Hikers rescued from Himalayan pass days after deadly blizzard
Kathmandu, October 17
Search teams in Nepal used shovels and ice axes on Friday to dig through thick snow and rescue about 40 hikers trapped for days on a Himalayan pass after blizzards and avalanches killed at least 29 persons in one of the world's worst mountain disasters.



Nepalese policemen move the bodies of trekkers killed following a snowstorm to a plane in Jomsom, Nepal, on Friday. AFP

Hong Kong, October 17
The Hong Kong riot police used pepper spray and baton charged crowds of pro-democracy protesters on Friday evening as tension escalated after a pre-dawn clearance of a major protest zone in the Chinese-controlled financial hub.

Crowds of protesters headed to the gritty and congested Mongkok district after work and school on Friday evening, across the harbour from the heart of the civil disobedience movement near government headquarters, to try to reclaim sections of an intersection that police had cleared in a surprise raid early on Friday.

Hundreds of protesters tried to break through police lines and they used open umbrellas to shield themselves from pepper spray. In the melee, the police used batons and scuffled violently with activists.

The police hauled off several protesters as others shouted insults and chanted "open the road".

The protesters, led by a restive generation of students, have been demanding China's Communist Party rulers live up to constitutional promises to grant full democracy to the former British colony which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Before dawn on Friday, hundreds of policemen staged their biggest raid yet on a pro-democracy protest camp, charging down student-led activists who had held the intersection in one of their main protest zones for more than three weeks.

The operation came while many protesters were asleep in dozens of tents or beneath giant, blue-striped tarpaulin sheets.

The raid was a gamble for the 28,000-strong police force who have come under criticism for aggressive clearance operations with tear gas and baton charges and for the beating of a handcuffed protester on Wednesday.

Storming into the intersection with helmets, riot shields and batons at the ready from four directions, the 800 officers caught the protesters by surprise. Many retreated without resisting.

"The Hong Kong government's despicable clearance here will cause another wave of citizen protests," radio talk-show host and activist Wong Yeung-tat said earlier.

In the evening, with more protesters streaming to the area, authorities closed the nearby underground train station, media reported.

Police raised red flags, warning the protesters not to charge. — Reuters

London, October 17
Iraqi pilots who have joined Islamic State (IS) are training its members in Syria to fly three captured fighter jets, media reported on Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said witnesses have seen the planes being flown around a military airport in Aleppo, BBC reported.

Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the SOHR, said IS was using Iraqi officers who were pilots under ex-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to train fighters in Syria.

"People saw the flights, they went up many times from the airport and they are flying in the skies outside the airport and coming back," he said.

It is not known how many Iraqi pilots have defected.

Witnesses told the SOHR the planes appeared to be MiG-21 or MiG-23 models.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government said that its troops had gained ground to the north and west of Tikrit and cut an important IS supply route.

Kurdish forces, backed by US-led air strikes, are continuing to fight militants in the northern Syrian town of Kobane.

US-led warplanes struck IS positions Friday, taking advantage of new coordination with the town's Kurdish defenders, the SOHR said. Capturing the town would give the group unbroken control of a long stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border. — IANS

London, October 17
The World Health Organisation has admitted that it botched attempts to stop the now-spiraling Ebola outbreak in West Africa, blaming factors including incompetent staff and a lack of information.

"Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall," WHO said in a draft internal document obtained by The Associated Press, noting that experts should have realised that traditional containment methods wouldn't work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems.

The UN health agency acknowledged that, at times, even its own bureaucracy was a problem. It noted that the heads of WHO country offices in Africa are "politically motivated appointments" made by the WHO regional director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo, who does not answer to the agency's chief in Geneva, Dr Margaret Chan.

Dr Peter Piot, the co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, agreed in an interview today that WHO acted far too slowly, largely because of its Africa office.

"It's the regional office in Africa that's the frontline," he said. "And they didn't do anything. That office is really not competent."

Piot also questioned why it took WHO five months and 1,000 deaths before the agency declared Ebola an international health emergency in August.

"I called for a state of emergency to be declared in July and for military operations to be deployed," he said. But he said the World Health Organisation might have been scarred by its experience during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, when it was slammed for hyping the situation.

In late April, during a teleconference on Ebola among infectious disease experts that included WHO, Doctors Without Borders and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, questions were apparently raised about the performance of WHO experts, as not all of them bothered to send Ebola reports to WHO headquarters. — AP

Kathmandu, October 17
Search teams in Nepal used shovels and ice axes on Friday to dig through thick snow and rescue about 40 hikers trapped for days on a Himalayan pass after blizzards and avalanches killed at least 29 persons in one of the world's worst mountain disasters.

The Trekking Agencies' Association of Nepal said 37 persons were brought down from Thorong La pass, which is 5,416 metres high. Austrians, French, Germans, Indians and Nepalis were among the nationalities represented.

The police said 48 persons were rescued from different locations in the popular trekking region around Annapurna, the world's 10th highest peak, where some had sought shelter in a temple. "Some of the foreign tourists were sitting in a temple for the last two days," said Surya Bahadur, a police officer from Dolpa, a district of glaciers and ravines.

Thorong La is the highest point of a three-week loop around the Annapurna peak. Authorities said they had little idea how many Nepalis were missing from remote villages near the Tibetan border, and blamed failures in weather forecasting and lax regulations that led to many trekkers being caught in the open when the blizzard hit. — Reuters