Dwindling numbers of birds worldwide are a sign that governments are failing to keep promises to slow damage to nature by 2010, an international report said yesterday.
Rising human populations and clearance of forests for farming or biofuels were wrecking natural habitats, according to the study by Birdlife International, which groups experts in more than 100 conservation bodies worldwide.
Even common birds, such as doves or skylarks in Europe, were becoming scarcer in a worrying sign of wider upsets to nature.
Birds are among the best researched of all wildlife and are a barometer of the environment.
"Bird species are slipping faster than ever towards extinction," according to Birdlife's State of the World's Birds report issued at an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) congress in Barcelona.
Brazen thief robs Vietnamese police station
Vietnamese authorities are hunting for a brazen masked criminal who robbed a district police station, state media reported yesterday.
The Dan Tri online newspaper quoted investigators in Quang Nam as saying the armed robber forced the duty officer to hand over his mobile phone and some money.
Many seek former Nepali king's blessings
About 5,000 people lined up in front of the private home of Nepal's ousted King Gyanendra yesterday to seek his blessings on an important Hindu festival, his first as a commoner.
The King's loyalists, many of them ministers and senior officials during his absolute rule which ended in 2006, stood in queues for more than an hour to greet Gyanendra on the 10th day of the Dasain festival, when people seek the blessings of elders.
Gyanendra and his wife Komal applied red vermilion paste to the foreheads of people, some on wheelchairs and others with crutches, outside their heavily guarded home in the capital Kathmandu.
"I feel very happy to receive their blessings," said 75-year-old Ripu Sudan Thapa after he greeted the former royal couple, who sat on chairs in front of their home.
Nepal abandoned its 239-year-old monarchy in May and became a republic following a deal with former Maoist rebels to end their decade-long civil war.
King Gyanendra left his official palace in June and has since been living in a former hunting lodge outside the Nepali capital.
The Maoist former rebels are now heading a coalition government meant to oversee the preparation of a new constitution and cap a peace process which began in 2006.
Man indicted for hacking Palin e-mail
A Tennessee man has been indicted for hacking into Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, the Justice Department said.
David Kernell, 20, of Knoxville, turned himself in and has appeared before a US judge, the Justice Department said. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
According to the indictment, Mr Kernell accessed Mrs Palin's account, gov.palin@yahoo.com, on September 16 after correctly answering a series of personal questions.
Yahoo allows users to change their passwords if they confirm personal information such as their birth date and ZIP code and correctly answer a personal question such as the name of their first pet.
Mr Kernell then posted some of the account's contents, along with the password, to the online message board 4chan.org, the indictment says. Known online as "rubico," Mr Kernell also posted family members' cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses online, the indictment says.
Mice overcome fear and depression with natural Prozac
The brain can produce antidepressants with the right signal, a finding that suggests that meditating, or going to your "happy place", truly works, scientists reported yesterday.
Mice forced to swim endlessly until they surrendered and just floated, waiting to drown, could be conditioned to regain their will to live when a tone they associated with safety was played.
The experiment suggests that there are good ways to teach people this skill, and points to new routes for developing better antidepressants, said Eric Kandel of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Columbia University in New York, who led the research.
Footballer drowns in ritual swim
A Zimbabwean soccer player drowned in a crocodile infested river during a ritual to cleanse his team of bad spirits before a match, a state newspaper said.
The Chronicle quoted unnamed sources as saying about 16 players from second division side Midland Portland Cement were told to swim in the Zambezi River in the resort town of Victoria Falls ahead of a soccer match on Sunday.
"The technical team told every player to get into the river so that they could be cleansed of bad spirits," it said.
The paper quoted local police commander Peter Rodzi as saying that, after the swim, the other players had noticed that one of the team was missing. "The area where the team was swimming is prohibited as the current is strong. The river is also infested with crocodiles and hippos," said Mr Rodzi.