JAPAN
White tiger kills zookeeper
A white tiger attacked and killed a zookeeper in its enclosure in southern Japan, officials said yesterday. “A zookeeper was found collapsed in a cage, bleeding,” a local police official said, adding that the man was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. The attack happened late on Monday at the Hirakawa Zoological Park in the southern city of Kagoshima. Akira Furusho, 40, was discovered bleeding from the neck and officials believe that he was mauled by one of the zoo’s four rare white tigers, media reports said. The zoo said that the tiger was sedated with a tranquilizer gun after the attack, as rescue workers and police rushed to the scene.
PHILIPPINES
No cancer found in Duterte
The condition of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s health “is not serious” and it will remain a confidential matter, his spokesman said yesterday. “The president will abide by the constitution, but because it is not serious, he will treat his medical condition as confidential,” Harry Roque told a news briefing. Philippine Acting Minister of the Interior Eduardo Ano yesterday said that Duterte had told a Cabinet meeting on Monday night that test results showed he does not have cancer.
INDIA
Prominent editor arrested
Police in southern India have arrested the chief editor of a prominent investigative magazine on charges of publishing defamatory content against a top state official. Police in Tamil Nadu yesterday arrested R.R. Gopal at the airport in the state’s capital, Chennai, as he was about to board a flight to a neighboring state. Police said that they arrested Gopal after his influential Tamil-language magazine, Nakkeeran, published reports linking the state’s governor to a university sex scandal. Dozens of journalists and politicians protested the arrest, calling it an assault on freedom of expression.
INDIA
Airport police to go grumpy
Armed police at airports have been told to cut down on smiling, with officials blaming the 2001 US terror attacks partly on an excessive focus on friendliness, local media reported yesterday. The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), in charge of aviation safety, is to move from a “broad smile system” to a “sufficient smile system,” the Indian Express reported. The English language newspaper said the move was aimed at making the CISF “more vigilant than friendly.” “We cannot be over-friendly with the passengers, because one of the reasons cited as to why 9/11 happened... was excessive reliance on passenger friendly features,” CISF director-general Rajesh Ranjan was quoted as saying.
YEMEN
Smiths turn bombs to knives
Missiles fired by Saudi-led coalition jets rain down on militia and civilians alike, killing and maiming thousands. Children, farmers and others collect shrapnel from their farmlands, from dirt alleys in impoverished neighborhoods, and offer it for sale to Ali Ghomari and other artisans. From missiles, they do not make ploughshares. They make knives — jambiyya, the ornamental daggers that Yemeni men wear for prestige and as a show of courage. The entire Ghomari family sits in huts forging glowing metal around open fires in the northern city of Abs. When he has the money, Ghomari sometimes buys the remains of trucks and cars destroyed in wrecks, bombings or airstrikes. “Trucks make the best dagger because the steel is strong and special,” he said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Decades-old bottle found
A plastic bottle that is at least 47 years old has been found washed up on a beach with its lettering and messaging still clear, prompting warnings about the enduring problem of plastic waste. The item, found by a coast guard warden at a beach in Somerset, “still looks almost new,” the Burnham Coast Guard said on Facebook. “We were staggered yesterday by how much debris has washed up on the beach,” it said. “It’s shocking how long rubbish can survive and ultimately harm nature.” The bottle advertises itself as “4d off,” meaning it dates back to before decimalization was introduced in Britain in 1971.
UNITED STATES
Hurricane gaining power
Hurricane Michael gained strength over warm tropical waters amid fears it would swiftly intensify into a major hurricane before striking Florida’s northeast Gulf Coast, where coastal dwellers are boarding up homes and seeking evacuation routes. A hurricane hunter plane that on Monday bounced into the swirling eye of Michael off Cuba found that wind speeds were rising, even as forecasters said that the storm could reach major hurricane status with winds topping 179kph by last night. Landfall is expected today on the northeast Gulf Coast, where authorities warned of a potentially devastating strike.
UNITED STATES
Impotence gene found
Researchers have identified a genetic variant that is partially responsible for erectile dysfunction, a development that could help improve treatment, a study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found. Men who have a copy of this variant have a 26 percent increased risk of facing erectile dysfunction, compared with the average population, the study said. Those with two copies of the variant face a 59 percent higher risk, lead author Eric Jorgenson said. The results were based on a database of 36,649 patients of Kaiser Permanente Northern California.
MEXICO
Couple claims 20 killings
A couple detained while transporting human body parts in a baby carriage has admitted to killing 20 people, twice the number originally suspected, the chief investigator on the case said on Monday. The man also admitted to raping some of his female victims and selling some of their body parts, Mexico State prosecutor Alejandro Gomez said. The man and woman were arrested on Thursday last week in Ecatepec on suspicion of killing 10 women. The man gave detailed accounts of the 10 murders and told investigators that he and his wife had killed 10 others as well, Gomez said. “He described it in a completely natural way... I would say he actually seemed happy to have done this,” Gomez said in a radio interview.
UNITED STATES
Swift ventures into politics
When pop megastar Taylor Swift praised two Democratic candidates in her home state of Tennessee, she broke a years-long policy of keeping her politics to herself. Her endorsements drew much praise, but also a fierce backlash. Some white supremacists who have formed an odd cult around her cried betrayal, while some mainstream fans said she should have stuck to music. On Monday, President Donald Trump joined in, saying he now likes Swift’s music “about 25 percent less.” On Instagram on Sunday, Swift threw her support behind Senate candidate Phil Bredesen and House of Representatives candidate Jim Cooper.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema