■ Nepal
Site hampers body recovery
Rescuers struggled in rugged Himalayan terrain yesterday to recover the bodies of 24 people who were killed when a helicopter chartered by conservation group WWF crashed in bad weather in eastern Nepal. Army rescue teams found the wreckage of the Russian-built aircraft on Monday near Ghunsa, a village in Taplejung district -- about 300km east of Kathmandu -- after a two day search hampered by rain and fog. Police said the inaccessibility of the remote area, located above 3,500m, had forced two helicopters carrying rescue teams to return yesterday morning.
■ Thailand
Bird flu kills cock breeder
A 59-year-old Thai man who bred and raised fighting cocks in the northeast contracted the H5N1 bird flu virus and has died, bringing the country's human death toll from the disease to 17, health officials said yesterday. The man, from Nong Bua Lamphu Province, had been treating his sick fighting cocks with herbal medicines when he was exposed to the disease, said Thawat Suntrajarn, director-general of the Department of Communicable Disease Control. He became ill on July 14 and died on Aug. 10, the Health Ministry said.
■ East Timor
PM meets disaffected troops
East Timor's prime minister met yesterday with hundreds of soldiers whose dismissal earlier this year sparked gunbattles in the capital and -- later -- the installation of a new government. Jose Ramos-Horta told the men, who have been based in a camp on Dili's outskirts for more than six months, that he was willing to listen to their grievances and provide back pay. He said those who were not involved in May's violence could be eligible to return to their jobs.
■ Australia
Placenta going to goannas
An Australian man who says "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin shaped his love for reptiles said yesterday he plans to feed the placenta from the birth of his newborn son to his pet goannas in order to bring his family closer to the lizards. Wil Kemp, a reptile keeper at the Rockhampton Zoo in the northeastern state of Queensland, said his second son was born on Sept. 5, the day after a stingray killed Irwin as the famed TV conservationist filmed on the Great Barrier Reef. Kemp and fiance Kahila Pepper named the boy Tai Irwin; the given name after the taipan snake and the surname after the television star.
■ South Korea
Lotto `winner' turned away
Ecstasy turned into agony for a South Korean lottery winner when he presented a winning ticket only to be told he could not claim the prize of US$1 million because of a printing mistake, officials said yesterday. The Prime Minister's Commission on the Lottery has called off the sale of Speetto-2000 instant scratch-and-win tickets after printing errors resulted in the circulation of more than 10 first-prize tickets instead of the normal four, a spokesperson for the Office for Government Policy Coordination said. "We suspect that errors might have occurred when the printers were transmitting ticket-producing data to the printing system," the spokesperson said.
■ China
Blogs mushroom to 17m
The number of blog sites in China reached 34 million last month, a 30-fold increase from four years ago, state media said yesterday, despite a series of curbs on media and dissent. China has more than 17 million people writing blogs (short for Web logs) and more than 75 million people reading them, Xinhua news agency said. Authors of personal blogs choose their own subject and can instantly forward their writings to friends anywhere in China or the world. "The rapid growth of blog sites in China also brought potential business opportunities to the advertising industry," Xinhua said.
■ Japan
Pedophile killer given death
A pedophile who killed a seven-year-old girl and sent her photograph to her mother was sentenced to death yesterday in Japan, in line with his own request, a court said. Kaoru Kobayashi, 37, who admitted the crime, raised his first in the air in a sign of victory as the verdict was read out in the courtroom, news reports said. The abduction, sexual assault and murder of seven-year-old Kaede Ariyama in 2004 shocked Japan and prompted the government to set up a database to keep track of convicted pedophiles.
■ Australia
Treasurer turns `top gun'
Australia's "top gun" treasurer has taken to the skies in a fighter jet to prove to voters he is more than a man with money. With a thumbs-up sign, Peter Costello squeezed his bulky frame into the cramped cockpit of an air force FA-18 Hornet for a one-hour practice "dog fight" over the wine regions north of Sydney. "I went up with two bags and you will be pleased to know they both came back empty," he told Australian radio yesterday, promising that he had not been sick despite looking white when back on solid ground. Costello also showed no ill-effect from a bleeding ear he suffered squeezing a combat helmet onto his head. The ambitious treasurer has traveled Australia's "outback" to convince skeptical Australians he is more than a hard-nosed budget manager.
■ Cyprus
Goat out of the doghouse
A disgraced regimental goat has won back his stripe by impressing top British military brass on the same parade ground where his antics spoilt Queen Elizabeth II's birthday celebrations, army officials said yesterday. William (Billy) Windsor, was demoted to private after refusing to keep in step with a marching band marking the Queen's 80th birthday on June 16, at Episkopi garrison near Limassol. Billy -- attached to the 1st battalion Royal Welsh -- regained his rank after "turning heads" during last week's Alma Day parade to celebrate a Royal Welsh victory in the Crimea War, 1854.
■ United States
Iran deal close: report
Iran is close to a deal that would include a temporary suspension of uranium enrichment and clear the way for nuclear talks but Tehran wants to keep the agreement secret, the Washington Times reported yesterday. Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief and Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani were scheduled to meet in Europe yesterday and today, the report said, citing US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. However, in Brussels, a spokeswoman for Solana said he had no plans to meet Larijani yesterday. She declined to comment on the newspaper report.
■ United Kingdom
Cleaner denies blackmail
An illegal Brazilian immigrant caught in a love triangle involving two judges denied blackmailing them on Monday, saying she kept as "insurance" a sex video allegedly showing one of them snorting cocaine. Roselane Driza, 37, of north London, told the Old Bailey court she kept a homemade sex video of the two Asylum and Immigration Tribunal judges -- one of whom was also her lover -- in case anything happened to her. One is a man referred to as "Judge I" and the other is a woman referred to as "Judge J." Driza worked as a cleaner for both judges for several years before being fired in 2004.
■ Guatemala
Authorities retake prison
Seven inmates died on Monday when authorities stormed the country's biggest prison to retake control of the penitentiary, which had been run by prisoners for 10 years, officials said. Pavon Prison had been under control of the Order and Discipline Committee, an organization of inmates that the state put in charge of the prison in 1996, officials said. Among the dead was the inmate who headed the committee, Luis Zepeda. He was felled after allegedly shooting at officials attempting to take back the prison, authorities said.
■ Turkey
Kurdish mayors go on trial
Fifty-six Kurdish mayors went on trial yesterday to face charges of aiding and abetting a terrorist group for seeking to keep a Kurdish TV station on the air in Den-mark. The trial is seen as the latest test of freedom of speech in Turkey. The mayors were indicted after writing a letter to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen asking him to keep the Roj TV station, which is banned in Turkey, on the air despite claims. Ankara claims it is a mouthpiece for the Kurdistan Workers Party. Forty-five of the mayors attended the opening hearing of the trial in Diyarbaki.
■ United States
Fetus killer says not guilty
A woman who confessed to cutting a fetus from the womb of her childhood friend and then killing the friend's three children pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder on Monday. The woman confessed to her boyfriend last week that the stillborn baby they had buried was not theirs. It was, in fact, the child of her friend, who bled to death after the fetus was removed from her stomach with scissors. Police launched a search for the victim's three children and said that they had been drowned and stuffed into the friend's washer and dryer.
■ UNITED STATES
Attorney investigated
Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney who has represented several Guantanamo Bay detainees, said the US military is attempting to falsely link him to the suicides of three prisoners at the US base to deflect blame for its own actions. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has seized approximately 495kg of documents in its probe of the June suicides by three detainees, the first to rock the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The suicides stoked international condemnation of the detention center, where alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban members are held. Lawyers and human rights activists have called the suicides an act of desperation.
■ UNITED STATES
California fire spreads
Flames jumped over a fire line on Monday and quickly moved toward a remote community northwest of Los Angeles, prompting authorities to issue an evacuation for about 500 people threatened by one of the largest and longest-burning wildfires in California history. Firefighters dropped retardants to slow the fire's advance in the area and took advantage of calmer winds and cooler temperatures to escalate attacks on the blaze. The fire in Los Padres National Forest has burned approximately 537km2 since Labor Day. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency for Ventura County.
■ United States
No `jihad' for Mitsubishi
The owner of a car dealership that planned to air a radio advertisement calling for "a jihad on the automotive market" has issued an apology and promised not to use the commercial. Several stations had already rejected the spot from Dennis Mitsubishi, which boasted that sales representatives wearing burqa would sell vehicles that can "comfortably seat 12 jihadists in the back." The dealership received sharp criticism after news reports about the proposed ad, which never aired. The Council on American-Islamic Relations decried it as disrespectful and divisive. It "was simply an attempt at humor that fell short," dealership president Keith Dennis said on Monday in a prepared statement.
■ Argentina
Key witness missing
Police aided by dogs searched throughout Argentina for a missing 77-year-old witness whose gripping testimony of torture helped convict a former police officer in the first "Dirty War" trial since the repeal of amnesty laws last year. Jorge Julio Lopez went missing on the eve of the Sept. 19 conviction of a former police investigator in a landmark human rights case. He was reported missing after his son went to pick him up to attend the final trial statements and found that his father was not home. On Monday, black-uniformed police with trained dogs scoured parts of Buenos Aires province near Lopez's La Plata home as authorities spread "wanted" pamphlets in communities.
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
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘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