■ China
Bears feast on keeper
An animal keeper in China who made his living extracting bile from the gallbladders of live bears was attacked and eaten by six of them, state media said Tuesday. Han Shigen was assaulted by the bears on Monday morning while cleaning their cage, Xinhua news agency said. He died on the spot and was eaten by the animals. In traditional Chinese medicine, the bile salts of bear gallbladders are considered powerful medicine for the treatment of various intestinal and cardiac-related illnesses. Bear gallbladders can fetch as much as US$4,000 or more in Asian markets, according to a report on the Web site of the World Wildlife Fund.
■ Hong Kong
Ex-Disney worker in protest
A former employee of Hong Kong Disneyland scaled the resort's famous Magic Mountain rollercoaster ride on Tuesday in a dispute with management, police said. The 48-year-old man climbed to the top of the attraction's 30m-high domed roof armed with a small knife and demanded to speak to park managers, a police spokeswoman said. Police negotiated with him for more than two hours before convincing him to give up his protest. He was not arrested. The Disney company confirmed the man was a former employee, but could not say what his dispute was about. Staff at the US$3 billion theme park, which opened early last month, have complained that they are overworked and poorly treated.
■ South Korea
Visitor gives birth in North
A South Korean visiting North Korea to see a festival has become the first woman from her country to give birth in the communist state, raising questions about the baby's citizenship, officials said yesterday. Hwang Seon went to a hospital in Pyongyang on Monday night and gave birth to a baby girl, a South Korean Unification Ministry official said. The mother had been expecting to give birth next week, but wanted to take advantage of a rare opportunity to visit North Korea to see a mass games festival.
■ Indonesia
Corby sentence reduced
A high court in Bali has reduced by five years a 20-year drug smuggling jail term imposed on Australian former beauty student Schapelle Corby, her lawyer said yesterday. "That is correct. The verdict has been issued. I received the news from the high court just today. A copy of the ruling will be delivered to the Denpasar district court this Friday," lawyer Erwin Siregar said. Corby, 28, was in May found guilty of smuggling after 4.1kg of marijuana was found stashed inside her unlocked surfboard bag when she arrived in Bali.
■ Nepal
Elections set for 2007
King Gyanendra, who was condemned at home and abroad for seizing power eight months ago, said yesterday that he would hold parliamentary elections by April, 2007 -- five years later than planned. In a message to the nation on the Hindu festival of Dasain, Gyanendra urged the world community to help conduct dignified, free and fair polls. He also urged Maoist rebels to end their revolt to topple the monarchy and to join the political mainstream. Polls have been delayed since 2002, when Gyanendra sacked the prime minister and postponed elections set for November that year.
■ The Netherlands
War crimes trial begins
The war crimes tribunal in The Hague began the trial of the three Serbian Army officers accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes for a notorious massacre during the Balkan wars. Serbian forces overran a Croatian town, Vukovar, in November 1991, emptied the hospital and killed almost 300 people. Among the dead were patients, members of the hospital staff, journalists and Croatian fighters who had taken refuge. Two officers, Veselin Sljivancanin, 52, and Miroslav Radic, 43, pleaded not guilty to the charges. The third, Mile Mrksic, 58, did not speak. Prosecutors said the three were being held accountable because as commanders they had control over both the Serbian troops and the Serbian paramilitary groups that organized and carried out the killings.
■ United Kingdom
Burberry not for ferrets
Luxury goods firm Burberry has threatened legal action against a company making garments in its trademark check pattern -- for pet ferrets. According to yesterday's edition of the Daily Telegraph, the trouble began when Ferret World, a shop in Dudley, England, advertised a check-patterned fur-lined ferret cap and cape ensemble "in the famous Burberry design." Owner Simon Bishop said he was shocked to get a letter from Burberry saying he had violated its intellectual property rights, and agreed to remove the mention of Burberry's name from his shop's Web site. But Burberry also demanded he send them a sample of the material used to make the outfits, hand over the names of all purchasers and vow never to sell anything similar again. "Burberry should get a life," Bishop said.
■ The Netherlands
Deportation plan backed
The lower house of the parliament has backed plans to increase the powers of Integration and Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk to deport foreign residents who commit crimes. In a snap debate late on Tuesday, the center-right parties endorsed a proposal to deport foreign first-time offenders if their crime was serious enough to warrant a prison sentence. The opposition opposed the proposal. Verdonk's aim is to be able to deport foreign offenders who commit crimes within their first three years in the country. The new measure, if it becomes law, would avoid bureaucracy, she said.
■ Canada
Teachers' strike continues
British Columbia teachers stayed off the job for a second day on Tuesday in defiance of a court order, forcing some 600,000 public school students to remain at home. The teachers say they won't return to the classroom until they have a negotiated settlement. They want a wage increase of 15 percent, a cap on class sizes and improved working conditions. A British Columbia Supreme Court judge will decide today how the union should be punished for defying the court order.
■ United States
Prosecutor subpoenaed
Indicted Representative Tom DeLay's attorneys turned the tables on a Texas prosecutor, delivering a subpoena to compel his testimony about his conduct with grand jurors. Attorney Dick DeGuerin said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle refused the subpoena on Tuesday at his Austin office when he declined to sign a paper acknowledging its delivery. Earle said he had voluntarily accepted the subpoena.
■ Turkey
Farmers told to turn in birds
Turkish authorities have ordered poultry farmers in a quarantined area in western Turkey to hand over birds for culling or face fines and possible jail sentences as Turkey tried to contain an outbreak of suspected bird flu. The local governor's office said on Tuesday nearly 5,700 domestic birds had already been killed. In Romania, where the country's first suspected bird flu cases were reported on Friday, some 40,000 birds were to be slaughtered in coming days and authorities were giving thousands of people a standard flu vaccine to prevent them from getting human flu.
■ United Kingdom
Iran under more pressure
Britain and France put new pressure on Iran on Tuesday to obey international rules over its nuclear program and underlined the intention of the US and European powers to ensure it does so. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow also shared the goal of preventing nuclear proliferation, but he cautioned against doing anything that might threaten the work of the UN nuclear agency in Iran. Lavrov gave no hint after talks in Paris that Russia was about to abandon cooperation with Tehran on a nuclear plant it is building in Iran, despite calls to do so by Washington.
■ United States
IRA leader indicted
The US Justice Department has indicted the leader of an Irish Republican Army splinter group for conspiring with North Korea to distribute counterfeit US currency in Europe and Britain, the Wall Street Journal said yesterday. The department is seeking the extradition of Sean Garland, 71, who was arrested on Friday in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and six other alleged accomplices for trial in the US within the next 65 days, the daily said. The indictment marks the first time Washington has formally cited Pyongyang in a US court for allegedly mass-producing counterfeit US$100 bills, known as Supernotes.
■ United Kingdom
Damages offered for raid
Britain offered on Tuesday to pay compensation for personal injuries and damage to buildings caused when its troops raided a prison in southern Iraq last month to free two British special forces soldiers. "We regret the incidents that took place in Basra on 19 September 2005. We also regret the casualties on both sides and the material damage to public facilities," local British and Iraqi authorities said in a joint statement. The incident, in which the two soldiers who had been operating undercover in Basra were captured by Iraqi police after a firefight and then taken by militant militias, badly soured diplomatic relations between Britain and Iraq.
■ United States
Reporter hands in notes
New York Times reporter Judith Miller turned over notes of a previously undisclosed conversation with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and underwent questioning by prosecutors in the criminal probe of the Bush administration's leak of a covert CIA officer's identity. In a memo to its staff, the newspaper said Miller was to appear yesterday before a federal grand jury in the investigation, her second grand jury appearance in recent days. The Times said that it is preparing a story about Miller's "entanglement with the White House leak investigation" and that the story will be completed when the reporter finishes her cooperation with prosecutors.
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
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‘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