Bra ban ahead of exam in China

BEIJING: More than nine million students packed exam halls across China for the opening day of the country's university entrance exam on Friday -- with attempts to stop cheating even leading to bans on metal bra clasps.

Students in the northeastern province of Jilin were banned from wearing clothing with metal parts and education authorities installed metal detectors in exam centres to clamp down on "wireless cheating devices", the state-run Global Times reported.

Authorities have become increasingly concerned about the risk of examinees using devices such as smartphones -- some of which have become smaller and easier to hide -- as an illicit aid during tests.

Around 9.12 million high school students were registered across China to sit the crucially important two-day exam, known as the gaokao, reports have quoted the education ministry as saying.

Officials aimed to crack down on "sales of high-tech gear for cheating, and gaokao-related fraud", the Global Times said.

Some measures to ensure students reach the annual test on time can be extreme. Pictures posted online showed an amphibious fire engine ploughing through water to deliver a boy dressed in school uniform to the exam in a remote part of Inner Mongolia.

The southern city of Guangzhou introduced dedicated lanes for vehicles taking students to the gaokao, local media said, while parents in China's business hub of Shanghai booked taxis a week in advance for their children.


- AFP through Awani

American tourist gang-raped in northern India

New Delhi: An American tourist was allegedly gang-raped by a truck driver and two of his accomplices in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, police said Tuesday.

"The 30-year-old was raped by men in a truck on Monday night. They offered her a lift and she accepted it," police inspector Abhimanyu Kumar told AFP.

The incident took place in Manali, a tourist destination 500 kilometres (300 miles) from the capital New Delhi.

Kumar said the medical tests have confirmed that the tourist was raped and police were hunting for the accused men.

"The woman cannot remember the number plate of the truck and she could not understand what the accused were talking about. They drove the truck to an isolated spot and raped her for nearly one hour," he said.

Kumar said every truck driver in Manali had been ordered to report at the local police station as part of the investigation.

On Monday, police in eastern India arrested a local businessman for allegedly drugging and raping an Irish charity worker after her birthday party.

A survey by a trade body released earlier this year found that the number of foreign women tourists visiting India had dropped by 35 percent following several sex attacks that have made global headlines.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India reported earlier this year that female tourist arrivals had fallen after the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old Indian student by six men on a bus in New Delhi in December.

The gang-rape brought simmering anger about endemic sex crimes in the country to the surface and led to sometimes violent protests in cities across the country.

A Swiss cyclist was gang-raped in central state of Madhya Pradesh in March, while a South Korean tourist was allegedly drugged and raped in the same state in January by the son of the owner of a hotel where she was staying.



AFP via Astro Awani
Story published on: June 04, 2013