NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

US/ OBAMA VISITS GROUND ZERO IN NEW YORK CITY: US President Barack Obama is in New York City to visit the site of the 9/11 attacks, Ground Zero, 4 days after US forces killed al-Qaeda head Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Bin Laden was believed to be the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and many others. Obama laid a wreath in memory of the victims and spoke privately to relatives of those who were killed on that awful day. Before going to Ground Zero, Obama also spent time with firemen who responded on that day and tried to save as many people as they could. Hundreds of first responders were also killed when the Twin Towers collapsed. Ground Zero is now a building site, with construction scheduled for completion in 2013. As well as several office towers, the area will also house the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which comprises a museum, waterfalls and a park. Similar low key services were also held at the Pentagon, where American Flight 77 crashed and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 went down. The visit comes 1 day after Obama said graphic photographs of Bin Laden's body would not be made public. Obama said the images could pose a national security risk. "It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence, as a propaganda tool. That's not who we are," Obama said last evening.

US/ ALABAMA DOGS FIND NEW HOPE IN MAINE: Dozens of dogs from Alabama are finding a new home in Maine so an Alabama shelter can make room for other animals left homeless in the wake of last week's devastating storms that ripped across the South. The Greater Androscoggin Humane Society in Lewiston, Maine is planning to take 50 dogs from the Shelby Humane Society in Columbiana, Alabama. A Shelter manager said the dogs are expected to arrive Saturday after making the 20 hour drive from Alabama. Once in Maine, the homeless dogs will be put up for adoption. The shelter said the dogs range in age from 2 years to 4 years and weigh between 4 pounds to 80 pounds. The move was arranged due to overwhelming numbers of homeless pets in the areas hardest hit by the tornadoes. Most shelters in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee are reported to be overflowing with animals.

WORLD/ WORKERS ENTER JAPAN'S FUKUSHIMA PLANT: Workers entered one of the damaged reactor buildings at Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant today for the 1st time since it was rocked by an explosion in the days after the devastating earthquake in March. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said workers connected ventilation and air filtration equipment in Unit 1 in an attempt to reduce radiation levels in the air inside the building. The utility must lower radiation levels before it can proceed with the key step of replacing the cooling system that was knocked out by the March 11 quake and subsequent tsunami that left more than 25,000 people dead or missing along Japan's northeastern coast. Workers have not been able to enter the reactor buildings at the plant, about 140 miles NE of Tokyo, since the immediate days after the tsunami. Hydrogen explosions at 4 of the buildings at the 6 reactor complex in the 1st few days destroyed some of their roofs and walls and scattered radioactive debris. A TEPCO spokesman called today's development a 1st step toward a cool and stable shutdown, which the utility hopes to achieve in 6 to 9 months.

WORLD/ LAST WWI COMBAT VETERAN DIES IN AUSTRALIA AT 110: The world's last known combat veteran of World War I, Claude Choules, has died in Australia aged 110. Known to his comrades as Chuckles, British-born Choules joined the Royal Navy at 15 and went on to serve on HMS Revenge. He moved to Australia in the 1920s and served in the military until 1956. Choules, who had been married to his wife Ethel for 76 years before she died 3 years ago, was reported to have died in his sleep at a nursing home in his adopted city of Perth. He is survived by his children and grandchildren. Choules tried to enlist in the Army at the outbreak of WWI to join his elder brothers who were fighting, but was told he was too young. He lied about his age to become a Royal Navy rating, joining the battleship HMS Revenge on which he saw action in the North Sea aged 17. He witnessed the surrender of the German fleet in the Firth of Forth in November 1918, then the scuttling of the fleet at Scapa Flow. Choules remembered WWI as a "tough" life, marked by occasional moments of extreme danger. After the war he served as a peacekeeper in the Black Sea and in 1926 was posted as an instructor to Flinders Naval Depot, near Melbourne. It was on the passenger liner to Australia that he met his future wife. He transferred to the Royal Australian Navy and after a brief spell in the reserves rejoined as a Chief Petty Officer in 1932. During World War II he was chief demolition officer for the western half of Australia. It would have been his responsibility to blow up the key strategic harbour of Fremantle, near Perth, if Japan had invaded. Choules joined the Naval Dockyard Police after finishing his service. Another Briton, Florence Green, who turned 110 in February and was a waitress in the Women's Royal Air Force,  is now thought to be the world's last known surviving service member of WWI. An American veteran died earlier this year.

WORLD/ STUDY FINDS CHIMPS ARE SELF-AWARE: Chimpanzees are self-aware and can anticipate the impact of their actions on the environment around them, an ability once thought to be uniquely human, according to a new study. The findings, reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Wednesday, challenge assumptions about the boundary between human and non-human, and shed light on the evolutionary origins of consciousness, the researchers said. Earlier research had demonstrated the capacity of several species of primates, as well as dolphins, to recognize themselves in a mirror, suggesting a fairly sophisticated sense of self. The most common experiment consisted of marking an animal with paint in a place, such as the face, that it could only perceive while looking at its reflection. If the ape sought to touch or wipe off the mark while facing a mirror, it showed that the animal recognized itself. But even if this test revealed a certain degree self-awareness, many questions remained as to how animals were taking in the information. What was the underlying cognitive process? To probe further, researchers at the Primate Research Institute in Kyoto designed a series of 3 experiments to see if chimps, our closest cousins genetically, to some extent "think" like humans when they perform certain tasks.  All the results suggested that "chimpanzees and humans share fundamental cognitive processes underlying the sense of being an independent agent", the researchers concluded. "We provide the first behavioural evidence that chimpanzees can perform distinctions between self and other for external events on the basis of a self-monitoring process". The full Report can be found on the journal's website.