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.
It is usually a serene two-and-a-half-hour ride on Japan’s famously efficient bullet train, but on Saturday, the journey quickly descended into a zombie apocalypse, with passengers screaming in terror. Organizers of the adrenaline-filled trip, less than two weeks before Halloween, touted it as the world’s first haunted house experience on a running Shinkansen. On board one chartered car of the Shinkansen, about 40 thrill-seekers were ready to brave an encounter with the living dead between Tokyo and the western metropolis of Osaka. The eerie experience was inspired by the hit 2016 South Korean action-horror movie Train to Busan, in which a father and
IRANIAN THREATS: Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami said that it would be a ‘mistake’ for Israel to attack Iran and if it did ‘we will strike you again painfully’ Israel yesterday bombed a Syrian coastal city, while the US conducted multiple strikes on targets in Yemen nearly a month into Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza all belong to the so-called “axis of resistance” led by Iran, which on Oct. 1 conducted a missile strike on Israel. Israel has vowed to retaliate for the strike. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami yesterday said in a speech that Tehran would hit Israel “painfully” if it attacks Iranian targets. “If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in
NEW RECRUITS: A video released by Ukrainian officials allegedly shows dozens of North Koreans lining up to collect military fatigues from Russian servicemen Russian aerial strikes wounded more than a dozen and knocked out electricity for tens of thousands of Ukrainians overnight in attacks on residential areas as temperatures dropped toward freezing, Kyiv said yesterday. Ukraine also said it had targeted a crucial Russian explosives factory, about 750km from the border, in an overnight drone attack, while Moscow said it had shot down 110 drones, the largest attempted aerial barrage by Kyiv in more than two weeks. At least 17 people were wounded in an attack on Kryvyi Rig, Ukraine, including a first responder, the Ukrainian State Emergency Service said. “At night, the enemy attacked Kryvyi
The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms, but that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet. One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale, but as new research shows, that disaster actually might have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as “a giant fertilizer bomb” for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the