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.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
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