Bjoerk the bear and her two cubs, 18 February (photo: Bern Bear Park)
Update 26 February, link added Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Lausanne newspaper 24 Heures called it one of Switzerland’s best-guarded secrets, proving that it isn’t only bank accounts the Swiss are quiet about: Finn, one of Bern’s two much-loved zoo bears who was shot by a policeman in November when he attacked an intruder, became a father in December. The news came out only this week. Bjoerk, the mother, surprised everyone by not just hibernating but giving birth to two cubs at the Bern Bear Park, which is one of Switzerland’s most popular tourist attractions.
Finn, the father will remain alone in his part of the park, say zoo authorities. “Male bears have no fatherly feelings – he would just kill the cubs.”
The cubs have been named Urs and Berna.
Police in Aarhus, Denmark, have shot and wounded a Somali man carrying a knife who broke and entered the home of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard after the owner hit an alarm bell to call the police. The man, say police, is a member of the radical Islamist al-Shabab militia. Westergaard became a target of Islamist extremists after he published a cartoon in 2005 of the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, which they considered blasphemous. The cartoon led to a series of incidents involving Danish media and embassies around the world, despite an apology from the newspaper.
Shabtai Kalmanovich, who was accused of spying for the KGB in Israel in 1988 after 17 years in the country to which he had emigrated, was killed after being shot in central Moscow Monday 2 November. The Lithuanian-born Kalmanovich was shot more than 20 times by a passing car, according to Russian media, and his driver sustained serious injuries. Kalmanovich moved to Russia in 1993 after being given a medical pardon in Israel, and he became a successful businessman who owned a women’s basketball team and organized major international concerts, among other ventures.
Links to other sites: Jerusalem Post, Moscow Times, Novosti
WBC former welterweight champion Vernon Forrest, 39, known for being an articulate and civic-minded citizen in a sport not always known for these, was shot dead at a gas station in Atlanta, Georgia. He had chased thieves who tried to rob him as he filled the tank of his Jaguar. Atlanta AJC
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The death of Zill-e Usman in Peshawar, Pakistan is the third death of a UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) staff member in the country in six months, the Geneva-based organization announced 17 July. He was shot at the Kutcha Gari camp on the border of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in North-West Frontier Province on the morning of July 16. Another staff worker was injured but is not in serious condition and a guard was killed.
Zill-e Usman was one of the longest-serving staff members in the country, who had been working with the Peshawar office since 1984.UN staff in the Geneva office gathered at noon for a minute of silence to honour the slain father of four.
Two days after the deaths of two soldiers, with four people injured, a police officer in County Armagh in Northern Ireland was shot and killed as he and a colleague answered a call for help. Officials insist the two events are not linked, with police chief Hugh Orde saying “these are disparate groups, badly infiltrated and indeed many awaiting trial north and south of the border. It just reminds us that a small group of people determined to wreck what is huge political progress are becoming more dangerous.” BBC
The former deputy mayor of Grozny, Gelani Shapiyev, was shot three times in the head and killed, outside his apartment building in an “affluent” neighbourhood in western Moscow, near the Krylatskaya metro station. He is the third former Chechan official to be shot in three years on the streets of Moscow, according to the Moscow Times.
