World Briefs

Three Guinean men died from exhaustion in last week while taking part in intense physical endurance tests to become policemen in the West African state, a senior police officer said yesterday.

Guinea, which is deeply impoverished despite being the world's top exporter of the aluminium ore bauxite, is recruiting around 7,000 new police officers to bolster security. Each must complete a rigorous physical training test to be selected.

"Three died - they couldn't stand the obligatory physical tests," the senior police officer said. "The applicants did not die on the spot, but in hospital, where they had been taken in a state of physical exhaustion. The treatment they received could not save them," he said.

Recruits are divided into companies of 120 or more and put through punishing endurance tests including wading through pools of mud and crawling through tropical scrub on hands and knees for long periods.

Like many across Africa, members of Guinea's security services often live in rundown barracks and complain of poor pay and conditions. But the forces are seen by many as a relatively good career in a country where the poor scrape a living through subsistence farming or hawking food or other merchandise on the streets.

US pilot ordered to shoot down UFO

Two US fighter planes were scrambled and ordered to shoot down an unidentified flying object (UFO) over the English countryside during the Cold War, according to secret files made public yesterday.

One pilot said he was seconds away from firing 24 rockets at the object, which moved erratically and gave a radar reading like "a flying aircraft carrier".

The pilot, Milton Torres, now 77 and living in Miami, said it spent periods motionless in the sky before reaching estimated speeds of more than 12,000 kph.

After the alert, a shadowy figure told Lieutenant Torres he must never talk about the incident and he duly kept silent for more than 30 years. His story was among dozens of UFO sightings in defence ministry files released at the National Archives in London.

The files are online at: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos.

Sex shop spreads tainted with melamine

Chocolate-flavoured body spreads sold in British sex shops have been found to be tainted with melamine, the chemical that made thousands of babies ill in China, food safety authorities said yesterday.

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) said melamine had been found in Chinese-made I Love You sets, sold at Ann Summers sex shops, containing chocolate and strawberry body pens and chocolate-flavoured spreads.

"This is a first. We've never had to put out an alert before on 'willy spread' - chocolate-flavoured or otherwise," the FSA said on its website, www.foodstandards.gov.uk.

It said the health risk from the affected products was low.

Judge accused of road rage stabbing

A Kenyan High Court judge may be charged with stabbing a motorist in the stomach during a road rage incident in Nairobi, local media reported yesterday.

Justice G.B.M. Kariuki was driving his official Mercedes Benz when it was involved in an accident late on Saturday with a saloon car driven by Robert Kamau, a 29-year-old NGO worker.

"We stopped at the scene and he told me I had hit his side mirror," Mr Kamau told the Standard newspaper from hospital. "He demanded that I pay him. He then slapped me and took away my keys. As I went for the keys, he stabbed me."

A senior police source told the paper Judge Kariuki had not been arrested: "We are waiting for instructions, but he will be in court to face a serious charge because there is evidence."

Judge Kariuki, who is based in the western town of Kakamega, denied the allegations and told the Nairobi Star newspaper that Mr Kamau must have fallen on his own knife as he attacked him. "It is a self-inflicted injury. He was very drunk," Judge Kariuki said. "I am a judge and cannot engage in something like that."

Snake spoils woman's fashion contest fun

A woman voted best-dressed at an Australian fashion contest was unable to collect her prize after she was bitten by a deadly snake, local media said yesterday.

Megan McDonough won the best-dressed contest at a horse race meeting at Hamilton in country Victoria state on Saturday, but was bitten by a Tiger snake before she could collect her prize.

"The judging had just been concluded. They were just giving them a final parade. And unfortunately Megan got bit on the foot," Hamilton Racing Club secretary manager John Donnelly told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.

Tiger snakes are common in southeastern Australia during warm months and are among the world's deadliest snakes. Symptoms of a bite include localised pain, numbness and sweating, followed rapidly by breathing difficulties and paralysis.

Mr Donnelly said the woman was taken to hospital and was recovering well.

Addicted elephant kicks the habit

An elephant once addicted to heroin-laced bananas in China has kicked its habit but in the process has become unfit for the wild, state media said yesterday.

The four-year-old bull elephant, referred to alternately as Xiguang (or Big Brother), went through a lengthy rehab course after traders captured it in southwest China in 2005 and used spiked bananas to control it.

"Three years of domestic life and a huge amount of rehabilitation medicine have changed the physical situations, odours and habits of Xiguang," a Yunnan Wild Life Park manager was quoted as saying.

Xiguang will divide its time between two wild life parks in the southwestern province of Yunnan.