■North Pole
Man fulfills undertaking
A British explorer has become the first person to trek solo and unsupported from northern Canada to the geographic North Pole -- the northernmost point on the earth's surface -- a London newspaper reported yesterday. "Erm ... I've done it," Pen Hadow, 41, was reported as telling The Times of London. "The overwhelming immediate feeling is of utter relief. But I am exhausted. Exhausted," he said. Hadow reached the North Pole on Mondaya day ahead of his target of 65 days, according to The Times. "I gave my father an undertaking shortly after he died in 1993 to make it to the North Pole solo and with no resupply, and to have completed that -- after my third attempt -- is everything to me," the paper reported.
■ Ivory Coast
Fighting triggers exodus
Refugees, many paddling dugout canoes, were streaming from Liberia into Ivory Coast, part of a massive 10,000-person exodus in 48 hours to escape fighting in a major new rebel push there, the UN refugee agency said. The flight started when the coastal Liberian town of Harper fell to rebels over the weekend, the UN refugee agency said Monday. "We don't know if this is a few days' panic or something that will last and increase. But for now, it's sure chaos," refugee agency spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort said in Abidjan, commercial capital of neighboring Ivory Coast.
■ Ireland
PM opposes alcohol abuse
Alarmed that Ireland has become one of the hardest-drinking countries in Europe, the government announced Monday it plans to require health warnings on alcoholic drinks and limit booze advertisements that invade every corner of Irish life. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern insisted, in a speech to European brewers in Dublin, that young people shouldn't be exposed to saturation marketing of alcohol, which he said was fueling a "drink to get drunk" culture.
■ United States
Chimp hypothesis touted
Chimpanzees are more closely related to people than to gorillas or other monkeys and probably should be included in the human branch of the family tree, a research team says. The idea, sure to spark renewed debate about evolution and the relationship between humans and animals, comes from a team led by Morris Goodman at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. Currently, humans are alone in the genus Homo. But Goodman says humans and chimps share 99.4 percent of their DNA.
■ Uganda
AIDS resistance found
Scientists believe an AIDS vaccine might be a step closer after studying a response to the HIV virus in individuals in Uganda who appear immune to infection. Over two dozen people near Lake Victoria have been found to remain uninfected even though they have unprotected sex with HIV-positive partners. Some of the resistant individuals had a lower measured immune response than infected partners but their immune systems attacked the virus more effectively, keeping them HIV negative. The finding suggests that what matters is quality, not quantity, of immune response. Similarly, Lancet last Thursday released a report saying researchers found that some die from SARS because the body's defenses react overly aggressively to the SARS infection.
Agencies
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