World Briefs

A panda at a zoo in southern China attacked a student who snuck into its pen hoping for a cuddle with the endangered bear.

The 20-year-old male student surnamed Liu jumped over the fence at the zoo in the tourist city of Guilin, ignoring warning signs not to, Xinhua news agency said.

"The panda, named Yangyang, was wide awake. Apparently scared by the intruder, he bit at Liu's arms and legs," it quoted an unnamed worker as saying after zoo keepers managed to calm the panda and rescue Liu, the report said.

"Yangyang was so cute and I just wanted to cuddle him," Liu was quoted as saying from his hospital bed. "I didn't expect he would attack."

Scientists believe fewer than 2,000 giant pandas live in the wild in China.

Transvestite fiesta rocks town

Indigenous gays and transvestites have found a haven of acceptance in Mexico's macho society, in the southern town of Juchitan which celebrated the festival of the "muxes" over the weekend.

The muxes, a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish for woman, dress as women year round and others are gays who only don women's clothes at the annual party, or not at all.

The muxes (pronounced moo-shes), mostly of ethnic Zapotec descent, are widely respected in the southern mexican town where a dance and parade that crowns a transvestite queen and celebrates the harvest has been held annually for the last 33 years.

Anthropologists say the tradition of blurring genders among Mexico's indigenous population is centuries old but has been revived in recent decades due to the gay pride movement.

The beer-fuelled fiesta continued yesterday at a parade through town.

The area around Juchitan, a laid-back town near the Pacific, has a history of women playing leading roles in public life.

Australian dam bursts

A dam burst in Australia's Queensland state yesterday after days of heavy rain and up to four people were believed missing in floodwaters, Australian Associated Press reported.

"There are reports of people missing," local mayor Peter Maguire told the news agency. "I've heard three and four but I don't know if that's right."

Police confirmed that the dam had broken and flash floods had been feared.

"It was causing a large volume of water to travel downstream. Police hold concerns for the whereabouts of two people," a police spokeswoman said.

The area is a popular picnicking spot.

The bursting of the Bedford dam, near the town of Blackwater in the state's central highlands, reportedly sent thousands of gigalitres of water rushing downstream.

It follows days of bad weather in the northeastern state. The dam reportedly held 22,900 megalitres of water.

Pope prays for Stalin victims

Pope Benedict yesterday prayed for the millions who perished in Ukraine's mass famine of the 1930s engineered by Josef Stalin and said he hoped human rights could no longer be denied in the name of ideology. Ukraine marked the 75th anniversary of the 1932-33 famine at a Saturday ceremony that was boycotted by Russia, which rejects Ukraine's description of the famine as a "genocide.

The Pope, in his Sunday morning address to the faithful, acknowledged those who died and said he hoped nations would now move towards reconciliation, peace and mutual respect.

"In the fervent hope that no political order can, in the name of an ideology, deny the rights of a human being and his freedom and dignity any more, I assure my prayers for all the innocent victims of that enormous tragedy," the Pope said.

Historians say some 7.5 million people died in the famine, aimed at breaking the spirit of Ukraine's independent farmers. Soviet authorities denied that it had occurred.

Pet rage leads to stabbing

A Japanese man upset by the death of his pet turned himself in after fatally stabbing a bureaucrat and his wife, Japanese police and media said yesterday.

Police were searching the house of a 46-year-old man who said he murdered a former vice minister for health and welfare. Kyodo news said the man also admitted to the fatal stabbing of the 66-year-old bureaucrat's wife.

Takehiko Yamaguchi and his 61-year-old wife, Michiko, were found dead at their home with stab wounds to the chest. The wife of another former health and welfare bureaucrat was also seriously stabbed at the entrance to her home by a man pretending to be making a delivery. Her husband, who had also been vice minister, was not home at the time.

The man who turned himself in to police said he was upset over the death of a pet, Kyodo said.

"I was angry because my pet was killed in a public welfare centre," Kyodo quoted the man as saying.