An 82-year-old Chinese Nobel physicist has popped the question to a 28-year-old student whom he described as his last gift from God reports from Beijing has it.
Dr. Chen Ning Yang, known in China as Yang Zhenning, would marry student Wong Fan in January.Yang won the physics Nobel Prize in 1957 jointly with Lee Tsung-dao for their investigation of the so-called parity laws, which led to important discoveries about elementary particles.
Yang, whose wife died last year, is a professor at Tsinghua University. He and his wife met Wong in 1995, the newspaper said.
“She has very good English and she is nice and not calculated,” Yang said. “She is my last gift bestowed by God.”

A quick splash in the backyard turned into an emergency when a central Queensland woman discovered her toddler playing with an old World War II bomb.
Michelle Bates of Gargett, in the Pioneer Valley west of Mackay, had taken her son Liam to a waterhole on her property when she noticed him playing with a “suspicious” object.
“There was a bit of water in the gully and I had taken the kids down to have a bit of a splash,” she said. “I saw him pick up something and I wasn’t sure what it was. Turns out it was a bomb.”
Police and an army bomb disposal team from Townsville removed the object, which experts later identified as a 3.5-inch anti-tank rocket.

An armed robbery suspect used the arrest of his partner as a diversion to steal a new patrol car, crash into a ditch, break into a woman’s home and then fall asleep on her couch, Tennessee authorities said.
Robert Bell was arraigned on a variety of charges after the spree that began with the hold up of a market early Wednesday, said McMinn County Sheriff Steve Frisbie. The other suspect charged is Patrick C. Elswood.
After hitting the market, the two robbers stole a Ford Bronco and led authorities chasing them into Athens. They ran the Bronco into a fence and struck a parked car. The pair jumped out of the car and tried to run away as an officer got out of his cruiser to chase them on foot. Authorities said Ellswood tried to attack the officer, who shot him with a stun gun. But Bell got into the officer’s cruiser and drove off — and then into the ditch, causing $3,200 damage to a car that had been in service only a week.
“In defense of the deputy, this was a felony stop and if he had turned off the car and taken out the keys, he probably wouldn’t have stopped the man,” Frisbie said. “It was a split-second decision.”

Residents of Beijing are worried that the careless disposal of dead pets is hurting their campaign for a “green” Olympic Games to be held in the capital in 2008 it has been reported..
Of the more than 200 pets that die each day in Beijing, only one is cremated. The rest are either buried or dumped in trash cans.
Pets were shunned in the days of Mao Zedong as a symbol of bourgeois decadence, but pet pooches have become increasingly popular in the last decade as living standards have risen dizzily.
“Quite a number of pet owners bury their pets either in the lawns of residential quarters or in public places, and quite a number of dead pets end up in the trash cans of residential communities,” Liao Yumin, manager of the Beijing Boai Animal Crematorium, said.
“The careless burial of dead animals could result in hazardous pollution as rainwater or flooding runs over the bodies,” he said.
 

A nanny left a year-old toddler home alone while she went Christmas shopping in the family Mercedes, not expecting the little girl’s mother to pop into the house while she was out, police in New York havereported.
“She said the baby was a good sleeper,” said Eastchester police Lt. William Curran. “I guess she was gambling nothing would go wrong.”
Victoria Braithwaite, 27, was arrested upon her return and charged with reckless endangerment, endangering a child and using a car without permission, Curran said.
He said police were called at about 11:30 a.m. by the girl’s mother, Vivian Lem, who had left her with the nanny at about 8:40 a.m. The baby was safe in her crib when the mother returned to the home in the New York suburb.

A man who visited a middle school in Michigan dressed as Santa Claus left with a citation for misdemeanor marijuana possession.
The 40-year-old Detroit man faces up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine after a small plastic bag of marijuana was found in the pocket of his street coat, which he left in a school restroom, Wayne County Sheriff’s Department officials said.
A deputy who works at the school found the marijuana while searching the coat for identification after a teacher found it in the bathroom. The man dressed as Santa approached the deputy a short time later and identified the coat.
The man denied the pot was his. His wife, who was at the school to take pictures of Santa with the students, apparently did not know the marijuana was in her husband’s coat, officials said. “She was not happy,” Lt. Paul Jones said. “It’s going to be a long ride back to the North Pole.”

Don’t read this one...

A Mexican man killed his lover in a drunken, drugged fight then cooked the man’s body in tomato and onion sauce and ate it over three days.
Police found Gumaro de Dios Arias grilling rotting human flesh for his breakfast, including part of a heart, when they raided a shack he lived in near the Caribbean beach resort of Playa del Carmen, a police chief said.
“He was preparing stews. There was a grill where he was cooking part of the heart and bits he had cut off the body. It was terrible, terrible,” said local police chief Martin Estrada.
Arias told police the victim, a young man, arrived at his cardboard hut in a wasteland area with a mutual friend who then left the two of them drinking and taking drugs.
 

Tailpiece

A young couple got married and left on their honeymoon. When they got back, the bride immediately called her mother. “Well, how was the honeymoon?” asked the mother.
“Oh, mama,” she replied, “the honeymoon was wonderful! So romantic...”
Suddenly she burst out crying. “But, mama, as soon as we returned, Sam started using the most horrible language. He’s been saying things I’ve never heard before! All these awful 4-letter words! You’ve got to come get me and take me home... please mama!”
“Sarah, Sarah,” her mother said, “calm down! Tell me, what could be so awful? What 4-letter words has he been using?”
“Please don’t make me tell you, mama,” wept the daughter, “I’m so embarrassed! They’re just too awful! You’ve got to come get me and take me home... please mama!”
“Darling, baby, you must tell me what has you so upset... Tell your mother these horrible 4-letter words!” Still sobbing, the bride replied,
“Oh, mama...words like dust, wash, iron, and cook...”