TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan's Pizza Hut has pulled grated cheese from its outlets after they were found to contain unacceptably high levels of the industrial chemical melamine.
The company said the grated cheese, which is mixed with creamer, contained 30 times the permitted level of the chemical, at 76 parts per million. It estimated that about 130 kilograms (286 pounds) of the product, which comes in small individual servings for sprinkling on pizzas to add flavour, had already been distributed by its 143 delivery shops.
TOKYO, Japan - Japan's best-known Buddhist nun is reaching out to a new audience by writing a cellphone novel at the age of 86. Jakucho Setouchi, a prolific writer and translator of 11th century epic romance "The Tale of Genji," is latching on to a publishing revolution - short works of fiction distributed piecemeal by cellphone often become best-sellers in book form. The story, entitled Tomorrow's Rainbow, is about a high school girl who is deeply hurt by her parents' divorce but finds the love of her life in a boy named Hikaru.
BANGKOK, Thailand - - A publicity stunt by an underdog in the race to be governor of Bangkok went badly wrong when her campaign manager drowned as they bathed in a canal to highlight the plight of residents who have no access to clean water. Candidate Leena Jangjanya said Thirasak Sitanont, 32, drowned as she and other staff were showing journalists the rash they got from washing in the filthy water. Leena, a businesswoman, is among 16 candidates in the race to be governor of Thailand's capital city of more than 10 million people.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Cambodia's parliament has re-elected Hun Sen as prime minister, extending his 23-year grip on power, at a session boycotted by parties disputing the results of the July general election. The royalist parties - Funcinpec and the Norodom Ranariddh Party - picked up two seats each, and the Human Rights Party (HRP) three seats. Hun Sen has a reputation for trampling on human rights to secure power, but a booming economy has bolstered his standing in a country still struggling to lift itself from the ranks of the world's poorest.
HONG KONG - A chef in a Hong Kong noodle bar was arrested for allegedly attacking a woman with a meat cleaver when she complained about the quality of his food. The 47-year-old woman was assaulted after she grumbled about the meal she was served on in the noodle bar in the city's Wan Chai district. The chef, 50, allegedly grabbed a meat cleaver from the kitchen after the woman made a "rude remark" to him and landed several blows to her head before being restrained by fellow diners.
BEIJING, China - A Chinese farmer who caused a sensation by producing photos of a rare tiger was convicted of faking the pictures and jailed for 30 months, Xinhua news agency reported. Zhou Zhenglong, 54, won a reward of about C$4,000 from the authorities in northwestern Shaanxi province last October for his digital photos of a South China tiger, an endangered species that has not been seen in the wild for decades. But doubts about the authenticity of the photos soon surfaced online, and it turned out he had borrowed an old tiger poster and propped it up between the trees. Police also found a wooden model of a tiger claw he used to replicate a paw print in the snow.
SINGAPORE - Singapore's High Court has ruled that the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) magazine defamed Singapore's leaders. It ruled that the editor, Hugo Restall, also defamed Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his son, current Prime Minister Lee Hsein Loong. The Singapore government has frequently resorted to its own courts to protect its reputation. Singaporean leaders have won hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages in defamation cases against critics and foreign publications, which they have said are necessary to protect their reputations from unfounded attacks.
NEW DELHI, India - A court in the western Indian state of Maharashtra has sentenced six people to death for killing four members of a lower-caste Dalit family in 2006.
Another two were sentenced to life in prison. All eight were found guilty last week.
The Dalits, a woman, daughter and two sons, were killed by an upper-caste mob in land row. The husband escaped. The case led to widespread protests. Crimes against Dalits, formerly known as untouchables, often go unpunished. Discrimination against Dalits, who are at the bottom of the centuries-old Hindu caste system, is a punishable offence in India.
JAKARTA, Indonesia - A ferry carrying some 60 people caught fire on in rough seas off the eastern Indonesian island on Maluku province, killing seven people and injuring five others. Most of the passengers were travelling to their hometowns to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan. Indonesia is a vast archipelago nation of more than 17 000 islands and ferries provide popular and cheap transportation for the country's more than 230 million people.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Malaysian police have released on bail a blogger, detained under the Sedition Act. Syed Azidi Syed Aziz, 38, also known as Sheih Kickthefella, was detained on September 17 for allegedly inciting the public to fly the Malaysian flag upside down in one of his Internet postings. Opposition and rights groups have slammed the recent arrests as a government effort to crack down on dissent and have called for the security law, drafted almost 60 years ago, to be repealed.
