UNITED STATES
Concrete owl recovering
An owl found partially encased in concrete after it got inside a cement mixer in southwestern Utah is expected to fly free again after it was painstakingly cleaned by animal sanctuary workers who described the bird as a “fighter.” The great horned owl was found at the Black Desert Resort and arrived at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab earlier this month with its face, chest and right wing covered in dried concrete. After making sure the bird could breathe, workers spent days cracking apart the concrete using forceps and cleaning its feathers using toothbrushes, dish soap and their fingers. Two weeks later, it was able to fly again and is continuing its recovery in an aviary. “He’s a youngster, which may be why he ended up in a concrete mixer,” Bart Richwalski of the animal sanctuary said.
Photo: Best Friends Animal Sanctuary via AP
LEBANON
Israeli strike kills 13
An Israeli strike on the southern city of Sidon killed 13 people and wounded several others, the Ministry of Health said on Tuesday. The Israeli military said it struck militants who it said were operating in a training compound in the crowded Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon. Hamas condemned the strike in a statement, saying it targeted an open sports field used by residents of the camp, adding that there were no military establishments in refugee camps in Lebanon.
NEW ZEALAND
Puberty drugs to be banned
The government yesterday said it was banning new prescriptions of puberty blocking drugs for young transgender people, in a move that critics warned could worsen the mental health of those affected. Doctors would no longer be able to prescribe gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues for gender dysphoria or incongruence to those seeking treatment and not already on the drugs, Minister of Health Simeon Brown said. The decision resulted from a health ministry finding of a lack of “high-quality evidence that demonstrates the benefits or risks,” he added in a statement. The ban takes effect from Dec. 19. The ban would have a devastating impact on the lives and well-being of transgender and gender diverse young people in New Zealand, Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa vice president Elizabeth McElrea said in a statement. “The ban will lead to worsening mental health, increased suicidality and dysphoria for gender diverse children and young people.”
JAPAN
Nuclear plant to be turned on
The government is set to approve the restart of the world’s biggest nuclear plant this week, local media reported yesterday. The resource-poor country pulled the plug on nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, but it wants to revive atomic energy and reduce its dependence on imported fossil fuels. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant is expected to get approval from the Niigata Prefecture governor to resume operations, according to Kyodo News and the Nikkei business daily, citing unnamed sources.
MALAYSIA
Utility loses US$1bn to crypto
National utility firm Tenaga Nasional Bhd lost US$1.1 billion of power to illegal cryptocurrency mining since 2020 in thefts the Minister of Energy Transition and Water Transformation said posed a “serious threat to the national energy supply system.” Tenaga also uncovered 13,827 premises that were suspected of being illegal cryptocurrency mining hubs, the ministry said in a parliamentary reply filed on Tuesday.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
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