The Morningwood News

Daily Mail (UK)
By Jaya Narain

Masked, a revolver clutched in a gloved hand and pointed straight at the camera, this is how the rival gang members portray themselves on the internet.

Other chilling shots - available to anyone who logs on to the website YouTube - show how they terrorise the neighbourhood on quad-bikes, ride wheelies on motorbikes and perform handbrake turns on busy roads in their high-performance cars.

The Croxteth Crew and the Strand Crew of Norris Green both have a hard core of 15 members aged between 13 and their mid-20s but can call on reinforcements when required.

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LA Daily News
BY BARBARA CORREA

First came reports that toxins found in plastic baby bottles and vinyl bibs could make infants sick.

Then researchers said “Baby Einstein” videos - those artfully crafted nature and music DVDs designed to make little Joey the sharpest tot in the playpen - actually made a lot of kids dumber.

And just when parents thought they’d heard it all, the world’s largest toy-maker, Mattel Inc., announced a second massive recall in two weeks. This time, Mattel had to warn consumers about more lead-paint-tainted toys from China and small magnets that pose a choking hazard.

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International Herald Tribune
Asia & Pacific
By Thomas Fuller

BANGKOK: America has Tom, Dick and Harry. Thailand has Pig, Money and Fat.

For as long as people here can remember, children have been given playful nicknames that no matter how silly - classics include Shrimp, Chubby and Crab - are carried into adulthood.

But now, to the consternation of some nickname purists, children are being given such offbeat English-language nicknames as Mafia or Seven - as in 7-Eleven, the convenience store.

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International Herald Tribune
Europe
The Associated Press

MOSCOW: When he flexes Russia’s diplomatic and military muscle, President Vladimir Putin always makes headlines.

But few could have predicted the squall of gossip and speculation that would follow after Putin stripped off his shirt for the cameras while on holiday with Prince Albert II of Monaco in the Siberian mountains last week.

The resulting images of the presidential abs, prominently enshrined on the presidential Web site, inspired admiration, criticism and some racing pulses among his admirers.

The Russian media still can’t get enough.

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Yahoo UK & Ireland
AFP

BEIJING (AFP) - China said Wednesday it had discovered many safety problems with soybeans imported from the United States, urging US authorities to deal with the problem.

“Inspection and quarantine units in various areas have discovered a large number of quality and safety problems with imports of US soybeans,” the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said.

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CNN World
Reuters

A one-legged Emirati father of 78 is lining up his next two wives in a bid to reach his target of 100 children by 2015, Emirates Today reported on Monday.

Daad Mohammed Murad Abdul Rahman, 60, has already had 15 brides although he has to divorce them as he goes along to remain within the legal limit of four wives at a time.

“In 2015 I will be 68 years old and will have 100 children,” the local tabloid quoted Abdul Rahman as saying.

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NPR
Crime In The City

John Burdett’s Bangkok is far more than the bizarre murders, corrupt cops and big-hearted bar girls of his novels, which include Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Haunts.

It’s also the city as a living breathing, thing, like the Chao Phraya River that snakes through Bangkok’s center. The waterway is where Burdett’s narrator-detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep sometimes comes to unwind.

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signonsandiego.com
The Union-Tribune
By Lisa Cornwell
Associated Press

CINCINNATI – Toys and other children’s products recalled because of safety concerns are often resold through online auction sites, putting children at risk, according to a recent study.

EBay Inc.’s Web site prohibits the sale of recalled products, but enforcement efforts don’t seem to be succeeding, said Keri Brown Kirschman, the study’s lead author and an assistant psychology professor at the University of Dayton.

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International Herald Tribune
Europe
By Clifford J. Levy

MOSCOW: Moscow asks, Who turned off the hot water?

The dour Moscow of Cold War film strips is long gone, and this increasingly prosperous city fancies itself striding chest out into the future. But every summer, the people here get a taste of old-style deprivation, as if they were flung back to a time when they had to line up at dawn to buy a few coils of mealy sausage.

In neighborhoods rich and poor, for as long as a month, most buildings have had no running hot water, not a drop.

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Yahoo 7 News
AAP

A US sailor faces up to 12 years jail after pleading guilty to grooming a 14-year-old girl for sex in Australia.

David Wayne Budd, 28, was arrested at Sydney Airport on June 23 after an online conversation with a detective posing as a young girl on June 21.

The Petty Officer 2nd Class had been stationed at Rockhampton in Queensland, where he had been posted as part of a joint US-Australian military training exercise.

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International Herald Tribune
Africa and Middle East
By Howard W. French and Lydia Polgreen

LILONGWE, Malawi: When Yang Jie left home at 18, he was doing what people from China’s hardscrabble Fujian Province have done for generations: emigrating in search of a better living overseas.

What set him apart was his destination. Instead of the traditional adopted homelands in North America and Europe, where Fujian people have settled by the hundreds of thousands, he chose southern Africa, making his way to this small, landlocked country where Stanley and Livingstone’s legendary meeting occurred.

“Before I left China,” said Yang, now 25, “I thought Africa was all one big desert,” a place forever bathed in terrible heat. So he figured ice cream would naturally be in high demand, and with money pooled from relatives and friends, created his own factory. Malawi’s climate, in fact, is subtropical, but that has not stopped his ice cream company from becoming the country’s biggest.

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DNA India
AFP

TOKYO: The temperature hit an all-time high in Japan on Thursday with the extreme summer heat bending train rails and killing at least 13 people this week, officials said.

The mercury shot up to a record 40.9 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit) Thursday afternoon in central Gifu prefecture and Saitama prefecture near Tokyo, the weather agency said.

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