■ INDIA
Soldiers feared dead
Seven soldiers and eight army porters were feared killed after avalanches triggered by heavy snow hit army posts near the border with Pakistan in Kashmir, an army spokesman said yesterday. He said troops had launched rescue operations in Uri and Machil sectors in north Kashmir near the Line of Control, which divides the disputed Himalayan region between India and Pakistan. "Two bodies have been recovered so far, five soldiers and eight porters are still missing," Colonel Manjinder Singh said. The snow and landslides also blocked the 300km mountain highway that links the Kashmir Valley to the rest of India, officials said.
■ BANGLADESH
Zia's son claims torture
Tareque Rahman, the influential elder son of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Khaleda Zia, told a court bail hearing on Wednesday that he was tortured during questioning on corruption allegations, reports said yesterday. He said he was blindfolded and suspended from a ceiling on Dec. 31. Rahman was arrested in March as part of the military-backed emergency government's crackdown on graft. Zia, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the leader of the other main party, the Awami League, and scores of other high-profile figures are also in custody facing graft charges.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Too much Christmas fun
A groping Santa, a drunken car chase, a bloody punchout. Festivities in Antarctica got a little out of hand this Christmas. Complaints of "inappropriate touching" were made against a Santa who had posed for photographs on a decorated snowmobile at the US McMurdo station, on the edge of the continent, a New Zealand newspaper reported on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a US staff member, suspected of drunk driving, raced along an icy road in a four-wheel-drive vehicle chased by a fire engine before she was intercepted, said the Press newspaper, without citing sources. McMurdo base is home to about 1,000 US scientists and staff during the summer months and is the largest community in Antarctica.
■ CHINA
Mice on flight disease-free
The quarantine authority said yesterday it had found no diseases in eight mice discovered on a United Airlines flight from Washington. Inspectors found the mice after the airline reported the stowaways to local quarantine officials upon landing on Sunday afternoon, Xinhua news agency said. The incident prompted an emergency team to rush to the aircraft to lay poison and traps, and send captured mice for testing at a laboratory, the agency said. The mice posted negative results in several categories of testing, including "parasites" and "bubonic plague antigens," the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said on its Web site.
■ CHINA
Smugglers sentenced
Two men in Xiamen have been given suspended death sentences for smuggling pangolins and other exotic animals into China, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Pangolins are in great demand in China, where their meat is considered a delicacy and their scales are believed to hold medicinal properties. From October 2005 to April 2006, a gang smuggled 17 containers of pangolin meat and scales worth 23.4 million yuan (US$3.2 million) into China, Xinhua said. Two gang leaders were sentenced to death, suspended for two years. Three others were jailed for life.
■ RUSSIA
Rogozin appointed to NATO
Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed a leading nationalist politician and foreign policy hawk as Russia's new ambassador to NATO yesterday, the Kremlin said in a statement. Dmitry Rogozin made his name in politics by defending the rights of ethnic Russians in Europe and recently formed a nationalist political party in Russia together with an anti-immigrant group. He has also served as Russia's representative to the Strasbourg-based Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a 47-nation body that concentrates on human rights issues.
■ GERMANY
Polar bear is a girl, maybe
It's a girl. Maybe. Zoo officials in Nuremberg announced on Wednesday that Germany's new polar bear cub is probably a female. The cub's eyes are not yet open and its sexual organs not completely developed, so there's still a chance she could be a he, the Nuremberg zoo's deputy director Helmut Maegdefrau told reporters. But the yet-unnamed four-week-old cub -- taken from its mother, Vera, on Tuesday amid concerns she could harm or even kill the newborn -- is "lively, strong and well-fed," Maegdefrau said. Four keepers are caring for the baby bear, who weighed in at 1.75kg, feeding it high-fat milk every four hours.
■ SWEDEN
Commuters to heat building
A Swedish company plans to harness the body heat generated by thousands of commuters scrambling to catch trains at Stockholm's main railway station to heat a nearby office building. Real estate firm Jernhusen AB believes the system can provide about 15 percent of the heating for a 13 story building being built next to the Central Station in the Swedish capital. "It just came up at a coffee meeting last summer. Somebody suggested: why not do something with all this heat in the station?" project leader Karl Sundholm said. About 250,000 people pass through the station every day, warming the air inside with their body heat.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Actor cuts his wrists
The Bill actor Jeff Stewart was taken to hospital after trying to cut his wrists in his dressing room when producers ended his contract, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. Stewart, 52, who plays Police Constable Reg Hollis in the long-running ITV drama, called security guards and an ambulance took him to hospital from the TV studios in southwest London on Wednesday, the Sun newspaper said. The program's producers TalkbackThames confirmed that an incident had taken place, but did not give any details. "We can confirm an incident occurred yesterday following a meeting with Jeff Stewart, when the future of Jeff's contract with The Bill was discussed," it said in a statement. "Our primary concern is for Jeff Stewart's welfare."
■ POLAND
Man gets shock at brothel
A man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish newspaper Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town. "I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming," the husband told the newspaper on Wednesday. The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.
■ UNITED STATES
Bill Richardson drops out
Democratic Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson has dropped out of the race for the US presidency, CNN reported late on Wednesday, citing campaign sources. Richardson, 60, had a poor showing in the first two Democratic Party electoral contests, coming in fourth in Iowa's caucuses with two percent of the vote, and fourth in the New Hampshire primary with five percent. An official announcement was expected from Richardson late yesterday, CNN said. Richardson, energy secretary and US ambassador to the UN under former president Bill Clinton, was vying to be the first Hispanic president of the US, but failed to break into the top pack of Democrats -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.
■ UNITED STATES
Manhattan corpse caper fails
Two men wheeled the corpse of their friend around the sidewalks of midtown Manhattan in an office chair in a failed attempt to cash his US$355 Social Security check, police said. Virgilio Cintron, 66, had died of natural causes when two of his friends, both aged 65, brought him to a check-cashing store in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood on Tuesday. "They were trying to pass him off as still being alive," a police spokesman said. The suspects left the corpse on the sidewalk and attempted to cash the check, but the clerk knew Cintron and asked to see him. The two men promised to bring him right back, but when they went outside to retrieve him a crowd had gathered around the dead man. An on-duty detective who had been eating lunch nearby spotted Cintron and put an end to the caper.
■ RUSSIA
Man kills dog-eating pals
A man has confessed to killing two friends with an axe after returning home to find them cutting up and preparing to eat his favorite dog, prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday. "Flying into a rage, the dog's owner picked up an axe from the floor and cut off the heads of the uninvited guests," prosecutors in the Siberian region of Chita said in a statement. The 40-year-old man then called the police and confessed to the killing last month, prosecutors said. It was unclear why his acquaintances wanted to eat the dog.
■ UNITED STATES
Death row inmate gets life
An Ohio death row inmate who had received a state record seven reprieves and faced execution this month had his murder sentence commuted to life in prison without parole. Governor Ted Strickland based his decision on Wednesday on the lack of physical evidence linking John Spirko, 61, to the murder. Strickland is a death penalty supporter, but he has said he is conscious of the numerous examples of exoneration through DNA testing around the US. The attorney-general's office said last week it had concluded that no DNA evidence links Spirko to the 1982 killing of Betty Jane Mottinger.
■ UNITED STATES
Dog rescued from tiger pit
A stray dog was recovering on Wednesday from puncture wounds to its neck and shoulders after seeking shelter in a Tennessee zoo's tiger pit. The 23kg female retriever mix darted inside a service entrance to the Memphis Zoo on Tuesday and led workers on a brief chase before it bolted over a 1.2m-high railing and a retaining wall at the tiger exhibit. She swam across a 3.7m-wide moat to the interior of the exhibit and was attacked by a 102kg female Sumatran tiger. Zoo workers used fireworks and air horns to distract the two tigers.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump