John McCain's US presidential election campaign has solicited a financial contribution from an unlikely source - Russia's UN envoy - but a McCain spokesman said it was a mistake. In the letter, Mr McCain urged Russia's UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, to contribute anywhere from $35 to $5,000 to help ensure Mr McCain's victory over Democratic rival Senator Barack Obama, currently ahead in voter preference polls.
"If I have the honour of continuing to serve you, I make you this promise: We will always put America - her strength, her ideals, her future - before every other consideration," McCain assured Mr Churkin.
Moscow's mission to the United Nations issued a terse statement on the Republican presidential candidate's letter, saying that the Russian government and its officials "do not finance political activity in foreign countries".
A spokesman for Mr McCain, a long-time critic of Russia, had a simple explanation for the fund-raising letter's arrival at the Russian mission in New York: "It was an error in the mailing list."
Wedding guests end up in hospital
Two Chinese wedding banquets held on successive nights at the same restaurant put at least 60 guests into hospital with food poisoning, the latest in a series of village dinner upsets.
Of around 250 villagers who attended the banquets last Friday and Saturday in a rural suburb of Beijing, at least 60 were rushed to hospital in the following days.
"It was embarrassing to have to tell others that I vomited and had diarrhoea at a wedding banquet," the Beijing News quoted one villager as saying.
Earlier this month, 170 guests were poisoned at a wedding banquet in the neighbouring province of Hebei when powdered rust remover was added to the pot instead of salt.
A day earlier, 61 wedding guests suffered food poisoning at a banquet in impoverished Gansu province in the northwest.
China has been hit by a series of food safety scares in recent years, most recently when thousands of infants fell sick from contaminated milk powder that also killed four babies.
Berlin woman gives birth to sextuplets
A woman who had been struggling to conceive ended up giving birth to six healthy babies in a German hospital, the medical director of Berlin's Charite hospital said yesterday.
Ulrich Frei said the woman had given birth to four boys and two girls - each weighing between 800 and 900 grams - after 27 weeks of gestation.
The woman had undergone a standard fertility treatment after unsuccessful attempts to become pregnant, Wolfgang Henrich, a doctor who assisted the delivery, told a news conference. He said it had been an unproblematic caesarean birth.
The hospital declined to give further details about the woman.
Footprints of abominable snowman found
Japanese climbers returning from a mountain in western Nepal yesterday said they had found footprints they think belonged to Yeti, the mythical abominable snowman.
"We saw three footprints which looked like that of human beings," Kuniaki Yagihara, a member of the Yeti Project Japan, said in Kathmandu, after returning from the mountain with photographs of the footprints.
The climbers, equipped with long-lens cameras, video cameras and telescopes, said, however, that they did not see or take any photographs of the creature.
The Yeti is said to live in the Himalayan regions of Nepal and is largely regarded by the scientific community as a mythical creature.
Mr Yagihara, 61, said the creature's footprints were found on snow at an altitude of about 4,800 metres in the Dhaulagiri mountain range in western Nepal.
Woman harassed by drunken undertaker
An Australian undertaker who got drunk and followed a woman in his hearse, honking the horn and shouting threats, was making a "cry for help", his lawyer told a Sydney court yesterday.
Adam Lee's life revolved around Caring Funerals and his work for the Rotary club, lawyer Roland Bonnicci told the magistrate.
But he acknowledged that Mr Lee, 37, did binge drink on weekends and his "mental state is deteriorating", the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported.
The prosecutor, Sergeant Paul McGirr, was unimpressed with the man's defence.
"The only cry for help on that evening was the cry for help by Maureen Wyer, who was the victim," he said.
Sarkozy fights back against voodoo doll
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to sue a publishing company unless it withdraws a Sarkozy doll that comes with a "voodoo manual" instructing readers to plant pins in it, his lawyer said yesterday.
The doll is emblazoned with some of Mr Sarkozy's most famous quotes such as "Get lost you pathetic arsehole" - his words to a bystander who refused to shake his hand at a farm show last year. Readers are encouraged to plant pins in the quotes.
"Nicolas Sarkozy has instructed me to remind you that, whatever his status and fame, he has exclusive and absolute rights over his own image," lawyer Thierry Herzog wrote to publishers K&B in a letter published by newspaper Le Monde.
The company has also issued a Segolene Royal doll representing Mr Sarkozy's rival in last year's presidential election. Her lawyer said she was also considering legal action.