■ RUSSIA
Oil spill kills 15,000 birds
Nearly 15,000 birds have died from the fuel oil that spilled from a Russian oil tanker wrecked in a fierce Black Sea storm, and Russian Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev estimated on Wednesday that damage from the spill could reach up to US$251 million. Trutnev also said the amount of fuel that spilled from the tanker Volgoneft-139 since Nov. 11 had risen to more than 3,000 tonnes. Workers continued trying to mop up some of the fuel that soiled kilometers of coastline in the Kerch Strait, the waterway that connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov . Russia and Ukraine share the strait. The storm battered almost a dozen vessels in the strait and killed six sailors.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Barking mad for fancy dress
Darth Labrador. Dogzilla. Elvis the hound dog. No outfit is too outrageous for man's best friend. The British do love a party animal -- they have gone crazy dressing up their dogs for costume parties. Sales soared by 300 percent over Halloween. Now costumiers have lined up a festive big seller -- the one-size-fits-all Santa pet hat for the dog determined to have a great Christmas. "Some cynics would say the British love their dogs more than they do other people," said Benjamin Webb, spokesman for Angels Fancy Dress which has been supplying costumes for humans since 1840 and is now on a canine winning streak.
■ SWEDEN
Women protest topless ban
A group of Swedish women is making waves by taking their tops off at public swimming pools in a protest against what they call gender-biased rules on swim wear. About 40 women have joined the network and staged topless protests in at least three cities, said Sanna Ferm, 22, one of the founders of the group called Bara Broest, which means "bare breasts" or "just breasts." "The purpose of the campaign is to start a debate about why women's bodies are sexualized," Ferm said on Wednesday. She said the fact that men can be bare-chested in public swimming pools but not women is "a concrete example of how women have fewer rights than men."
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Cookies sell for US$32,000
A rare 1920s cookie tin and its original contents were auctioned for ?15,600 (US$32,000) in London on Wednesday. The Sports Coupe car-shaped tin went for more than five times the pre-sale estimate, Bonhams auction house said. Experts believe the William Crawford and Sons biscuit tin, sold to an anonymous private British collector, has now become the most expensive in the world. Its unusual shape always made the car an attractive item. Its original cost is estimated to have been about ?100 in today's prices. The tin, designed as a children's toy car, was fitted with electric headlights and featured a male driver and female passenger.
■ RUSSIA
Corruption proliferating
More than 8,500 people were charged with corruption this year, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko said on Wednesday. "In the first 10 months of 2007, Russia's interior ministry uncovered over 37,000 cases of corruption, including over 10,000 cases of bribery and 1,700 of commercial graft. Over 8,500 people were charged with these crimes," a ministry statement said. He called on both Russians and the nation's foreign partners to help combat the crime.
■ UNITED STATES
Lion chases cars
Sheriff's deputies in Pike County, Ohio, responded to an emergency call that a lion was "attacking" vehicles on a highway on Monday and found a man trying to nab a 250kg feline. Terry Brumfield told officers that his lion -- named Lambert -- had broken out of its pen in nearby Piketon, about 145kg east of Cincinnati. Brumfield was able to get Lambert back into the cage without anyone getting hurt. Brumfield and his wife have two lions. Vicki Brumfield said raising them has helped her husband through a bout of depression. She said they are tame, like great big house cats. Ohio does not require permits for exotic animals, but that would change under an Ohio House of Representatives bill now in committee.
■ ARUBA
Suspects back in detention
Three young men once detained as suspects in the 2005 disappearance of US teenager Natalee Holloway have been arrested again, the public prosecutor's office said, citing new evidence in the case. Dutch student Joran van der Sloot and two Surinamese brothers, Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of involvement in voluntary manslaughter and causing serious bodily harm that resulted in the death of Holloway, the prosecutor's office said in a statement. Chief Prosecutor Hans Mos declined to discuss the new evidence or any other details about the case. "Our intention is to keep them in detention for a longer period," he said.
■ BRAZIL
Wayward whale dies
A whale that got lost and swam some 1,300km up the Amazon River died after efforts to capture it and transport it back to the ocean failed, an environmental official said on Wednesday. The 5.5m minke whale had become stranded on sandbars at least twice since it was first spotted last week in the Tapajos River, a tributary of the Amazon near the jungle city of Santarem. A group of biologists and veterinarians managed to examine the animal on Sunday, but the whale got away and was found dead on Tuesday on a Tabajos River beach, said Nazarena Silva, an official with the Ibama environmental protection agency.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not