■ UNITED STATES
Fish going deaf
An increase in manmade sounds underwater makes fish deaf, a professor says. Michael Smith, an assistant biology professor at Western Kentucky University, cited US Navy sonar and oceanic shipping as possible noise pollution for fish, which use sound to find their way around and listen for predators. His study will expose locally bought rainbow trout, silver perch and goldfish to various sound combinations at a special sound booth. Then tests will see whether the fish have hearing loss. The fish's brain waves will be recorded through electrodes while the fish listen to tones.
■ BELGIUM
Ticket collectors on strike
The rail network was paralyzed yesterday as ticket collectors went on strike in protest against a series of attacks on staff by passengers. Trains to other countries, including Luxembourg, were also hit, although the cross-channel Eurostar and the high-speed Thalys that runs to France, Germany and the Netherlands were operating as normal. "The strike is expected to last all day. There are many lines affected and we have had to cancel lots of trains," said Clarisse Poncelet, a spokeswoman for network operator Infrabel. She did not say exactly when trains would start running again.
■ UNITED STATES
Woman has lucky escape
Friday the 13th turned out to be lucky for one La Crosse, Wisconsin, woman. Sara Wrobel narrowly missed a 15 tonne to 20 tonne piece of construction equipment that became unhinged from a dump truck and fell just in front of her as she backed out of her driveway. She said she walked out of her house a few minutes early on Friday and pulled out of her driveway, and as she waited for her garage door to close the equipment -- a rock screener -- fell. "I heard this weird noise, and the thing crashed right in front of me," said Wrobel, who is pregnant and due any day. The screen became unhinged from the dump truck, hit a telephone pole, flipped over the embankment and landed on the driveway, she said.
■ UNITED STATES
Mosquito `threat' rejected
Three prisoners in Colorado say their lives have been threatened -- by mosquitoes. The inmates at Walsenburg and Limon prisons sued, saying they were at risk of contacting West Nile virus or other diseases after they were bitten repeatedly by mosquitoes and suffered "the emotional and mental distress of whether or not each mosquito's bite would result in death or serious bodily injury." Stephen Glover, Alan Smith and Michael Freeman said the bites caused high fever, headache, neck stiffness and muscle weakness. But the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's decision to throw out their case. Prison officials said no confirmed cases of West Nile virus have ever been found in the prison population, and inmates are given mosquito repellant.
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