NEPAL
Police break up protest
Police yesterday broke up demonstrations and arrested protesters who were demanding the release of the former crown prince Paras Shah, who was detained for questioning after he fired a gun into the air following an argument. Police official Babukaji Giri said about 150 protesters gathered in Kathmandu and 17 were detained for attempting to attack police officers and vehicles and for blocking traffic. Meanwhile, 500 protesters also imposed a general strike in two districts in the south, blocking highways and forcing markets and schools to shut down, Giri said. Shah was taken in for questioning on Tuesday about the firing incident that followed an argument on Saturday night with two guests at a restaurant in Chitwan. Shah has admitted firing his gun, but defended his action, saying he could not bear to hear insults against his family and country.
SOUTH KOREA
Runaway bear captured
A young bear that bolted from a zoo on the outskirts of Seoul has been captured on a nearby mountain after nine days on the run, zoo officials said yesterday. The six-year-old Malaysian black bear nicknamed “KKoma” (Kid) escaped from Seoul Zoo at Gwacheon on Dec. 6 and was sighted on a mountain about 6km away. Kkoma was found yesterday in a trap placed at the mountain summit and appeared to be in good shape, a zoo spokesman told Yonhap news agency. Zoo officials said they plan to move KKoma back to its cage after giving it a medical check-up. Plans to anesthetize the 30kg male bear so he can be moved more easily have, however, hit a snag: The weather on the mountain is cold enough to freeze the liquid.
JAPAN
‘Extinct’ salmon found
A salmon species thought to be extinct for 70 years is alive and well in a lake near Mount Fuji, Kyoto University science professor Tetsuji Nakabo said yesterday. The black kokanee, or kunimasu in Japanese, was thought to have died out in 1940, when a hydroelectric project made its native lake in Akita Prefecture more acidic. Before then, 100,000 eggs were reportedly transported to Lake Saiko, but the species was still thought to have died off. Nakabo said his team of researchers found the species in Lake Saiko, about 500km south of the native lake. He posed for pictures and video with a specimen that was dark olive with black spots on its back. The kunimasu grow to about 30cm in length. Nakabo said the lake had enough kunimasu for the species to survive if the current environment is maintained, though he said in interviews he hoped fishermen would not catch it.
UNITED STATES
Naked postman nabbed
A postal carrier says he simply wanted to cheer up a woman on his rounds who seemed “stressed out” when he decided to deliver mail in the buff. A police report says the 52-year-old man told the woman he would deliver the mail in the nude to her office in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, to make her laugh. The report says that on Dec. 4 he brought the mail wearing only a smile. The mail carrier was arrested for lewd and lascivious behavior several days later. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says the man admitted delivering the mail naked was a stupid thing to do.
UNITED KINGDOM
Fireman admits siren death
A fireman has admitted causing the death of a farmer who was crushed to death by his herd of cows after they were startled by fire engine sirens. Julian Lawford pleaded guilty at Exeter Crown Court to a charge of causing the death of Harold Lee by careless driving, the Press Association reported on Tuesday. Lee, 75, was trampled to death by his cows as he walked them along a country road near his home in Burtle, Somerset. Lawford, 49, was due to stand trial accused of manslaughter by gross negligence but admitted the lesser charge, which was accepted by the prosecution.
ARGENTINA
Archbishop slams Santa
A Roman Catholic archbishop surprised his parishioners by telling the children that Santa Claus was not real, but instead a commercialized symbol of Christmas. “That’s not Christmas,” Archbishop Fabriciano Sigampa of the city of Resistencia said in mass, insisting that children should not confuse celebrating the birth of Christ “with a fat man dressed in red.” Sigampa’s ire was aroused by plans for a snow covered cabin in the city’s main square where a Father Christmas figure would hear children’s wishes and receive donated toys to be given out to poor children. “Surely, in the coming days there will be a deluge of advertisements after they inaugurate the house where a fat man dressed in red lives. And we should not confuse ... Christmas with that.” Sigampa has attracted controversy before. In the 1990s, he caused a stir by ordering a mural for a cathedral that showed the Virgin Mary with then president Carlos Menem and members of the Catholic hierarchy.
RUSSIA
Uniform hospitalizes troops
Sharp new military uniforms, created by a top fashion designer, have landed hundreds in hospital after proving too thin to withstand ferocious winter cold, a state daily said yesterday. Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported that between 60 and 250 servicemen have been laid up with everything from flu to pneumonia as Arctic chills sweep through the country’s northern reaches. “They literally felt naked outside,” the paper quoted the mother of one solider as saying. “Many of them ended up in hospital. Ours developed pneumonia,” she said of her son. The government daily said defense officials have admitted not receiving complaints about the uniforms in time to do anything ahead of the winter season. Introduced in 2008, the parade uniforms designed by fashion celebrity Valentin Yudashkin are threaded with gold and more shapely and chic, in a throwback to the uniforms of the imperial Tsarist army. The field versions, meanwhile, are lighter and come with thinner but more mobile boots.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the