ECUADOR
Fireworks banned in islands
The government on Friday banned most fireworks in the Galapagos Archipelago due to damage caused to the islands’ wildlife from the sounds of explosions, including heart problems and nervous stress. Officials announced the ban just days before New Year celebrations that traditionally see fireworks exploding across Latin America. The new rule bars the entry, sale and distribution of any fireworks that cause noise on the archipelago’s 13 main islands at at least 17 islets about 1,000km out in the Pacific, Governing Council of Galapagos president Lorena Tapia said on Twitter. “This is a gift for Ecuador and the world,” she said. Luminous pyrotechnics that do not produce any sound would still be allowed, officials said.
MEXICO
Blaze kills seven children
Seven children on Friday died in a house fire in a poor Mexico City neighborhood. The fire erupted before dawn in a wooden dwelling in the Iztapalapa neighborhood, the city prosecutors’ office said. Five of the children were younger than 10, including two two-year-olds, the office said, adding that the other two were 13 and 14. The children were apparently left alone while their parents worked, officials said. Local media said that the parents earn money collecting plastic bottles. Someone apparently lighted a fire somewhere on the lot to keep warm, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said. While the cause of the blaze remained under investigation, house fires in the city are often caused by attempts to heat dwellings using wood or charcoal fires or by faulty gas connections.
UNITED STATES
Bear attack victim improves
A Pennsylvania woman who survived a bear mauling by punching the animal as it dragged her has been upgraded to a fair condition after several surgeries. Danville, Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Medical Center on Friday said that Melinda LeBarron has been moved from intensive care to a medical-surgical unit. Her son has said that the attack on Dec. 12 resulted in broken bones, cuts and bruises, and that she suffered multiple bites. LeBarron told relatives that her Chihuahua-mix named Bear distracted the bear. The dog was also bitten during the attack. State wildlife officials have said that they believed the bear was a sow with cubs and the incident occurred after the dog ran toward the bears. The attack took place in a rural area outside Muncy, Pennsylvania, about 265km northwest of Philadelphia.
UNITED STATES
Doctor used own sperm: suit
A Florida couple has accused a retired Vermont doctor of artificially inseminating the woman with his own sperm rather than that of a donor in the 1970s. They filed a lawsuit in US District Court on Dec. 4 against John Coates and then-named Central Vermont Medical Center seeking at least US$75,000 in damages. The complaint says that Coates agreed to inseminate Cheryl Rousseau with donor material from an unnamed medical student, who resembled Rousseau’s husband and had characteristics that she required. Rousseau had wanted a child with her husband, but he had a vasectomy that could not be reversed, the complaint says. Coates performed the artificial insemination, but inserted his own genetic material, the lawsuit says. The couple recently discovered what had happened when their now-grown daughter sought information about her biological father through DNA testing, which in October determined that Coates was her father, the complaint says.
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
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
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of