New sport combines boxing and chess

In front of 1,000 cheering fans one recent Saturday night, Sazhin moved his bishop to go in for the kill and won the world championship of chess boxing, a weird hybrid sport that combines as many as five rounds of pugilism with a game of chess.

The combatants switch back and forth between boxing and chess -- repeatedly putting their gloves on and taking them off, so that they can move the pieces around the board without clumsily knocking them over -- in a sort of brains-and-brawn biathlon.

"It's the No. 1 thinking game and the No. 1 fighting game," said Iepe Rubingh, the sport's 32-year-old founder.

Rubingh's inspiration was "Cold Equator," a 1992 French comic book in which two heavyweight boxers beat each other's brains out for 12 rounds and then play a 45-hour game of chess.

"That's not functional. So I thought about how it could work," Rubingh said.

Benedict keeps to West in travel

SYDNEY, Australia -- While he didn't expect to travel much, Pope Benedict XVI is actually keeping pace with his globe-trotting predecessor John Paul II. The difference is their destinations.

John Paul, only 58 when he assumed the papacy, made extensive tours of the developing world, with stops in Catholic strongholds and some of the world's poorest countries among his first nine pilgrimages. Benedict, now 81, has stayed mainly in the affluent West.

With the exception of Brazil and a trip to Islamic Turkey, Benedict's itinerary reads much like the list released by the Vatican last week of the countries whose Catholics and dioceses contribute the most to the Holy See: the United States, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria.

Benedict is marking the Church's World Youth Day in this splendid city of First World opulence and is expected to announce that the next global youth event will be in Madrid, Spain.

The German-born pope has made no secret of his interest in Catholicism in the West, particularly Europe, where Mass attendance is very low and many churches are empty. On the plane taking him from Rome to Sydney, Benedict said the church in the West was in "crisis" because people believe they no longer need God.

He clearly has not made the developing world a travel priority -- Benedict's next scheduled trip is to France in September -- but there are those who think he should.

In an interview with the Italian Catholic newspaper Avenger before the pope left Rome, Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras stressed the importance of papal travel.

"Only the rich can afford to come to Rome," he said. "So I say, only slightly joking, that papal trips are a kind of preferential option for the poor."

Anglicans meet as schism threat looms

CANTERBURY, England -- The Lambeth Conference, a once-a-decade summit of the world's Anglican bishops starting this week, will be a tense, closely watched family reunion.

The Anglican Communion has been splintering since 2003, when the Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

The meeting is considered a measure of the health of the global fellowship, and on the basis of attendance alone, the communion looks fragile. About one-quarter of Anglican bishops -- conservatives mostly from Africa -- are boycotting the conference.

The 650 or so church leaders who are participating are a mix of traditionalists and liberals with divergent ideas on what Anglicans should believe.

Overseeing the get-together is Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader. As the "first among equals," he has no authority to force a compromise. Still, he bears the heavy burden of trying to keep the centuries-old communion together.

"In my view, the split has already taken place," said David Steinmetz, an expert in Christian history at Duke Divinity School in Charlotte, North Carolina. "The interesting question -- still unanswered -- is how wide and deep will it grow?"

The Anglican Communion is a fellowship of churches that trace their roots to the missionary work of the Church of England. The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the U.S.

Wary China tells local leaders to manage unrest

BEIJING -- Responding to a fresh wave of unrest as China gears up to host the Olympics next month, the communist leadership has told local leaders to be on alert to public grievances and find ways to resolve them.

The order is the most recent in a series of calls reflecting the government's apparent concern over rising social inequality, rampant corruption and the weak legal system.

Communist Party secretaries at the county level have been told to "keep track of key public complaint cases until they are solved," the English-language China Daily newspaper said Wednesday, citing earlier reports in Chinese state media.

"The unprecedented move ... shows the central leadership is paying more attention to public complaints," the state-run paper said under the front page headline "Officials 'must treat public woes.'"

As Beijing enters the final stretch before the Aug. 8-24 Olympics, the government is trying to limit complaints and demonstrations across the country that could tarnish the image of an orderly, modern nation it's been striving to achieve.

Mostly, Beijing has relied on heavy-handed tactics to suppress unrest: Petitioners bringing grievances to Beijing have been rounded up and officials have been told to thwart attempts by thousands of laid-off teachers to publicly demand pensions and other benefits.

A repressive crackdown also followed deadly anti-government rioting in Tibet and the traditionally Turkic Muslim Xinjiang region in the west.