Mistress caught with BMW

A Beijing man’s mistress was allegedly caught in Guang’an, Sichuan province, trying to sell his BMW after what police are characterizing as a vengeful theft.

The woman is facing theft charges in Shijingshan district court.

Police said the woman’s lover beat her after he tried to end their relationship in order to go back to his wife. The scorned woman allegedly took the car after the couple fought.

Man upends police cruiser

A 42-year-old man has appeared in Chaoyang district court after allegedly tipping over a police car and directing insults at officers, Chaoyang district court said yesterday.

The incident allegedly happened after police tried to intervene in a dispute involving a cigarette vendor on Oct 19. Officers said Yu Guangjun rejected the mediation of local police and began his attack.

Damage to the police car is estimated at more than 36,000 yuan.

The court has not yet reached a verdict.

Son left outside court

A man abandoned his son outside Fangshan district court after failing to get compensation for a traffic accident in which his son became disabled, Beijing Times reported.

The son, surnamed Li, was injured on Oct 22, 2005, after being struck by unlicensed truck. The driver was arrested in August and ordered to pay Li 210,000 yuan in compensation. Li tried to claim the money but failed to find the judge on Jan 5 so, he left his disabled son outside the court, saying he could not afford to raise him.

The judge explained the legal procedure to Li and reunited him with his son.

Prizes to patent holders

The commission of science and technology in Fengtai district will spend 10 million yuan a year on encouraging new patent holders in Fengtai district to get national and international patents, Beijing Times reported.

Inventers with patents can get 8,000 yuan each; 3,000 yuan for patent for utility model, 1,000 yuan for patent for design 1,000 yuan and 50,000 for international patents.

Two injured in boiler blast

A young couple was injured when a 3-m-long boiler exploded at 2 am in Wanggui restaurant in Chaoyang district, Beijing times reported.

The couple had been in a single-floor home that was damaged by fire. They were also injured by falling debris after the explosion.

Police said the person in charge appeared to have run away soon after the explosion. The cause of the incident is under investigation.

Fire forces 100 from homes

More than 100 residents were evacuated Sunday after a fire broke out in a building containing apartments and a kindergarten, Beijing News reported.

There were no injuries.

The blaze flared in the basement of Door 5, Building 5 of Zhu Jiang Jun Jing south area in Fengtai district yesterday evening. Firefighters successfully fought the fire, which was caused by an electrical short-circuit. A witness, surnamed Liu, said the fire began around 5:30 pm and the whole building was filled with thick smoke.

Unlicensed autos targeted

The city government will crack down on unlicensed vehicles during Spring Festival in a bid to better protect people, Beijing Times reported yesterday. Beijing Capital International Airport, railway stations, long-distance bus stations and other transportation hubs will all be under close scrutiny.

Rapist sentenced to 7 years

An employer, surnamed Guo, who raped one of his employees and her daughter was sentenced by Miyun county court to seven years, the court said. Guo employed the woman and her husband to shepherd his sheep and plough his fields from the beginning of March last year. In July and August, Guo had a sexual relationship with the woman and, on separate occasions, with her daughter.

Both had mental health problems and were incapable of fending off such sexual advances, resulting in Guo’s conviction.

Food fair spreads festival

Beijing municipal commission of commerce is set to launch a traditional Beijing gourmet festival from Feb 6 to Feb 28, between the minor New Year day and the Lantern Festival. Beijing’s oldest trademarks, including Quanjude, Hongbinlou and Kaorou Wan, will present promotions of their specialties.

Consumers are invited to vote online for “my favorite restaurant for New Year Eve dinner” and “top 10 most popular food street in Beijing”.

Early in the morning, father sent me a message: “Grandma passed away last night. Your mother has decided not to go back.” The news did not come suddenly. But I’m deeply ashamed at how lightly I took it upon hearing that the 88-year-old refused to go to bed one night recently, unless she was dressed for her passage to the other world.

She staged the same drama several times, annoying my second aunt – mother has four younger sisters and two younger brothers back in Chongqing municipality – who has been taking care of her since grandpa passed away in 1994.

Mother doesn’t want to attend the funeral as she is vexed with her siblings’ quarrels. The fourth uncle and sixth aunt, who live in the countryside, were unhappy as the second aunt sold grandma’s old house to a neighbor for 3,000 yuan ($440).

I’d only met grandma a few times, and I didn’t catch a word of her rapid dialect. Some 15 years ago, I went there for Spring Festival. In that cold, humid and foggy winter, grandma beamed at her offspring from all over the country.

When mother offered to get bean curd, grandma instructed us to go to a particular bean curd store and watch out if the man tried to steal our beans. Her seriousness made no sense to me. Nor did the dimly lit old house in which I had to fumble over uneven ground through the kitchen smoke and pig den.

Grandma seemed to live in another world.

Five years ago, when mother came to help with my newborn baby, we sat through long nights, trying to get the wailing boy to sleep. She recounted her childhood, with grandma and many other amazing characters.

It gradually dawned on me that although grandma was an illiterate rural woman, she had a strength that pulled the whole family through the most difficult years.

She had to be a wet nurse at the village landlord’s home to support her family. “Luckily for me, grandma had plenty of milk after feeding that boy,” mother said.

In between giving birth to baby after baby, grandma toiled in the fields while grandpa eked out a living loading salt, log and bricks at a dock by the Yangtze River.

Mother recalled that she was left alone in the field, playing with worms and grass. “When I was hungry, I just grabbed earth mixed with my own pee,” she said, helping me change the diaper.

Grandpa joined the Party early on at the dock. Mother never elaborated on that but gave more emphasis on how he’d get drunk and wouldn’t come home for days.

With little food, grandma suffered from gallstones and she would tumble on the ground, screaming in pain. Then it was my mother, barely 10, who had to climb the star-lit mountain path to find grandpa and the doctor for some medicinal herbs.

As the nation recovered from a 3-year famine in the early 1960s, mother could have been a tremendous help if she had stayed home. But grandma was adamant about sending her eldest daughter far away to a university in Northeast China for a better life.

Mother has been sending money every month to grandma for decades. Her fifth and seventh sisters, both teaching in Chongqing, have followed her example.

Grandma spent her last years deaf and content, playing poker with her old neighbors. Mother would yell into the phone: “Mother, I know you can’t hear me, just say something. I’m glad to hear your voice.”

At the funeral, hundreds of relatives, friends and neighbors attended a banquet of 60 tables. A fengshui master decided to place her tomb at a specific location near my grandpa’s, so together they’d bless all their descendants.

Middle-school student falls ill after drinking beverage; mercury poisoning found by father

A middle-school student has become the second person in Beijing to get mercury poisoning after drinking a can of Sprite in less than three months.

A 13-year-old Beijing student named Wang Haoyong was sent to the 307 PLA Hospital on Jan 17 for mercury poisoning after consuming the beverage.

Wang is currently in a stable condition, but will have to stay in the hospital for further treatment until his blood’s mercury level drops to 2.5 percent ng/ml. The latest test puts it at 3.6 percent ng/ml.

Wang said that he bought a can of Sprite in a supermarket near his school in Tongzhou district.

“It felt like jelly when I drank it. One hour later, I started to have headaches and felt dizzy,” he said.

After observing the illness, Wang’s father ran a quick test.

“I checked the remaining Sprite in a transparent bottle and found something about the size of a soybean. It looked like mercury, so I sent my son to hospital as quickly as possible, ” Wang Yijun, the patient’s father, told METRO yesterday.

The father said his son is in a stable condition but he has lost 5kg from the treatment, and faces the potential aftereffects of europsychiatric diseases and kidney problems.

“My son is better now, but I feel it’s my responsibility to draw public attention to this case. With the Spring Festival coming, families might select soft drinks to celebrate with and I don’t want this tragedy to happen again,” he added.

Wang believed that the second case of Sprite mercury poisoning proves there is a problem.

The first case took place on Nov 7, 2009. Ma Sai, a 21-year-old man, ordered a can of Sprite in a restaurant in Xidan. Several minutes later, Ma started vomiting and was diagnosed with mercury poisoning later in hospital.

“He finished his treatment in hospital in early December but we cannot say he is fully recovered since he still has 1.8 ml of mercury in his blood,” Li Hongsheng, Ma’s relative, told METRO yesterday.

Both families claim that when the Sprites were opened, they were full of carbon dioxide.

They have stated it is impossible that someone could have injected mercury into the cans, since there were no holes.

However, the factory said there is no procedure containing mercury in their production lines, insisting the two poisonings were “individual cases”.

Chen Yi, a public relations manager from Coca-Cola Beijing Company, said all the production procedures and materials they use are mercury-free.

“We believe someone did that on purpose after our products went into the market,” Chen said.

Multiple world champion ready to get back into driver’s seat of F1 car

BERLIN: Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher said on Wednesday the neck injury which hampered his return to Formula One last August is no longer a factor as he prepares for the 2010 season.

Despite retiring from F1 in 2006, Schumacher signed a three-year contract with Mercedes GP last December and has been testing with Mercedes in Jerez, Spain, but says last year’s neck injury has long since healed.

Schumacher insists any concerns over the injury he sustained in a motorbike accident nearly a year ago and forced him to abort a return to Ferrari last year are no longer an issue and it feels like he has never been away.

“The after-effects of that accident are long gone, that’s why I was sure that the neck would not cause any problems,” he said on his website.

“This was one year ago – that’s over.

I have been practising since December very carefully and feel extremely fresh and fit.

“That was one of the reasons I felt so good in the car in Jerez.

“But then, F1 is another thing, the g-forces are higher, that’s not really comparable.

“That is why I look forward so much to testing in February.

“Only then the old feeling will be completely back. I can’t wait to be back there.”

Schumacher says testing of Mercedes’ GP2 car went better than expected with his first drive in the F1 car set to take place next month.

“The test was super, I can’t tell the difference,” said Schumacher.

“We have been handicapped a bit because of the wet weather in the first two days but on the third day we could do a lot and even simulate a race on slicks.

“It went better than I had expected.

“I immediately felt well in the car, it was as if I never was gone.”

The 41-year-old said he has signed a three-year deal to race with Mercedes because he wants to win the world championship again having linked up with Ross Brawn, who orchestrated the pits in each of his seven world championship wins.

“I signed because we want to achieve something together,” said the German.

“The set up we have here is pretty unique – with Ross and his world championship-winning team, with the know how of Mercedes, with the best engine at the moment, we want to use that.

“We have a clear aim: we want to win the championships.

“That’s what we will fight for from the beginning.

“That is my personal standard too.”

Despite repeatedly saying he would never return to Formula One during the years of his retirement, Schumacher explained his decision to return to the track.

“I couldn’t imagine my return before last year,” he said.

“After my retirement at the end of 2006, I was very happy, I felt relieved: like I had been freed.

“I enjoyed that feeling because especially in the last two years of racing, F1 had demanded a great deal from me.

“It was not just the racing, I loved during that time but all those things which relate to living under constant observation.”

AFP

CLEVELAND, Ohio: LeBron James continued his reign over the Los Angeles Lakers, recording 37 points as the Cleveland Cavaliers claimed a 93-87 victory to sweep the season series against the defending NBA champions on Thursday.King” James recorded 12 points in the fourth quarter including the go-ahead lay-in with 40 seconds remaining. He added a free throw and Anderson Varejao made three more from the line to help the Cavaliers close the game with the final six points.

You don’t want to look too far into (the win),” James told reporters after also finishing with nine assists.

“They’re the best team we have in our league. You take the win, use it as a measuring stick and move on.”

Kobe Bryant scored 31 points and became the youngest player to reach 25,000 points after converting a free throw in the first half after starting well in the matchup against James, a shootout between the NBA’s last two MVP winners.

However, Bryant’s shooting woes returned in the second half and finished with 12 of 31 from the field.

Bryant’s jumper with 1:32 remaining tied the game at 87-87, but Los Angeles faded and failed to gain revenge for their 102-87 Christmas Day loss to Cleveland.

The Cavaliers (33-11) moved to within percentage points of the Lakers (32-10) for the best record in the league despite receiving bad news earlier in the day.

Mo Williams, the team’s second leading scorer, learned he would be out 4-6 weeks with a shoulder injury he sustained against the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday.

Cleveland appeared affected early by the loss of their scoring option and fell 27-18 behind after the first where Bryant tallied 12 points.

The Cavaliers cut into the margin to just two at halftime before James put his stamp on the second half with his outside shot. He made four straight jumpers during a personal 9-0 run that put the Cavs up 87-80.

Los Angeles responded with a 7-0 spurt of its own to tie the contest but could not score in the last minute.

“(The Cavs” are physical, tough-minded and hard-nosed-type team,” Bryant said. “We have to step up and match that — that’s not part of our DNA.”

The Lakers were held to just 38 percent from the field, getting 13 points and eight rebounds from Pau Gasol and a double-double (10 points, 10 boards) from reserve Lamar Odom.

Shaquille O’Neal scored 13 for Cleveland against his former team.

JOHANNESBURG: The South African Football Association (SAFA) is struggling with cash flow problems, the Mail & Guardian newspaper in Johannesburg reported on Friday.

South Africa hosts the FIFA World Cup in June.

The weekly newspaper said it had access to SAFA’s bank accounts which showed a negative balance of more than 7.4 million rands ($one million).

said other SAFA documents showed that it also owed suppliers another 7 million rands.

A senior SAFA official, who was not named in the report, said the situation was even bleaker than that.

“We are close to 10 million rands ($1.35 million) in the red, excluding what we need to pay our suppliers,” he said.

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to run the sport smoothly in the country. The majority of our regions have not received their grants, which has paralyzed the game in these affected areas.”

A letter written by the SAFA Waterberg region which was leaked to the newspaper said the region was facing eviction from its office, had not paid its phone bills and owed staff members their salaries.

But former SAFA chief executive Raymond Hack told the weekly paper that allegations of financial problems were “absolute nonsense”.

“The SABC alone owes SAFA almost 27 million rands ($3.6 million ),” said Hack, who resigned from his position early in January.

“I am reliably informed that the SABC will pay… this week which should sort out any financial problems,” said Hack, who reported a 32 million rands ($4.32 million) profit for SAFA last September.

SAFA’s vice-president for finance, Mandla Mazibuko, said that Hack left SAFA’s account in a deficit but would not give any figure.

“It’s really too early for me to comment because I’m still going through the books,” said Mazibuko.

Glee will return for a second season in 2010-11, Fox has announced.

The network also revealed plans for a nationwide hunt to find three new cast members for the next run of the musical comedy, which will air from the Fall.

“We’ve loved Glee ever since it was a pilot script, so it’s been an incredible thrill to watch the show take root and see audiences embrace these characters in such a huge way this season,” said Fox president Kevin Reilly.

“The show is a true and rare gem in television. We couldn’t be more proud of what Ryan Murphy and the Glee team have created so far, and can’t wait to see what they come up with for season two.”

The show returns for the second half of its freshman season Tuesday, April 13. In the UK, Glee premieres tonight at 9pm on E4.

Ridding any chance of a Jennifer Aniston run-in, reports tell that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are skipping out on the 2010 Golden Globe Awards.

The “Mr and Mrs Smith” co-star couple have opted out of this year’s ceremony, with a source claiming that the reason is Pitt’s omission from individual honors for his work in “Inglourious Basterds”.

Talking to E! News, stylist Jen Rade said, “They’re not going because he’s not nominated individually. Inglourious Basterds is, but not him.”

Meanwhile, Miss Aniston still is slated to appear at the 67th annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony held in Los Angeles on Sunday, January 17th.

Australian actress Nicole Kidman (R) is joined by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (C) and founder Esta Soler during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Family Violence Prevention Fund, a center for generating new solutions for violence prevention, at The Presidio in San Francisco, California January 8, 2010.

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil’s flood mudslide death toll rose to 85 and is expected to rise further as five people were still reported missing, local authorities said late on Monday.

The deaths were reported from the country’s Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais states.

Flood mudslides claimed 72 lives in the Rio de Janeiro state alone, where the disaster hit a holiday resort on the Grande Island and hit houses at the town of Angra dos Reis on the mainland.

A gigantic mudslide hit the Sankay Inn and seven other houses on the island, and killed 29 people including four children.

Another giant mudslide hit the Morro da Carioca neighborhood at Angra dos Reis, killing 21 people including nine children.

Twelve of the 21 deceased at Angra dos Reis were from the same family.

The mudslide left at least 125 people homeless and 238 others had to be evacuated as the local authorities ruled that over 200 houses at Angra dos Reis as uninhabitable.

Mudslides killed 10 people in the Sao Paulo state and three people lost their lives to flooding in the Minas Gerais state.

Angra dos Reis mayor Tuca Jordao said that at least 100 houses had to be demolished for safety reasons and the direct loss caused by the flood mudslide was estimated to be between 200 million and 250 million reais (between $116 million and $145 million).

Government authorities and rescue workers have so far rushed 11 tons of food and 28,000 liters of bottled water to Angra dos Reis.

Over 35,000 pieces of clothing were donated by the public to the mudslide victims.