NEPAL
Tourist survives tiger attack
A Dutch tourist who survived a tiger attack over the weekend by climbing a tree in a jungle in the southwestern region of the nation on Monday said that he is lucky to be alive and would now have a story to tell when he returns home. Gerard van Laar said he was attacked by the tiger when he and his guide, Krishna, were hiking in Bardia National Park on Saturday. “I was super lucky to be alive. I would have been dead if it had not been for Krishna,” Van Laar said by telephone from Bardia, about 400km southwest of Kathmandu. “All of a sudden, I heard a roar and a growl, and the tiger was heading toward us at full speed,” said Van Laar, who has been traveling in the nation since last month. He was able to escape by climbing a tree, but Krishna was attacked and slightly injured as he ran away to draw the attention of the tiger. The tiger returned and circled the tree while Van Laar tried to stay as quiet as possible about 6m above the ground. About two hours later, Krishna returned with help, and they shouted and used sticks to drive away the tiger. Krishna was hospitalized for a day, but Van Laar was not hurt. Bardia, a protected national forest, is home to about 70 tigers. It is popular and receives thousands of visitors per year, but tiger attacks are rare.
UNITED STATES
New spiders identified
A tarantula named after singer Johnny Cash is among 14 new species identified by scientists, who spent a decade collecting the hairy spiders and studying nearly 3,000 of them. The tarantula is black and can be found near the California prison that is the setting of Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues. Chris Hamilton and colleagues from Auburn University and Millsaps College collected nearly 1,500 spiders from the 12 states where tarantulas live, and about 300 sent by the public. They analyzed DNA from more than 1,000 of those spiders and examined another 1,200 specimens lent by museums in New York and London. They have collapsed the number of US species from 55 to 29, including the 14 new ones.
VIETNAM
Death row inmate pregnant
Four prison guards in the north of the nation have been suspended for alleged negligence after a female inmate, on death row for drug trafficking, became pregnant, which means her death sentence is to be commuted to life in prison once her child is born, state media reported yesterday. The Thanh Nien newspaper said Nguyen Thi Hue, 42, was arrested in 2012 for drug trafficking and sentenced to death in 2014. A court rejected her appeal the same year. The paper reported that, while in prison, Hue paid US$2,300 to a male inmate to help her get pregnant. It said the 27-year-old male inmate twice put his sperm in a plastic bag with a syringe in a mutually agreed place and Hue inseminated herself. She became pregnant and is expected to give birth in about two months. In accordance with the law, Hue is to have her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment for having a child younger than three years of age.
AUSTRALIA
Trapped miner rescued
A miner, who was trapped for a week underground in Indonesia after a tunnel collapsed, has been rescued and is recovering in hospital, Newcrest Mining said yesterday. Pak Mursalim Sahman had been stuck 300m below the surface since a Feb. 9 incident at Gosowong Gold Mine in Halmahera, Indonesia, which is operated by a Newcrest subsidiary. All other workers were safely evacuated at the time.
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