■ Japan
Favorite loser to retire
Glorious Spring has won hearts across Japan for racing doggedly in more than 100 horse races -- and losing every one of them. She placed second just four times. Now her losing days are numbered -- not because she's expected to ever win a competition, but because her owners have announced the eight-year old horse is retiring next March. The owner made the decision to put her out to pasture after the animal lost her 113rd consecutive race on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Kochi Racecourse, her home turf, said yesterday. The horse's chestnut face adorns novelty goods and has been eulogized in a pop song while betting tickets with her name on them are considered talismans against high-speed car accidents.
■ Hong Kong
Baby chokes on breast milk
A 10-day-old baby boy has died after apparently choking to death on his mother's breast milk in his Hong Kong home, police said yesterday. The infant was found unconscious by his mother about four hours after he went to sleep after drinking her milk early on Tuesday morning. The frantic 25-year-old mother called emergency services when she was unable to wake her baby and the infant was declared dead after arriving at the hospital, a police spokesman said. An examination found milk blocking the boy's trachea. Deaths from breast-feeding or drinking from baby bottles are rare but doctors advise mothers not to feed a crying child as it may choke if it is sobbing when fed.
■ Indonesia
Suspect `jumps' to death
Police say an African man jumped to his death from the 24th floor of his apartment building to evade arrest by narcotics officers searching the building, a local television station reported yesterday. The man threw an unspecified amount of heroin from the room in the luxury complex in central Jakarta before jumping, said Jakarta's narcotic police chief, Colonel Carlo Tewu. Tewu described the man as African, but didn't reveal his nationality or name. Tewu said that the man was on a list of wanted drug dealers.
■ China
School attack kills one
A gatekeeper at a Beijing kindergarten slashed 15 students and three teachers with a kitchen knife yesterday, killing one child and leaving others terrified and "covered in blood," police and news reports said. Two other children suffered "serious injuries" at the school affiliated with Peking University in the Chinese capital, according to a statement by the Beijing police. The police and official Xinhua News Agency identified the suspected attacker as Xu Heping, a 51-year-old gatekeeper at the school, and said he used a vegetable knife. Eight officers were sent to the scene within a minute and arrested the man, police said.
■ Hong Kong
Car bomb kills man
A man was killed by a car bomb early yesterday, police said, and local television reported he had narrowly escaped death in a similar attack nearly four years ago. Authorities believe explosives were hidden in the man's car and may have been detonated by a mobile phone as the man was driving with his wife, who was seriously injured in the face and hands. Police spokeswoman Cynthia Au identified the 47-year-old man by the surname Liu, and his 42-year-old wife by the surname Wong. There was no immediate indication of the motive, Au said. TV footage showed the wreckage of Liu's car.
■ Russia
Hippos spoil a nice vodka
Two Russian anglers quietly sharing a vodka as they waited for fish to bite in a Siberian river fled for their lives when two hippos broke the surface and shattered the peace of a summer day, Itar-Tass news agency reported on Tuesday. Malvina, the female hippo, and her companion Kenigs had escaped from a zoo at Bolshaya Rechka, about 200km north of Omsk, it said. The terrified anglers sped to the village, one on foot, the other by bicycle, and alerted zookeepers, who found the animals grazing in a field.
■ Germany
Robber orders victims strip
Police arrested a man suspected of holding three teenagers at gunpoint in the street and demanding money before forcing two of them to strip naked and jump up and down on car hoods, police said Tuesday. The victims, two young men and a young woman, were confronted by the man as they walked home in a Berlin suburb in the early hours of Monday morning. He drew a gun and demanded money but they had no cash on them. "The man then told the two men to strip naked and asked the girl to remove her shoes," police said. He forced the men to set fire to the clothes and shoes on the pavement then made them climb onto parked cars and jump up and down until they shattered the windshields, she added.
■ United Kingdom
No peanuts for squirrels
One of Britain's oldest gardens has declared war on grey squirrels by banning the sale of peanuts, a spokesman for the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh said on Tuesday. "We thought: `Why feed these brutes and sow the seeds of our own self-destruction,'" said spokesman Alan Bennell. Bosses at the gardens, founded in 1670, decided to withdraw peanuts from sale at the gift shop after their 15,000 fragile plants became overrun. "Along comes the greedy American grey squirrel with its funny foreign habits, namely, it likes eating peanuts, and creates substantial damage to plants," Bennell said.
■ Poland
Thieves lift bridge
Police were looking for a 359-tonne steel bridge yesterday, reported stolen from a warehouse in the Baltic port city of Gdansk. A Gdansk construction company had stored and forgotten the disassembled bridge in a local warehouse until it turned up missing during an inventory, Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza reported yesterday. Police suspect thieves made off with a total of just more than 359 tonnes of the bridge in bits and pieces over the course of several months. The crafty crooks stole a veritable fortune in scrap metal, while the company is claiming losses of nearly 2 million zloty (US$543,000).
■ South Africa
Christmas still stands
The government denied a media report that it plans to cancel Christmas. The Sunday Times newspaper ran the headline "Christmas may be canceled" for a story that quoted a task team evaluating public holidays as saying that no holiday should be regarded as sacred in multi-racial, multi-faith South Africa. "I would like to reassure all of you that there is no such report which has been tabled before me," Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said on Monday in response to the article. Last year authorities banned a Post Office advertisement asking children to write to Santa Claus, saying it was "profiting from the natural credulity of children."
■ United States
Too much mercury in fish
Fish from lakes and reservoirs sampled by federal researchers were contaminated with mercury, and most exceeded federal exposure limits for young children and women of childbearing age, a study by an environmental advocacy coalition said Tuesday. An Environmental Protection Agency official responded that the study misconstrued EPA data and created no reason for the government to change its recommendations on eating wild freshwater fish. An official of a commercial fish trade group said the study examined data on recreational fishing, not farm-raised freshwater fish found in supermarkets. About 2,500 fish collected from 260 bodies of water from 1999 to 2001 showed the presence of mercury, the report said.
■ United States
Teens charged in stabbing
Two teenage girls face murder charges in the stabbing deaths of one of the girls' grandparents after police captured the pair at a beach house on the Georgia coast. Holly Ann Harvey, 15, and Sandra Ketchum, 16, allegedly used a kitchen knife to kill Harvey's grandparents, Carl and Sarah Collier, both 77. Their bodies were found Monday night in their home about 24km south of Atlanta, authorities said. Harvey lived with her grandparents. "Our investigation indicated they were doing this for freedom and so they could be together," said Fayette County Sheriff Randall Johnson.
■ United States
Astronauts ready cargo dock
Two spacewalking astronauts improved the parking situation at the international space station on Tuesday, putting up the latest devices for guiding in a brand new line of cargo ships. Russian Gennady Padalka and American Mike Fincke installed laser reflectors and antennas for the cargo carrier that's due to arrive in another year, and hung out fresh science experiments in place of old ones. Padalka and Fincke left the station empty during their spacewalk and flight controllers in Moscow and Houston kept watch over the vacated outpost.
■ Denmark
Officers recalled from Iraq
Denmark recalled top commanders from Iraq on Tuesday following a mounting prisoner abuse scandal involving Danish soldiers which has shocked the egalitarian Scandinavian country. Danish Defense Minister Soren Gade told national TV he was recalling the officers after a meeting with the auditors investigating allegations of prisoner abuse during interrogations at Camp Eden in southern Iraq. The Danish military said the battalion commander, the head of military police, the head of military intelligence and the chief legal officer in Iraq had been recalled.
■ United States
Statue official faces charges
Closed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Statue of Liberty was partially reopened for visitors on Tuesday but under a series of new anti-terrorism measures and a cloud of alleged corruption by the officials in charge of the monument. Visitors can go as far as the basement of the 118-year-old monument but not its crown as in the past. The foundation responsible for the site spent more than US$6 million to set up anti-terrorist and security measures, but it has been charged with corruption because its president had been accused of accepting US$360,000 for consulting work from companies that did business with the foundation.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
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