Dog-cooking, tree-taking school-burner may lose job

BEIJING (Reuters) A Chinese headmaster, who tried to buy off colleagues by cooking dog meat for them after secretly selling off trees around the school, ended up setting fire to classrooms when the meal burst into flames, a Chinese newspaper said yesterday.

Ten classrooms containing televisions, computers, printers and textbooks burned down, leaving nearly 100 children unable to go to school, the Beijing Youth Daily said.

The headmaster, in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, sold off a 1,000-tree arboretum surrounding the school on the sly, the newspaper said.

''In order to get the teachers not to tell anyone what he had done, on the afternoon of May 16, headmaster Meng got friends to obtain two dogs, which they proceeded to kill on the school grounds,'' the report said.

''He then told the teachers they would have dog meat to eat that afternoon,'' it added.

Team plans cemetery for die-hard fans BERLIN (Reuters) A German soccer club plans to open a cemetery next to its stadium so that die-hard fans can rest in peace alongside their favorite team.

Hamburg SV, a Bundesliga side from the northern port city, aims to open the graveyard some 50 feet from the stadium's main entrance, said deputy chairman Christian Reichert.

''For a large number of people, it's important to be close to the club after their lives are over,'' he said. ''The cemetery will have the look of a small, open stadium.'' With 42,000 registered supporters at the club and just 500 graves up for grabs, competition for places promises to be fierce. Officials have already begun taking reservations.

''I don't know of any other place in Germany where this is done, so it's a unique opportunity for our fans,'' Reichert said, adding that teams like England's Everton FC have been known to inter fans' ashes around playing fields.

Gays accused of discrimination in resort town PROVINCETOWN, Massachusetts (Reuters) Provincetown, New England's summer gay capital, is facing a rise in harassment and discrimination. But this time it's straight people who say they are being ridiculed as ''breeders'' and ''baby makers.'' Less than a decade after a successful campaign to end violent paroxysms of ''gay bashing'' in the beach town at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, police and town officials report a resurgence in tension between gays and straight people.

Police Chief Ted Meyer said straight people complained of being called ''breeders'' over the July Fourth holiday weekend, and that in one serious incident a man was charged with assaulting a woman who signed a petition to ban same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, the only state where it is legal.

Equally troubling, he said, Jamaican workers in Provincetown say they have been the target of racial slurs.

''It's been a series of issues,'' Meyer said.

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