■ Australia
Tiny tot new hit at zoo
A tiny koala that could fit into the palm of an adult's hand has become the star attraction at Sydney's Taronga Zoo after staff nursed him back from the brink of death. Zookeeper Darrelyn Rainey kept the prematurely born marsupial named "Koori" beside her bed, feeding him every two hours for two weeks after he was rescued from his mother's pouch last month. Seven-month-old Koori weighed just 330g and was in danger of being rejected by his mother when he was given to Rainey. Koori will soon be weaned from his diet of specially formulated koala milk so he can rejoin his mother.
■ China
Obesity a growing problem
The Health Ministry says in a report that 200 million Chinese are overweight, a sign that rising incomes are helping to expand waistlines. More than 160 million people have high blood pressure and 20 million suffer from diabetes, the ministry said. Those rates and other obesity-related ills are rising. The new study released this week found the proportion of overweight adults has jumped by one-third, to 23 percent, since 1992, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. The number of people con-sidered clinically obese had nearly doubled to 60 million, or 7.1 percent of adults.
■ Macau
Losing gambler goes beserk
A mainland Chinese man who lost big money while gambling went berserk, stabbing his wife repeatedly and setting a fire that trapped several people inside their apartment, officials and newspapers said yesterday. The woman died after the attack on Tuesday, but firefighters saved three people while two others escaped, fire depart-ment spokesman Iu Chong Hin said. Firefighters caught the 48-year-old man in the apartment and handed him over to police, who charged him with murder and arson. News reports said the man lost about $6 million at casino tables. They did not specify whether the currency was Hong Kong dollars or US dollars.
■ Japan
Group suicide discovered
Nine young men and women were found dead in two parked cars on Tuesday, in what police believe may be the nation's largest-ever group suicide. They may be the latest in a rash of suicide pacts that have left dozens of people dead in recent years. Police said seven of the dead -- four men and three women, including several teenagers and a 33-year-old mother -- were slumped in the seats of a rented van in Saitama prefecture. The van windows were sealed with vinyl tape from the inside, and four charcoal stoves were on the floor. Two women were found in a rented car at an isolated temple in Yokosuka, with charcoal stoves at their feet
■ Singapore
Indonesia holds divers
Thirty-two divers who went missing on an expedition near Malaysia have been held by Indonesian author-ities for the past five days for straying into Indonesian waters, officials and dive operators said yesterday. The 32 divers will be allowed to return to Singapore once authorities complete immi-gration paperwork, the boat's owner-operator said.
■ Israel
Probe set on girl's slaying
The army has suspended a platoon commander suspected of emptying an ammunition clip into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl who had already been shot several times by soldiers. The army has launched an investigation into the shooting of Iyman Hams on Oct. 5. Soldiers told Israeli media that the girl had already been shot and possibly killed but that the commander approached her and shot her with automatic fire as they pleaded with him to stop. "I found it necessary to suspend the platoon commander for now," Colonel Eyal Eisenberg told Army Radio. "The accusations are grave."
■ France
Chechen trial to start
The European Court of Human Rights is to begin hearings this week into charges by Chechen citizens against Russia, court sources said on Tuesday. It will be the first time the Strasbourg-based court has agreed to hear cases brought by Chechens against Russia. It ruled in January last year it could accept the complaints, lodged by six Chechens. Hearings are to start today. Two of the plaintiffs allege torture and extrajudicial killings by Russian army soldiers in the Chechen capital Grozny in 2000.
■ Albania
The poorest Europeans
More than half of the Albanian population survives on less than the equivalent of US$2 a day, making them the poorest people in Europe, according to a UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report. The report highlighting Albania said one in four persons lives in absolute poverty on less than US$1 a day, according to Tirana media accounts of the report. FAO estimated the country needs up to US$21 billion in foreign investments by 2015, and an annual GDP growth rate of 6.5 percent to be able to tackle its growing poverty. Albanian authorities have disputed the report's figures, saying only about 30 percent lived on less than US$2 a day.
■ United Kingdom
Five held in girl's murder
Five men have been arrested over the murder of a 14-year-old schoolgirl who was shot dead on her way home from a fairground, in a crime that has stirred a public outcry in the UK, police said on Tuesday. Danielle Beccan was shot as many as six times from a passing car while walking home with friends from the annual Goose Fair in Nottingham, central England, on Friday night. Police confirmed that the suspects had been taken to Nottingham for questioning.
■ Australia
Bridge slay defense opens
Launching his defense of the man accused of murdering a British backpacker by throwing her off a bridge, a lawyer said yesterday that two other men and a group of Aborigines claimed to have carried out the slaying. Ian Douglas Previte, 32, has pleaded innocent to murdering 19-year-old traveler Caroline Stuttle in the Queensland state farming town of Bundaberg on April 10, 2002. Prosecutors say Stuttle was thrown, screaming, over the 9m bridge's railing after Previte had robbed her to support his drug habit. She died of a fractured skull and broken spine sustained when she hit the ground. But Previte's attorney, Denis Lynch, said two other men had confessed to the killing and that another man had told police he had overheard a group of Aboriginal youths saying they had thrown a backpacker off the bridge.
■ Canada
Workers launch strike
Some 125,000 Canadian federal employees launched a nationwide strike Tuesday after wage talks with the government broke down, a union said. The strike affects a wide swathe of critical services including fire and emergency responders, the coast guard, revenue employees, customs, immigration services, weather forecasters and even the payment of state pensions. "The union had set a deadline of midnight, Oct. 11, either to reach settlements or to strike," Public Service Alliance of Canada president Nycole Turmel said in a statement.
■ Mexico
Robbers get away with cash
Bandits broke into the vault of an armored car company in northwestern Mexico and stole at least 120 million pesos (US$10.5 million), and officials said Tuesday they had no made no arrests in the case. The robbers intercepted two security guards on their way to work late Saturday in Ciudad Obregon, then threatened to hurt the guards' family members unless they helped with the robbery, Sonora state police said in a statement Sunday. The attackers then entered the building of Seguridad Especial de Proteccion, which distributes money by armored vehicles, and waited all night with the guards, fleeing with the money early Sunday, when the doors opened automatically, police said.
■ United States
Police chase `Blues Brother'
Minnesota olice responding to a call of a convulsing Elvis Presley impersonator soon found themselves in a high-speed chase of another faux celebrity -- a man dressed as one of the Blues Brothers. Crystal Police Captain Dave Oyaas said the bizarre string of events began when officers were called to a veterans hall Monday morning to find a man dressed as Elvis Presley apparently in convulsions. When the officers approached, Oyaas said the man suddenly jumped up and yelled, "Viva Las Vegas!" before singing show tunes. At about the same time, two women said another man at the veterans hall dressed as John Belushi's character in The Blues Brothers had stolen their car and driven to a nearby airport. The man led police on a high-speed chase around the airport before officers forced him to stop and arrested him.
■ United States
Chemicals found in ditch
A drum of sodium cyanide missing since it fell off a truck was found by searchers in a ditch along a highway in northeastern North Dakota, authorities said. "We're very relieved," Ramsey County Sheriff Steve Nelson said Tuesday. "We're especially relieved that we found it sealed and intact." Sodium cyanide can turn into a lethal gas if it comes in contact with water. Authorities believe the drum holds about 57 liters of the chemical.
■ United States
Police search for killer
Los Angeles authorities on Tuesday appealed for help in catching a killer who gunned down a 14-year-old boy 19 times as he begged for his life in an alley. Teenager Byron Lee was executed as he rode his bicycle through an alley near his family's home on Saturday in the gang-plagued South Central district of the city. Witnesses told police that the boy fell from his bike after he was first shot. But two suspected gang members in their late teens or early 20s then got out of a car and fired more shots as the boy knelt and clasped his hands and begged for mercy.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of