A 73-year-old Japanese woman has climbed Mount Everest, smashing her own record to again become the oldest woman to scale the world’s highest mountain.
Ang Tshering of the China Tibet Mountaineering Association said Tamae Watanabe reached Everest’s 29,035-foot-high (8,850 m) summit from the northern side of the mountain in Tibet yesterday morning with four other team members.
Mr Tshering said Ms Watanabe and the other team members are in good condition and are on their way back to the base of the mountain.
Ms Watanabe had climbed Everest in 2002 at the age of 63 to become the oldest woman to scale the mountain.
Suicide bomber kills eight
A suicide bomber blew himself up at a police checkpoint yesterday in a volatile area of eastern Afghanistan, killing eight people, police said.
The bomber walked up to a checkpoint in Ali Sher district along the Pakistan border in Khost province and detonated his explosives-rigged vest, said provincial police chief General Sardar Mohammad Zazia. The policemen were searching motorists’ vehicles at the time of the explosion, he said.
Two Afghan policemen and six civilians were killed in the blast, he said.
Another policeman and another civilian were wounded.
“The aim of the attacker was to attack both police and civilians,” he said. “Unfortunately, the majority of the victims are civilian.”
Will Smith slaps reporter
Hollywood star Will Smith has slapped a male television reporter who tried to kiss him before the Moscow premiere of Men in Black 3.
The reporter from the Ukrainian television channel 1+1 approached Smith on the red carpet, put his hand on the actor’s shoulder and tried to kiss him.
Smith pushed him away and then slapped him lightly across the cheek with the back of his left hand.
It was not clear whether reporter Vitalii Sediuk intended to kiss Smith on the cheek or on the lips.
In any case, Smith appeared shocked by the journalist’s behaviour at Friday night’s premiere in the Russian capital.
Sean Penn’s charity gala
Sean Penn tried to turn the conversation at the Cannes Film Festival to Haiti, hosting a fundraiser for the earthquake-ravaged and poverty-stricken country.
It was the first time the festival has used its glitzy, global spotlight to attract attention for a cause not connected with a film.
Penn, director Paul Haggis and model Petra Nemcova brought their individual charities together for a black-tie dinner to benefit their organisations and renew attention to the Caribbean country. Designer Giorgio Armani co-hosted the gala.
Bus fire kills 16 pilgrims
An overloaded bus carrying pilgrims to a Muslim shrine rammed into a parked lorry and burst into flames overnight, killing 16 and injuring more than two dozen in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, police said yesterday.
Some of the 78 passengers aboard the 54-seater bus had kerosene and cooking gas cylinders that helped to turn the bus “into a ball of fire”, officer Iqbal Mallik said.
Some passengers escaped through the back door of the bus and others through a window.
19 killed in tunnel blast
A tunnel blast has killed 19 workers at a central Chinese highway construction site, officials said yesterday.
Two officials from Hunan province’s work safety bureau said yesterday’s explosion killed 19 and injured one person. The officials only gave their surnames as Li and Yang, a practice that is common among Chinese government employees.
The official Xinhua news agency says the blast occurred when a vehicle was unloading explosives in the tunnel of the road that is being built between Yanling and Rucheng in Hunan province.