cementing his place in history after beating Liston.
After refusing to join the Vietnam War he was stripped of his title 1967 and didn’t step back in the ring for four years.
Despite suffering an initial points loss to Joe Frazier on his return, Ali recaptured the crown after beating Smokin Joe in a rematch to set up a title shot against George Foreman.
Dubbed the Rumble in the Jungle Ali lifted became the undisputed heavyweight champion after knocking out Foreman in the eight round through his now famous Rope-a-dope attics.
Would-be raider tried to hold up cashier behind bullet-proof glass with a cleaver, while he took a phone call on his mobile
Caught on camera: Clerk giggling at robber
A Chinese bank clerk was caught on CCTV camera laughing at an incompetent raider who threatened her with a meat cleaver even though she was behind bullet-proof glass.
Then a second after pulling out the weapon at the branch in Shanghai, dozy De Ke, 28 got a phone call on his mobile phone which he then answered – leaning against the glass to tell whoever it was that he was busy and to call back later.
Cashier Rong Ku, 41, told local media: "I might have taken it seriously if he'd had a gun, and you never know really if the security glass will stop a bullet, but I knew he had no chance of getting through with a meat cleaver. It was a bizarre situation and I just had to laugh especially when he took a telephone call in the middle of the robbery.
"He said 'this is a robbery' in a really quiet voice and then asked me to hold on while he took a phone call."
As he shouted down the phone the security guard came over and asked him what he thought he was doing allowing another customer to walk up behind the meat cleaver waving robber and disarmed him, handing the meat cleaver to the security forces before throwing the man to the ground.
Police who interviewed the man said he had not been on drugs or drunk and that he appeared not to be suffering from any mental problems.
He said he had simply come up with the idea of robbing the bank to get some more money and not really thought it through carefully.
THE bodies of three more Haitians have been recovered by authorities in the Dominican Republic, raising the death toll to eight from a capsizing of a smuggler's boat last week.
Civil defence chief Leoncio Calderon Castillo says searchers found the bodies of two Haitian men washed up on a beach on Sunday.
Another asylum seeker's body was found in nearby waters where the seven-metre boat capsized.
Last week, a dozen Haitians who took the risky sea journey, looking for a better life, were rescued by the Dominican navy.
Those rescued told authorities the boat left early on Thursday for the US island of Puerto Rico and overturned a few kilometres from shore.
Smugglers had stolen the boat from a tourism business.
ZARA Phillips and Mike Tindall have sold the first pictures of their baby daughter Mia to a UK magazine.
The Queen's fourth great grandchild, who is 16th in line to the throne and was born on January 17, appears on the front cover of this week's edition of Hello!.
Dressed in a white striped baby gro, Mia, awake and content, is pictured lying in front of her proud parents.
In 2008, Zara's brother Peter Phillips was criticised after selling photos of his wedding to Canadian bride Autumn Kelly to Hello! and reportedly receiving STG500,000 ($A930,665) in return.
At the time Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb described the move "a serious error of judgment" that "smacks rather of greed".
Last September, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent's son Lord Frederick Windsor and his wife Sophie Winkleman posed for Hello! with their baby daughter Maud.
Earlier this month, Hello! published paparazzi photographs of Prince George in the arms of his mother the Duchess of Cambridge as they left a British Airways plane while on a Caribbean holiday.
Some commentators expressed surprised that the Cambridges had apparently not tried to stop the publication of the paparazzi images.
A spokesman for Hello! magazine said: "We are delighted that Zara and Mike Tindall chose to share their beautiful baby pictures with Hello!"
GREECE'S biggest Jewish community is taking Germany to Europe's top human rights court, seeking the return of a huge ransom paid to Nazi occupiers more than 70 years ago to free thousands of slave labourers.
Those labourers were still sent to German death camps.
The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki says it also wants "moral vindication" in a lawsuit tabled last week at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
In 1942, thousands of Thessaloniki's Jewish men aged 18-45 were press-ganged into construction projects across Greece by Nazi forces that had invaded Greece a year earlier.
Current community leader David Saltiel told The Associated Press that about 10,000 men were used as slave labourers, building roads and fortifications or repairing railways, and brutal conditions led to 12.5 per cent mortality in the first two-and-a-half months.
Community officials eventually struck a deal with a regional Nazi commander, paying him 1.9 billion drachmas - about 50 million euros ($A77 million) today - for their release. But soon after, the city's entire Jewish population was sent to German death camps, which few survived.
"What happened is unbelievable," Saltiel said. "Who could have imagined that (the Germans) would send men to work as forced laborers, that they would free them on payment of ransom and then lead them into the trains going to Auschwitz?"
About 96 per cent of Thessaloniki's 50,000 Jews were murdered in Nazi camps.
The community launched a legal fight for return of the ransom through Greek courts in 1997.
But after 16 years, in December, the country's Supreme Court rejected the bid, saying it lacked the authority to rule on the matter.
A Jewish community statement said that to raise the "astronomic" sum, in late 1942, the community was forced to sell its assets and raise donations from all its members, as well as from Jewish associations in other parts of Greece and the world.
"There was an organised plan, apart from the physical extermination of the Jews, to wipe them out financially, too," Saltiel said.
THE body governing halal meat in Indonesia is accused of demanding tens of thousands of dollars in "donations" and travel expenses from Australian businesses.
Indonesia's Tempo Magazine reports that meat entering the country must be certified halal - that is, prepared under Islamic guidelines - by groups licensed by the Indonesian Clerics Council (MUI).
Tempo reports that Australian groups seeking certification must pay large "donations" to the MUI, and foot the bill for groups of its representatives to visit.
Head of Halal Certification Authority based in Sydney, Mohammed El-Mouelhy, told Tempo that even though he agreed to the terms, he never got a halal label and was never told why.
Tempo reports seeing receipts for one business' deposits to the head of the MUI, Amidhan Shaberah.
The largest was $10,000, apparently to stop the MUI revoking the license of a business called Australian Halal Food Services.
Australian abattoirs are also being made to pay hundreds so the approved groups can inspect their facilities.
Director of meat processors JBS Australia, John Berry, told the magazine the high cost of halal certification was limiting business and concerning meat exporters who deal with Indonesia.
AAP has approached the MUI for comment.
Indonesian Twitter users expressed outrage at the report.
Some called for the end of the MUI "monopoly" and many called its conduct "haram," or forbidden by Islamic law.
"Heart & conduct must be halal too," user Rudy tweeted.
Samsung has unveiled its new Galaxy S5 smartphone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.Source: AAP
SAMSUNG has unveiled its answer to Apple's flagship iPhone 5s in a move set to ramp up the rivalry between the world's two biggest phone makers.
Samsung debuted the Galaxy S5 on Monday evening at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona.
The phone will begin shipping worldwide, including to Australia, on April 11.
The phone freshens up the flagship Galaxy line, which has been Samsung's chief weapon in the battle for global smartphone supremacy.
With a 5.1-inch screen, the S5 is slightly larger than the phone it updates - the one-year-old Galaxy S4.
Samsung have also given it a better camera and built a heart-rate monitor into the flash on the rear.
But the biggest addition is a fingerprint scanner which, like the one on the iPhone 5s, is built into the home button.
Users can teach the phone to recognise three different fingerprints. They can then swipe their finger across the home button to unlock the phone rather than having to key in a code or swipe a pattern.
And in a considerable expansion of the technology, Samsung has partnered with online payment provider PayPal to enable a range of online purchases to be verified with the swipe of a finger.
The fingerprint scanner on the iPhone 5s, by contrast, can only be used to unlock the phone and to verify purchases through Apple's own app store.
The camera shoots in 16 megapixels - an increase of three megapixels on the S4.
Samsung have also sped up the autofocus from about a second to 0.3 seconds, allowing for better action shots, while another feature allows for better photos in low light.
A more powerful battery means the phone will last about 20 per cent longer than the S4 before needing a recharge.
For people who need even more battery life, Samsung have come up with an optional ultra power-saving mode which turns the screen black and white and cuts down the phone's functions to the bare essentials, such as phone calls and texts.
The full-HD screen has 1920 by 1080 pixels, and the phone is powered by a 2.5-gigahertz quad-core processor.
Samsung has not said how much the phone will cost.
On Monday evening the company also unveiled its first attempt at a dedicated fitness-tracking wristband.
Called the Gear Fit, it has a colourful curved 1.84-inch screen and weighs about 30 grams.
It contains a pedometer, heart-rate monitor, timer and stopwatch and can also notify users when their phone receives a text, call or email.
It also provides notifications from phone apps such as Twitter, and can serve as music controller.
There is no word on when it will come to Australia, nor how much it will cost.
*Paddy Wood travelled to Barcelona as a guest of Samsung.
Three men and a woman have been arrested in the UK on suspicion of terror offences.Source: AAP
BRITISH former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg is among the four people who have been arrested in the UK on suspicion of Syria-related terrorism offences.
Begg, 45, from Birmingham, who was held in the US-run military prison in Cuba for nearly three years, is suspected of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas, West Midlands Police said.
A 36-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman and her 20-year-old son, also from Birmingham, in Birmingham, have also been arrested on suspicion of facilitating terrorism overseas.
All four are being held at a police station in the West Midlands, police said, while their three home addresses are being searched by officers from the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit. Vehicles and electronic equipment are being removed for forensic analysis.
"We can confirm that Moazzam Begg was arrested this morning," a West Midlands Police spokeswoman said.
"We are confirming this name as a result of the anticipated high public interest to accredited media."
She added naming Begg does "not imply any guilt".
Head of investigations for West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit, Detective Superintendent Shaun Edwards, said: "All four arrests are connected. They were pre-planned and intelligence led. There was no immediate risk to public safety."
City put on lockdown after leopard strays into cinema
The leopard has so far managed to evade capture (Picture: AFP/Getty)
Wildlife experts are trying to track down a leopard after it burst into a city’s residential area and injured at least two people.
The big cat strayed into the northern Indian town of Meerut, near Delhi, on Sunday night, entering a hospital, a warehouse, a residential complex and even a cinema.
Health workers managed to trap the leopard, thought to have strayed into the city from nearby woodland, in a hospital room but it escaped by smashing through glass panes before it could be tranquilised.
The leopard has still not been located and schools and colleges are understood to be closed in Meerut.
The leopard had been contained in a hospital room (Picture: AFP/Getty)
‘We received calls about the animal’s location in Abulane market,’ forest officer Sushant Sharma told the Hindustan Times.
‘We are visiting the area with a team of wildlife experts to tranquilise the leopard.’
Police officer Onkar Singh added: ‘We urged the public not to go near the animal, but they went close out of curiosity and the animal attacked them, inflicting minor injuries.’
Conservations have warned the leopard’s presence in the city was probably the result of human encroachment on animals’ natural habitats.
Jamie Coots died earlier this month from a snake bite (Picture: WBIR)
The son of a pastor who died after a snake bit him has vowed to do as his father did and continue to handle serpents as part of their church tradition.
Jamie Coots died on February 15 after a poisonous snake bit him at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name church in Middlesboro, Kentucky.
His 21-year-old son Cody said he will now take the helm of the church – holding about 20 people – and continue to practice their long-held beliefs and traditions.
He told WBIR: ‘I didn’t want this. I told my dad, I said “I don’t want to be pastor. I’ve seen the way things have happened and I’ve seen things you have had to take care of. I don’t want it.” He said, “You’re next in line. The lord is going to call you anyways”.’
Cody Coots, Jamie’s son, says he will continue the religious tradition regardless of his father’s death (Picture: WBIR)
Cody said that following his dad’s wake, a small group of friends and family went to the church to handle snakes and speak in tongues to celebrate his life.
Jamie had a permit to possess poisonous snakes, though according to WBIR it is illegal in Kentucky law to handle them.
Cody said his ‘outspoken’ dad went the way he had always wished.
‘How many people can pray that that’s how they wanted to die, and got exactly what they pray for? Not many.
‘His next request was “when you come to my funeral, pack my snakes, and handle them over my corpse”.’
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