Two men with carving knives attacked and seriously injured Hong Kong's most popular and sharp-tongued radio chat show host yesterday. Albert Cheng, renowned for criticising everyone from government officials and tycoons to the man in the street, was in a stable condition by late afternoon after more than five hours of emergency surgery, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Police could not say whether Mr Cheng had been attacked because of comments on his daily Tea Cup in a Tempest show, but he has often provoked extreme reactions. Mr Cheng (52) was set upon outside the commercial radio station where he works just before he was to go on air. The attackers fled, police said.
In Tiberias yesterday, a driver rammed his car into a police barrier outside a hotel where the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was on holiday.
Three policemen were slightly injured when the car hit the barrier shortly before Mr Netanyahu, his wife, Sarah, and their two young sons were due to leave the hotel in this resort on the Sea of Galilee.
The car was found later in the city centre. Israel army radio said a suspect had been arrested.
The acclaimed Greek photographer Nelly, who rose to fame in the 1920s for her controversial shots of a nude ballerina in the Acropolis, has died aged 99, her family said yesterday.
Elli Souyoultzoglou-Seraidari, who became better known as simply Nelly, achieved international fame for her 1927 pictures of Mona Paeva, lead dancer in the Paris Opera Comique, draped in only light veils in the Parthenon. The photos toured the world but caused a scandal in Greece, where she had become the country's first female photographer.
She moved to the US in 1939 but returned to Greece in 1966, where she won the highest accolades for her work from the Athens Academy.
The UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in the west African state of Mali yesterday for a four-day private visit. Mr Annan, a Ghanaian, arrived with his wife in the Malian capital, Bamako.