US, China to announce deals to reduce military tensions: Report

The United States and China are planning to announce military agreements aimed at reducing the possibility of confrontation between the two powers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, quoting unnamed US officials.

The Journal said one of the agreements to be unveiled on Wednesday by US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, would provide a mechanism for notifying the two countries of each other's activities, including military exercises.

Washington and Beijing will also set rules of behaviour in cases of encounters in the sea and air, the newspaper said, quoting people familiar with the negotiations.

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Final poppy planted to remember British World War I dead

A teenage army cadet on Tuesday planted the last of 888,246 ceramic poppies at the Tower of London, representing every UK forces World War I fatality, as Britain marked Armistice Day.

A century on from the start of the 1914-1918 Great War, people around Britain stood for the traditional two-minute silence remembering all those who have given their lives in conflict.

Cadet Harry Hayes, 13, was watched by a crowd of thousands at the Tower of London as he completed the poppy installation Blood Swept Lands And Seas Of Red. The vast artwork, filling the moat surrounding the 11th-century fortress with a blood-red tide, has captured the public imagination and become the focal point for World War I centenary commemorations.

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Watch fetches record $27 million at Swiss auction

A Patek Philippe gold watch billed as the most expensive - and most complicated - in the world fetched a record $21.3 million (S$27.5 million) on Tuesday when it went under the hammer in Switzerland.

The sale of the "Henry Graves Supercomplication", a handcrafted timepiece named after its original owner, a New York banker who ordered it in 1925, was the main event at a jewel and watch auction held in Geneva.

The watch, which weighs more than half a kilo and comprises 900 separate parts, had been estimated to go for a lower amount, US$15 million.

But frenzied bidding pushed the price up higher, and the final amount paid was "a new world record," Sotheby's said.

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Turkish doctor suffers heart attack on live TV health show

A Turkish doctor on Tuesday suffered a heart attack in front of millions of viewers during a popular health show broadcast live on national television.

Dr Ugur Yansel, a professor of orthopaedics, was explaining flat feet in children when he had a heart attack during a live telecast of the hugely-popular Healthy Living (Saglikli Yasam) programme on the Istanbul-based 360 channel.

The doctor, who is in his late 50s, displayed symptoms such as chest pain and discomfort before suffering what appeared to be the first in a series of heart attacks. He was eventually taken to a hospital by ambulance and was said to be in a stable condition.

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New York doctor now free of Ebola discharged from hospital

A doctor who contracted Ebola was discharged from a hospital on Tuesday after weeks of isolation treatment for the virus and was cheered by New Yorkers from City Hall to the Harlem apartment building where he lives.

The release of Dr Craig Spencer, 33, who worked with Ebola patients in Guinea and had been held at Bellevue Hospital Centre since he was diagnosed with the virus on Oct 23, will mean no one in the United States is being treated for the disease, according to media reports.

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