■ 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.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese