■ 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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion