TEHRAN: Iranian authorities have foiled an attempt on the life of former President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani by an extremist religious movement, a newspaper reported on Thursday. The assassination bid was ``discovered and neutralised'', the English-language Iran News reported, without giving any date or other details about the attack.

KATHMANDU: Fifteen-year-old Nepalese schoolboy Arbin Timilsina on Thursday came within 148 metres (485 ft) of becoming the youngest person to climb Mount Everest, before he was forced to turn back from the southsummit because of sore eyes, the Tourism Ministry said. However, he still remains the youngest person to have attempted to climb the 8,848-m-high (29,028-ft) mountain. Betrand Roche, a 17-year-old Frenchman, is the youngest person so far to have climbed Everest, having done so in 1990. Shailendra Raj Sharma, Director General of the Department of Tourism, said: ``He is now descending to the base camp to rest and he is not going to make further attempts on Everest for the time being.''

BRISBANE: A golden labrador called Barney on Thursday become the world's first dog to get a hearing aid. Attached externally to a titanium screw protruding from his skull, the device transmits sound through the bones of the dog's head into his inner ear. Sue Sommerlad, the vet and human audiologist who performed the implant, now hopes the procedure can be developed further for use in young children who are unable to wear conventional hearing aids, as well as other cats and dogs. Barney had been found around theUniversity of Queensland last September in severe pain from a chronic ear infection.