Hong Kong  - Hong Kong fire and safety experts began a one-month joint operation checking karaoke bars Monday following a fire which killed four people earlier this month.

The operation will check fire safety provisions at all karaoke bars located in old buildings shared with other businesses and residential units.

It follows a fire in a 15-storey building in the Mongkok district just over one week ago in which two firemen and two other people lost their lives.

London, Aug 18 : A comic book with top tips on drug smuggling from a criminal has become a huge hit in a UK jail.

Convicted drugs smuggler Anthony Spencer, serving six years, has helped his son Jason Wilson to write ‘Him & Hers Smuggling Vacation’.

The comic revolves around the life of a couple, who try to smuggle drugs from Spain to the UK.

Tips in the book include how to transport cannabis by sea and land. It also details how police undertake surveillance operations.

“I’m appalled. This book should be banned in prisons,” The Sun quoted Birmingham Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, as saying.

London, Aug 18 : Having a memory for numbers works well for Ben Pridmore, especially after he smashed three records to become UK’s memory champ by recalling an 818-digit number.

London, Aug 18 : Hundreds of teddy bears are being recalled by London department store Harrods, for they contain dangerous levels of toxic formaldehyde.

Tests conducted on the 2008 Christmas bears revealed that the foam-filled feet of the toys had too much of the cancer-causing chemical.

The store, which sells thousands of the collectors'' edition bears around the world every year, admitted that the higher than normal level of formaldehyde - used in embalming fluid - could cause skin problems.

At 20 years, al-Qaeda is losing its war, but its influence will live on.

According to the Washington Post, the group is more famous and feared than ever. But its grand project -- to transform the Muslim world into a militant Islamist caliphate -- has been, by any measure, a resounding failure.

In large part, that's because Osama bin Laden's strategy for arriving at this Promised Land is a fantasy. Al-Qaeda's leader prides himself on being a big-think strategist, but for all his brains, leadership skills and charisma, he has fastened on an overall strategy that is self-defeating.