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CAIRO – A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday.

After unsuccessfully petitioning his father for two years to marry the girl, the man heated up a knife and sliced off his reproductive organ, said a police official.

The young man came from a prominent family in the southern Egyptian province of Qena, one of Egypt’s poorest and most conservative areas that is also home to the famed ancient Egyptian ruins of Luxor.

The man was rushed to the hospital but doctors were unable to reattach the severed member, the official added citing the police report filed after the incident.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press, added that the man was still recovering in the hospital.

Traditionally, marriages in these conservative part of southern Egypt are between similar social classes and often within the same extended families — and are rarely for love.

BEIJING (Reuters) –
Chinese health authorities are putting a stop to restaurants serving chickens which have been bitten to death by poisonous snakes and cooked up for a supposedly detoxing meal.

The dish, served by a small number of eateries in the southern province of Guangdong and the south-western city of Chongqing, has generated a storm of publicity and controversy in the Chinese media and amongst bloggers.

A video showing a cook holding a snake and forcing it to bite a live chicken until it dies has been widely circulated online, (http:/you.video.sina.com.cn/b/21145091-1405053100.html) generating mainly angry comments.

"It's disgusting and really cruel," wrote one poster on the popular portal sina.com.cn.

"Not only is it cruel and blood-thirsty, but totally amoral," the Chongqing Business Daily cited a neighbour to one of the restaurants as saying.

Health authorities in Guangdong have already told restaurants to stop serving "poisonous snake-bitten chicken" and now those in Chongqing have joined in.

"Although nobody has been poisoned, this at the very least is an irregular way of slaughtering poultry," the business newspaper quoted a local health official as saying.

One dish, prized among some in Guangdong, is monkey brains scooped from a live animal, which has regularly upset animal rights campaigners in the West.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Nick Macfie; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

CARACAS (Reuters) –
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had promised a four-day marathon edition of his widely watched weekly television talkshow, but unspecified technical problems threw the plans awry this weekend.

In a three-line statement, the information ministry said Sunday's "Alo Presidente" program had been canceled for technical reasons. Saturday's show was called off without explanation.

To mark its 10 years on air, Chavez last week announced an extended edition of the program he frequently uses to criticize the United States and announce major policies like nationalizations in South America's top oil exporter. He planned to do one or two hours-long broadcasts a day.

The leftist began on Thursday, speaking for about eight hours in two installments and threatening to punish a critical private TV station.

He also chatted to teens about sex education, talked about problems with his weight and called his friend and mentor, Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro, "Our father who art in Havana."

The next day he challenged a group of right-wing intellectuals, including Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, to debate ideas on Saturday's show, but the broadcast never materialized.

A member of the president's press team said they had waited on the show's set until late afternoon without learning why it had been pulled.

Chavez was expected to transmit Sunday's show in the company of Bolivian President Evo Morales, before he travels to El Salvador for the inauguration of its new left-wing president, Mauricio Funes.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

CULVER CITY, Calif. – In a chewy chow-lenge, Takeru Kobayashi outlasted Joey Chestnut when the eating titans faced off to see who could devour the most pizzas.

Kobayashi, a six-time world hot dog eating champion from Japan, consumed 5 3/4 P’zones in a six-minute span of chaotic consumption Saturday to edge Chestnut. The 25-year-old from San Jose, Calif., wolfed down 5 1/2 P’zones on Stage 15 at Sony Studios.

“I’m a little bummed,” Chestnut said. “There’s nobody I like beating more than him, he pushes me harder than anybody.”

The arch rivals are best known for their annual Fourth of July hot dog eating showdowns on New York’s Coney Island. Chestnut has beaten his Japanese competitor the last two years, winning last year in a five-dog eat-off after they tied at 59 frankfurters in 10 minutes.

This time, they went cheek-to-jowl in a stomach-centric contest sponsored by Pizza Hut featuring the P’zone, a pizza weighing one pound with pepperoni and other ingredients sealed inside a crust. At nearly 12 inches long, it resembles a calzone.

Jaw strength and stomach capacity were sorely tested in consuming one of the most filling foods on the competitive eating circuit.

A serious-looking Chestnut prepped by opening his mouth wide and loosening his jaw. Kobayashi stretched his lean limbs and whispered with his interpreter.

Then it was time.

Chestnut took an early lead, squeezing a P’zone in his left fist while alternately slugging from a water bottle. Soon, liquid splashed all over Chestnut’s white jersey and dripped from his mouth.

Kobayashi took a tidier approach.

He roared back to take the lead for good on his second P’zone, tearing off bites of the golden crust, then folding it over and sipping carefully from a series of white paper cups that he refilled with water.

“The crust was very chewy so my technique was to try to drink as much water as possible to soften up the crust in my mouth,” Kobayashi said through his translator.

No dunking was allowed, and containers of marinara sauce accompanying each P’zone were tossed aside by both chowhounds.

A small crowd gathered a few feet from the elevated food fest cheered the men on, with Chestnut’s highway patrolman brother yelling inches from his face to eat faster.

Chestnut couldn’t keep up with his 31-year-old rival from Tokyo.

At the six-minute mark, Kobayashi raised his arms in triumph and lifted his red jersey to show off a set of washboard abs.

“It was tough. Kobayashi came to win,” Chestnut said. “I was raised on pizza so it was natural for me to eat it, but I was a little slow to get going and he came out fast.”

The thought of a Japanese outeating an American in a pizza contest wasn’t lost on Kobayashi, who is recovering from TMJ, a painful jaw disorder.

“I love pizza,” he said. “When I come to America, pizza is my happiness. I look forward to eating it.”

Chestnut said he wasn’t used to eating pizza that quickly.

“It’s doughy,” he said. “It takes a lot of chewing. He got off to a really good technique early on, his rhythm was drinking water and swallowing. I changed mine a couple times and never got in the right rhythm.”

Kobayashi ended a three-event losing streak to Chestnut, a 25-year-old whose weekday job is in construction management.

“I wanted to prove that I’m champion,” Kobayashi said. “A champion will stand up to any battle.”

He said he would go for another Fourth of July hot dog championship and then probably retire. Chestnut will be ready and waiting on Coney Island.

“I’ll see him in five weeks and I’m going to push him really hard there,” he vowed.

Portions of the pizza event will air on the Spike TV “Guys’ Choice” show on June 21.

PORT HURON, Mich. – Squirrel. Thief. Patriot.

A brazen squirrel has been grabbing small American flags placed in a Port Huron, Mich., cemetery and carrying them up to its nest, which now looks as if it’s bedecked in bunting.

Every Memorial Day, volunteers place the flags next to the graves of nearly 1,000 veterans buried at Mount Hope Cemetery about 55 miles northeast of Detroit. The flags were undisturbed during a Mass held Monday.

The Times Herald reports that workers at the cemetery on Tuesday noticed several flags had been torn off their wooden staffs, which were still in the ground.

The mystery was solved in front of superintendent Ron Ceglarek’s eyes. He watched a squirrel detach a flag stapled to a staff and carry it up a tree to the nest.

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Information from: Times Herald, http://www.thetimesherald.com

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Polly wants a passport — and isn’t above stealing one.

A brazen parrot, which spotted a Scottish man’s passport in a colored bag in the luggage compartment under a tour bus, nabbed the document and made off into dense bush with it, the Southland Times newspaper reported Friday.

The bird — a parrot of the Kea variety — made its move while the bus was stopped along the highway to Milford Sound on South Island, and the driver was looking through the compartment. Milford Sound, which runs inland from the Tasman Sea and is surrounded by sheer rock face, is part of Fiordland National Park, a world heritage site and major travel destination.

Police told the newspaper the passport has not been recovered and is unlikely to be located in the vast Fiordland rain forest.

“My passport is somewhere out there in Fiordland. The Kea’s probably using it for fraudulent claims or something,” the passport owner, who did not want to be named, told the newspaper.

A replacement passport from the British High Commission in Wellington could take six weeks and cost up to $250.

“I’ll never look at a Kea in the same way,” the man was quoted saying.

Kea, the world’s only snow line-dwelling parrot, are widely known as inquisitive birds who appear to take delight in attacking rubber items like windshield wiper blades.

Native to New Zealand, the birds are found only in or near South Island mountains, where they live in high-altitude beech forest and open sub-alpine herb fields that stretch up into the snow line.

Covered mainly in brown and green feathers, they have large flashes of bright orange feathers under their wings.

MISHICOT, Wis. – A Wisconsin woman and her 5-year-old daughter got a fowl visitor when an unwelcome wild turkey crashed through a bedroom window.

Heidi Herrera said she was watching television with her daughter Thursday when the bird quickly charged into the living room of their home in the eastern Wisconsin town of Mishicot. Herrera got her daughter and their pet Chihuahua to safety in another bedroom. The mother then ventured out and found the turkey in the kitchen.

When she walked toward it, the bird ran out the open front door and down the street, leaving behind feathers, blood and glass scattered throughout the house.

Wildlife biologist Aaron Buchholz of the state Department of Natural Resources said turkeys can’t see windows and the bird probably thought it could fly through the bedroom when it crashed through the window.

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Information from: Herald Times Reporter, http://www.htrnews.com

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) –
A local newspaper in northwest Pennsylvania apologized on Friday for running a classified advertisement that called implicitly for the assassination of U.S. President Barack Obama.

The Warren Times Observer, with a circulation of about 11,000, ran the ad in Thursday's paper and pulled it as soon as it was discovered by a manager, said publisher John Elchert.

The ad read: "May Obama follow in the footsteps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy," Elchert said.

Elchert declined to identify the person who placed the ad, and said he had referred the case to local police, who notified the Secret Service.

Elchert said the representative who took the ad apparently didn't make the connection between the four assassinated presidents — Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy — and mistakenly allowed the ad to run.

"It was just an honest mistake," he told Reuters.

Jim Mackin, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said investigators had identified the person who placed the ad and were taking it seriously. "We do not have the luxury of doing otherwise," he said.

Concerns about Obama's safety arose early in his campaign for president, especially among African Americans who expressed fears he could meet the same fate as black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, assassinated in 1968.

The Secret Service provided round-the-clock protection for Obama, the first black president in U.S. history, from an early stage in the campaign.

In a post on its website on Friday, the newspaper said the ad "apparently alludes to the wish that President Obama meets an untimely end by linking him with four assassinated presidents." It said the paper apologized for the "oversight."

In the 2008 general election, voters in the surrounding Warren County, about 300 miles northwest of Philadelphia, backed Republican candidate John McCain with 52 percent of the vote against Democrat Barack Obama with 46 percent.

(Editing by Claudia Parsons and Todd Eastham)

WENATCHEE, Wash. – Blewett the black Labrador retriever knows what it’s like to need a little help. For nearly a week last March, the lost dog barked for attention on Washington’s Blewett Pass, capturing the hearts of dozens of travelers who fed him and tried unsuccessfully to catch him. After he was finally captured, Jay and Janie Smith of Plain, Wash., gave him a home.

Jay Smith said his wife were walking Blewett on a trail above the Wenatchee River on Monday when the dog started barking and raced down the steep bank to sniff an animal near the river’s edge. Janie Smith thought it was a dead bear, but it was an old, arthritic black dog — and it was alive.

The dog’s tags showed it to be Pepper, an 11-year-old dog lost since Saturday. Carol Hurt, who lives nearby, had been baby-sitting Pepper for the weekend. She thinks the old dog was swept away by the river while taking a drink. She calls the rescue “pretty heartwarming.”

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Information from: The Wenatchee World, http://www.wenworld.com

TEXARKANA, Ark. – A man caught breaking into the Miller County Jail last summer will soon leave his cell there for one in an Arkansas prison. Bobby Finley, 20, was accused of planning to sell drugs and tobacco inside the jail. Finley pleaded guilty Thursday to five felony counts and was sentenced to a total of 19 years in prison. But the sentences are to run consecutively and top out at five years.

Guards caught Finley using bolt cutters to get through the chain-link fence that surrounds the jail. Prosecutors said Finley had cocaine and marijuana in his possession.

“In 19 years of prosecuting you always encounter cases that make you believe you’ve seen it all — until you see a case of this nature,” Deputy Prosecutor Carlton Jones said. “It never ceases to amaze me.”

Finley was found mentally competent to stand trial following a psychological evaluation.

Finley will get credit for time served for the 316 days he spent in jail since getting caught.

In his deal with prosecutors, Finley was sentenced to five years each on two possession counts and three years each on three counts of furnishing prohibited substances: cocaine, marijuana and tobacco.

When Finley was arrested last summer, Arkansas State Trooper Scott Clark investigated and said Finley was a moment away from getting inside the fence.

“This is the first one I’ve ever worked where somebody went to so much trouble to remove an obstacle so they could bring contraband into the jail,” Clark said at the time. “It’s definitely a first for me.”

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Information from: Texarkana Gazette, http://www.texarkanagazette.com