WORLD IN BRIEF

Japanese gas suicides up sharply

More than 870 people have killed themselves in Japan by inhaling toxic fumes from household chemicals this year, 30 times more than the total for all of last year, the government said Friday. Japan has long battled a high suicide rate and is now in the grip of a wave of deaths from mixing commonly available household products to form poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas. The gas can form noxious clouds that also affect those who happen to be nearby, often triggering mass evacuations. The number of toxic fume suicides jumped to 876 from January to September compared with 29 last year, the Cabinet Office said. Alarmed by the surge, police have launched a crackdown on popular Internet sites that give instructions on how to commit suicide using the method.

Concern grows over tainted feed

Chinese regulators said they were widening their investigation into contaminated food amid growing signs that the toxic industrial chemical melamine has entered the nation’s animal feed supplies, posing health risks to consumers throughout the world. The announcement came after food safety tests earlier this week found that eggs produced in three provinces in China were contaminated with melamine.

Essay costly for military official

Japan’s defense minister dismissed his air force chief for writing an essay that claimed the country was not an “aggressor” in World War II and was trapped into getting involved in the conflict by the United States. Toshio Tamogami’s essay will likely upset relations with China and South Korea, who remain bitter about Japan’s wartime occupation and say Tokyo has failed to properly atone for its invasion of the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and parts of China. “His views are different from the government’s. It is not desirable for him to stay in the job,” Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters soon after the essay was made public. Tamogami was not available for comment.

Al-Qaida affiliate releases captives

Two Austrians kidnapped in Tunisia by an al-Qaida affiliate have been released, ending an eight-month ordeal and anguished diplomatic attempts to win their freedom. Wolfgang Ebner, 51, and Andrea Kloiber, 43, were freed Thursday after 252 days in captivity and were under the protection of Mali’s military, Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said. Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa had claimed responsibility for abducting the pair Feb. 22 while they were on vacation in Tunisia. The precise circumstances leading up to the pair’s release remained unclear.

Congo refugees struggle back

International envoys converged on eastern Congo to help end some of the worst violence the Central African nation has seen in years, as thousands of anxious, hungry refugees struggled to get home amid a fragile cease-fire. The conflict between the army and Laurent Nkunda’s rebel movement is fueled by festering ethnic hatred left over from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and Congo’s unrelenting civil wars. Nkunda claims the Congolese government has not protected ethnic Tutsis from the Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping slaughter half a million Rwandan Tutsis. The U.N.’s deputy representative and humanitarian coordinator in Congo said more than 1 million people have been displaced by the fighting.

India blames terror groups

The level of sophistication in the bombings that killed at least 77 people in northeastern India indicates that local militants had help from other terrorist groups in carrying out the attacks, officials said. The scale and planning behind Thursday’s 13 coordinated blasts in Assam state surprised authorities, who struggled to determine who was behind the attacks —- among the worst ever in a region plagued by separatism and ethnic violence. The death toll in the explosions rose to 77 Friday. More than 300 were wounded.

Communists blast film star

The Communist Party in St. Petersburg, Russia, says Olga Kurylenko, the Ukrainian-born model who plays a Bolivian agent in the latest James Bond film, “Quantum of Solace,” has betrayed her roots. “In the name of all Communists we appeal to you, prodigal daughter of poor Ukraine and deserter of Slavic world,” the party said in an open letter dated Oct. 21 and posted on their Web site Friday. The Soviet Union “gave you free education, free medical care but nobody knew you would commit an act of intellectual and moral betrayal that you would become a movie kept girl of Bond, who in his movies kills hundreds of Soviet people and citizens of other socialist countries: Cubans, Vietnamese, North Koreans, Chinese and Nicaraguans,” the party said.

Boy, 7, girl, 5, not allowed to wed

Police raided a wedding between a 7-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl in Karachi, Pakistan, arresting the Muslim cleric officiating at the ceremony and the children’s parents, a senior officer said. The cleric had not yet begun the ceremony in Karachi, which was attended by 100 guests. Pakistan law forbids marriage below the age of 18, but some Muslim scholars say it is permissible if the bride and groom have reached puberty.

—- From news services

A beauty contest like no other

Banban, Saudi Arabia —- The contestants scampered down the runway, bleating at their admirers. Poets sang their praises in verse as the male-only audience appraised the competitors’ physical beauty, right down to the length of their necks.

But instead of receiving roses and a tiara, it was off to the highest bidder for many finalists in the first Saudi beauty pageant featuring locally bred sheep.

The contest, a far cry from female beauty pageants held in some Arab countries such as Lebanon, offered an opportunity for breeders to do business and a rare outlet for entertainment in a country where the few recreational activities that exist are conducted under the strict glare of the religious police.

Some 4,000 men assembled Thursday evening on a lit-up stretch of desert just north of Riyadh covered with hundreds of carpets. The event was off-limits to women in keeping with strict Saudi rules that ban the sexes from mixing in public.

Close to midnight, Fahd al-Jinahi, a 31-year-old Saudi, walked away with his prize purchase: Sana, a ram that he bought for $120,650.

Why did he choose it?

“I loved the length and width of his cheeks, his long neck and how his creamy yellow hair falls down his body,” al-Jinahi said.

—- Associated Press