INDIA
Mother fights off tiger
A mother fought off a tiger with her bare hands to save her toddler from its jaws, an official said yesterday. Archana Choudhary stepped out of her house in Madhya Pradesh on Sunday night as the 15-month-old boy wanted to relieve himself. A tiger believed to have strayed from the nearby Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve pounced on them, local official Sanjeev Shrivastava told reporters. It attacked and tried to sink its teeth into the child’s head, but the mother leaped to the rescue, he said. The tiger kept trying to snatch the boy until villagers heard her screams and rushed to her rescue. The tiger then slunk away into the forest. “She has been admitted to the hospital. She is out of danger and recovering. The baby is also doing fine,” Shrivastava said. The mother suffered punctured lungs and wounds to her abdomen while the toddler had deep gashes on his head.
BAHAMAS
Woman killed by shark
A shark attacked and killed a US cruise ship passenger who was snorkeling in waters around the Bahamas on Tuesday, authorities said. The incident involved a 58-year-old woman from Pennsylvania and occurred at a popular snorkeling spot near Green Cay in the northern Bahamas, police spokeswoman Chief Superintendent Chrislyn Skippings told reporters. “It’s unfortunate,” she said. Skippings said the woman’s family identified the animal as a bull shark. Royal Caribbean International said in a statement to that the person died after arriving at a local hospital for treatment and that the company is helping their loved ones.
HONG KONG
Two killed in crane collapse
Two men were killed and at least six injured after a tower crane collapsed at a construction site, authorities said yesterday. One man was pronounced dead at the site in eastern Kowloon and the other man died on the way to hospital, police told reporters. Six injured construction workers were taken to hospital, while another man was still trapped under the debris and awaiting rescue, police said.
SOUTH KOREA
Typhoon toll rises to 10
The death toll from Super Typhoon Hinnamnor rose to 10, authorities said yesterday, after the storm battered the southern coast with huge waves and heavy rain this week. The typhoon, one of the most powerful to hit the country in decades, flooded streets and buildings as it passed through on Monday and Tuesday. In the southeastern port city of Pohang — one of the hardest-hit areas — seven bodies and two survivors were pulled out of the submerged underground parking lot of an apartment complex, the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters said.
UNITED STATES
Antiquities returned to Italy
Prosecutors in New York on Tuesday returned dozens of antiquities stolen from Italy and valued at about US$19 million, some of which were found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “These 58 pieces represent thousands of years of rich history, yet traffickers throughout Italy utilized looters to steal these items and to line their own pockets,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said, adding that it was the third such repatriation in nine months. “For far too long, they have sat in museums, homes and galleries that had no rightful claim to their ownership,” he said at a ceremony attended by Italian diplomats and law enforcement officials.
Apps and Web sites that use artificial intelligence (AI) to undress women in photos are soaring in popularity, researchers said. In September alone, 24 million people visited undressing Web sites, the social network analysis company Graphika said. Many of these undressing, or “nudify,” services use popular social networks for marketing, Graphika said. For instance, since the beginning of this year, the number of links advertising undressing apps increased more than 2,400 percent on social media, including on X and Reddit, the researchers said. The services use AI to recreate an image so that the person is nude. Many of the services only
IN ABSOLUTE CONTROL: About 80 percent of Russians approve of Putin, a survey shows, but that might be misleading due to his intolerance to criticism Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday moved to prolong his repressive and unyielding grip on Russia for at least another six years, announcing his candidacy in the presidential election in March that he is all but certain to win. Putin still commands wide support after nearly a quarter-century in power, despite starting an immensely costly war in Ukraine that has taken thousands of his people’s lives, provoked repeated attacks inside Russia — including one on the Kremlin itself — and corroded its aura of invincibility. A short-lived rebellion in June by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin raised widespread speculation that Putin could be
JUMPING BAIL: The democracy advocate said made the decision after ‘considering the situation in Hong Kong, my personal safety, my physical and mental health’ Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow (周庭), who was jailed over her role in massive 2019 protests, on Sunday said she had moved to Canada and would not return to meet her bail conditions. Chow was one of the best-known young faces of the 2012, 2014 and 2019 protest movements against Beijing’s increasingly authoritarian rule in Hong Kong. She spent about seven months behind bars for her role in a protest outside Hong Kong police headquarters in 2019, when huge crowds rallied week after week in the most serious challenge to China’s rule since Hong Kong’s 1997 handover. On Sunday
TAKING STOCK: It was not yet clear how damaging the espionage, dating to 1981, has been, as authorities are still assessing the situation, the State Department said A former US ambassador to Bolivia has been arrested and charged with spying for Cuba over a 40-year span, the US Department of Justice announced on Monday, detailing a shock betrayal by a suspect who called the US “the enemy.” US Attorney General Merrick Garland laid out the allegations against Victor Manuel Rocha, a onetime member of the White House’s National Security Council now accused of using his positions within the government to support Cuba’s “clandestine intelligence-gathering mission” against the US. The charges against Rocha, 73, expose “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign
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