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Centuries-old painting of Persian bird found
Japanese researchers said on Tuesday they found a seventh-century painting of a mythological Persian bird in Afghanistan's Bamiyan ruins, showing the region's Buddhism was influenced by pre-Islamic Iran.
- Published: 00:00 July 26, 2006
Tokyo: Japanese researchers said on Tuesday they found a seventh-century painting of a mythological Persian bird in Afghanistan's Bamiyan ruins, showing the region's Buddhism was influenced by pre-Islamic Iran.
The team unearthed an image of what appears to be a Simorgh, the giant and powerful bird that figures prominently in Zoroastrian-era Iranian legends.
A Malaysian prince stabbed his mother to death with a "Rambo knife" and a screwdriver and seriously wounded his father before dying of a suspected drugs overdose, police said on Tuesday.
Tunku Shahzan, 21, slashed his 64-year-old mother Tengku Putri Kamariah Sultan Abu Bakar in the back as she tried to protect her husband, said police in Malaysia's eastern Pahang state.
The prince died later at a hospital in the state capital Kuantan, a police spokesman said.
"He may have died of a drug overdose, but we cannot speculate until the post-mortem results are out," he said.
In Japan, life expectancy fell for the first time in six years last year, but Japanese women can still expect to live longer than women in other parts of the world, Japan's Health Ministry said.
Life expectancy for women fell to 85.49 years in 2005 from 85.59 the previous year, but remained the world's longest for the 21st consecutive year, ahead of Hong Kong and Spain, the ministry said in a report.
In South Korea, disgraced stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk said on Tuesday he spent part of private donations for his research in failed attempts to clone mammoths, extinct members of the elephant family.
Hwang was indicted in May on charges of fraud and embezzlement after prosecutors said he was the mastermind of a scheme to make it look like his team had produced stem cell lines through cloning human embryos.
In Afghanistan, the Islamic government defended a planned vice and virtue department, saying it would be "totally different" to the one that operated under the Taliban.
But presidential spokesman Karim Rahimi admitted the parameters of the new body had yet to be finalised.
The announcement that the cabinet had approved the new unit has raised concern among rights activists and others of "Talibanisation" of Afghanistan.
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