Four elephants have been killed after they became trapped on a railway line and were hit by a speeding train.

The elephants were part of a herd crossing the railroad tracks in eastern India when the express passenger train ploughed into them.

Two adult female elephants and one calf were killed at the scene while another died later from its injuries.

They were hit by the Mahananda Express Passenger train early today in Jalpaiguri district, nearly 400 miles east of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state.

The track, which connects Siliguri to Assam, was closed down for several hours after the collision, as other elephants were guarding the dead and injured animals.

Nearby villagers attempted to join in the rescue effort but could not save the two adult female elephants and one calf which died at the scene.

Railway spokesman Jayant Sharma said the accident site was outside the state’s elephant corridor and there was no warning from the forest department about the movement of the elephants.

Dozens of elephants have died in recent years in such accidents as trains run through national parks and forests. Activists have called for trains to lower their speeds through such areas.

India’s wild elephant population was recently estimated at about 26,000.

The landmark Sydney Harbour Bridge is to undergo its biggest makeover since 1932, with a new coat of paint that will take two years to complete, the New South Wales state government said Thursday.
The bridge, which links the northern and central parts of the city and is one of the world’s most recognisable landmarks, will be sanded back to bare steel and repainted for the first time in its 81-year history.
“This grande dame of Sydney Harbour is getting a makeover with a high performance fade-resistant paint to help her endure the punishing conditions,” state Roads Minister Duncan Gay said.
Huge sections of the bridge have suffered from rust and corrosion in recent decades with some 485,000 square metres of steelwork — the equivalent of 60 football fields — needing to be painted.
“The new paint, still in that famous shade that we call ‘Harbour Bridge grey’, is expected to last 30 years and won’t darken or change over time,” Gay said.
Fifty painters will carry out the work that is expected to cost Aus$20 million (US$19.2 million).

A new-born boy was released from hospital five days after his mother accidentally dropped him down a toilet pipe while giving birth to him, state media said on Thursday.
His mother, grandparents and purported father will take care of him, it cited local officials as saying, adding that the father plans to test his paternity.
The case of the child, dubbed “Baby No. 59” by nurses after the number of his incubator, has sparked worldwide interest.
In China, there have been hundreds of thousands of comments on the country’s hugely popular weibos, services similar to Twitter, with users astonished by the circumstances and expressing good wishes for him.
The mother, 22 and unmarried, had kept her pregnancy a secret and gave birth unexpectedly when she went to the lavatory on Saturday.
The boy fell into the squat toilet and became stuck in a 10-centimetre (four-inch) tube, which firefighters and doctors spent nearly an hour taking apart before they could rescue him.

Canada is banning nearly all exports to and imports from Iran.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Wednesday Canada has grave concerns over Iran’s nuclear program. Canada is also adding 30 individuals and 82 entities to an economic blacklist.

Baird says Iran has produced nothing but “false promises and empty gestures” about its nuclear program.

The latest round of sanctions comes after talks between Iran and the United Nations Security Council, as well as Germany, failed to reach an agreement.

Canada shut its embassy in Tehran last September and ordered Iranian diplomats to leave, accusing the Islamic Republic of being the most significant threat to world peace.

Nepal marked 60 years since the first ascent of Everest on Wednesday, celebrating the summiteers whose success has bred an industry that many climbers now fear is ruining the world’s highest peak.
Four days of ceremonies which have been dubbed the “Everest Diamond Jubilee” conclude on Wednesday with a gala at the former royal palace in the capital Kathmandu in honour of the first successful climbers, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
The British expedition in 1953 changed mountaineering forever and turned New Zealander Hillary and Nepalese guide Norgay into household names and heroes in many parts of the world.
“Hillary and Tenzing were rock stars of the 1950s and into the 1960s,” Hillary’s son Peter told AFP in an interview. “The biggest thing about 1953 is that they were going into the unknown.
“People didn’t know what was up there, they didn’t know whether or not you could remain conscious, they didn’t know whether they could climb that final summit knife-edged ridge and get up what is now called the Hillary Steps,” he added.
A host of famous mountaineering figures will be at the gala on Wednesday night, including Everest legend Reinhold Messner of Italy, as well as Kancha Sherpa, the last remaining member of the 1953 expedition.

Alarmed at expanding waistlines around the world, the UN’s health agency has urged countries to get serious about reining in a ballooning obesity crisis, proposing an action plan that includes taxing unhealthy snacks and rules against marketing junk food to children.
Once considered only a problem in high-income countries like the United States, where nearly 70 percent of the adult population is overweight, obesity is now growing fastest in developing nations in Africa and Latin America, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
As the urgency to tackle the crisis grows, member countries of the UN body late on Monday adopted a 2013-2020 action plan to fight against diseases like cardiovascular illness, cancer, and chronic diabetes.
“The cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of taking action,” the body said.
The plan, which targets risky lifestyle choices such as smoking, alcohol consumption and an unhealthy diet, includes a goal to halt the rise in global obesity levels by 2020.
Obesity levels nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008, when at least one in three adults worldwide was overweight and around one in 10 was considered obese, according to the WHO.

President Barack Obama appears to be a regular customer of a Chinese Internet cafe, reports said, after the manager forged an identity card in the US leader’s name to help surfers avoid China’s web rules.
The card has a full-face picture of Obama, lists his correct birthday and gives his address as “White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC”, while stating his ethnicity as “Kenyan”, pictures showed.
As part of their efforts to control the web, China’s Communist rulers require Internet cafes to register users’ identity numbers before letting them go online.
The manager of the shop in Jinan, the capital of the eastern province of Shandong, created the card by printing out Obama’s personal details and sticking them on to the front of a genuine ID lost by its holder in 2010.

Retailer J.C. Penney may want to rethink the design of their new kettle after a string of customers complained it looks remarkably like Hitler.

The retailer advertised the new kettle – which is exclusively available in its stores – on a huge billboard over the 405 Interstate Highway in southern California.

But rather than being tempted into buying new kitchen equipment, commuters driving along the route near Culver City found themselves instantly reminded of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Several motorists took pictures of the sign, which is around 10 foot tall and 36 foot wide, and posted it on Twitter along with their views about the kettle’s resemblance to the  World War II dictator.

Jim @scplanetable tweeted: Every time I see that JC Penny billboard with the teapot, I keep seeing Hitler. Seriously, the thing looks exactly like Hitler. 405 S, man.’

Proving the billboard may not be the best advertising for the retailer, another commuter, Benari @benarilee tweeted: ‘Uh, no thanks, JC Penny. I don’t think I want your HITLER teapot.’

Other social media users added that they dreaded to think what the store’s pressure cookers must look like.

The king of Saudi Arabia has been ‘clinically dead’ for almost a week and is on life support machines, according to local media.

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud has been critically ill since last Wednesday, according to a Saudi journalist working in London, and has not been seen in public since.

The 89-year-old monarch is reportedly only alive thanks to being linked up to a ventilator, but his vital organs have stopped functioning.

It is the second time the Saudi news service has reported the ‘death’ of the king in recent months.

The Royal Court, which represents the Saudi royal family, has yet to comment on the claims.

In November last year, Saudi state media announced that the King had successfully undergone a back operation to tighten a loose ligament.

Contradicting this, Asharq Alawsat reported the king was ‘clinically dead’ almost a week after the procedure.

The news service said he had slipped into a coma, but this was rejected by the Royal Court.

Two climbers, a 67-year-old Japanese woman and a Spanish man, 50, and their Nepalese guide have died on Nepal’s rugged Dhaulagiri mountain, expedition organisers said Tuesday.

Chizuko Kono from Japan, Spain’s Juanjo Garra and Nepalese guide Dawa Sherpa went missing on Friday as they attempted to climb the world’s seventh highest peak, the organisers said.

Garra slipped and broke his ankle on the slope, organisers said, but it was not immediately clear what happened to Kono and her guide.

The trio, who were part of a larger group comprising 21 climbers, were confirmed dead by expedition organisers on Tuesday.

“On Friday afternoon Mr Garra slipped and broke his ankle and couldn’t walk any more,” Tika Gurung, the expedition organiser told AFP, saying that because it was late in the day an immediate rescue was not possible.

A Chinese province is likely to abolish mandatory HIV tests for teachers, the first region on the mainland to do so, state media said Tuesday.

HIV carriers are excluded from civil service jobs including teaching and policing in many provinces across China, leading to accusations of discrimination from rights groups.

It quoted a lawyer as saying that people with HIV have filed an increased number of anti-discrimination lawsuits which have raised awareness of the issue, though most have been unsuccessful.

As of the end of 2011 there were an estimated 780,000 people with HIV/AIDS in China, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, out of the country’s total population of about 1.35 billion.

The first 10 months of 2012 saw more than 34,000 new cases of AIDS reported in China, up 12.7 percent over the same period last year, the state-run Global Times reported, citing a health ministry report.

A mother and two daughters were allegedly killed by ten male relatives who believed they were having affairs.

The men are believed to have strangled their relatives in southern Egypt.

A body was found floating in the river Nile, near the town of Esna, close to the ancient city of Luxor.

It has been reported that the men used sharp tools to beat the three women in attacks that were meant to protect their family’s honour.

According to one of the suspects, who spoke to police on Thursday, the men wrapped the women’s bodies and blankets, weighted them with stones and threw them into the river Nile.

A security official said that women are murdered for violating traditional morals.

The ‘honour killings’ are not uncommon in conservative Southern Egypt, where women’s actions are thought to bring shame on the family.

Police are searching for the nine other suspects and two remaining bodies.

Honour killings are against Egyptian law, and perpetrators are prosecuted if they are arrested.

Courts are sometimes sympathetic to the accused and give lighter sentences.

This young Chinese woman threatened to jump off the fifth floor of a hospital building unless she was given a cigarette.

Jia Li Pan, 24, had gone to the hospital in Zhongshan, in Guangdong province, southeast China, for a counselling session after encountering difficulties including losing her job.

She was in the waiting room when she asked if she could have a cigarette from another patient.

When he refused, she lost her temper and started shouting, going onto the balcony where smokers were taking a break and reportedly threatened to jump unless one of them gave her a cigarette.

By that point all the smokers had fled and a crowd had gathered below the balcony – alerting police.

One officer gave the young woman a cigarette and then after she was offered her fifth cigarette he used the opportunity to pretend to light it – and grabbed her to pull her to safety.

A police spokesman said: ‘I don’t believe that she has mental problems, but she has had some bad news lately and it seems to have made her act a bit irrationally.’