YEMEN
British hostage freed
United Arab Emirates (UAE) forces based in Aden have freed a British hostage who had been held by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula militants, the Emirates News Agency (WAM) said yesterday. The hostage, 64-year-old Douglas Robert Semple, a petroleum engineer abducted in February last year, was rescued on Saturday and taken Aden, where he was put on a military plane and flown to Abu Dhabi, WAM said. It said he was taken to a hospital for health checks and spoke to his wife by telephone, adding that he would leave for Britain following the medical check-up. Britain’s Foreign Office confirmed in a statement that the hostage was “extracted by UAE forces in a military intelligence operation” and was “safe and well.”
GERMANY
Dinosaur footprints found
Scientists have found an unusually long trail of footprints from a 30-tonne dinosaur in an abandoned quarry in Lower Saxony, a discovery they think could be about 145 million years old. “It’s very unusual how long the trail is and what great condition it’s in,” excavation leader Benjamin Englich said at the site, referring to 90 uninterrupted footprints stretching more than 50m. Their diameter measured 1.2m. Englich and his team found the impressions while excavating at the quarry in the town of Rehburg-Loccum near Hanover on Wednesday. Englich said the elephant-like tracks were stomped into the ground sometime between 135 and 145 million years ago by a sauropod — a class of heavy dinosaurs with long necks and tails.
ARGENTINA
Treasures to head home
The government will return thousands of stolen archeological pieces to South American neighbors, President Cristina Fernandez said on Saturday. “We are doing something unusual, really special: restoring cultural wealth to other countries, in this case Ecuador and Peru. We are returning to them more than 4,000 pieces that had been stolen and have been recovered,” she said at the National Museum of Fine Art in Buenos Aires. “The world we live in is one in which great powers fight to control the cultural riches of other people. One can see in the great museums of the world pieces from Greece, Syria, Egypt, Asia and even Latin America, and which have not been returned.” Fernandez’s office did not describe the pieces in question or from whom and when they were seized.
COLOMBIA
Cuban doctors protest
About 100 Cuban doctors who deserted a humanitarian mission in Venezuela and have been stranded for months in Colombia seeking entry into the US are staging a protest in Bogota to draw attention to their plight. They say they fear the delays in processing their visa requests under a 2006 program aimed at luring Cuba’s medical talent could be a sign that US President Barack Obama is seeking to end the incentive as part of his campaign to normalize relations with Havana.
CHINA
Massive manhunt launched
Police in Hunan Province have launched a manhunt for a man accused of fatally stabbing his estranged wife and eight others. Xinhua news agency said the attacks occurred on Saturday in Longshan County. It said four people were injured. A news Web site in Hunan, rednet.cn, yesterday said that about 400 police officers were mobilized to find the suspect, identified as Wang Wensheng.
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
At first, Francis Ari Sture thought a human was trying to shove him down the steep Norwegian mountainside. Then he saw the golden eagle land. “We are staring at each other for, maybe, a whole minute,” Sture said on Monday. “I’m trying to think what’s in its mind.” The bird then attacked Sture five more times on Thursday last week, scratching and clawing the 31-year-old bicycle courier’s face and arms over 10 to 15 minutes as he sprinted down the mountain. The same eagle is believed to be responsible for attacks on three other people across a vast mountainous area of southern Norway
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
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