■AUSTRALIA
Unlucky day for aged ewe
The world’s oldest sheep, Lucky, has died after succumbing to a record heat wave that scorched much of the country’s southeast, its owner said yesterday. Despite her best efforts to nurse Lucky through the searing heat, Delrae Westgarth said the ewe died on Monday, aged 23 years, six months and 28 days, at the farm in Victoria state where she was born. “We brought her into the shed where she was reared and put air conditioners on her, which kept her going a bit longer,” Westgarth told public broadcaster ABC. Lucky was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest sheep in 2007. The normal top age for a sheep is 10 to 12 years.
■INDONESIA
Ferry passenger rescued
Rescuers plucked a woman from choppy waters on Monday, some 25 hours after she jumped from a crowded ferry that sank in a storm off Sumatra. At least 29 people drowned and 20 others were missing. A total of 255 survivors have been pulled from the sea since Sunday, when the Dumai Express 10 was hit by towering waves and sank about 90 minutes into an inter-island trip from Batam to Dumai in Riau. The rescued woman in her 30s was spotted by fishermen and was in stable condition in a hospital, a navy officer said. Patrols were still searching for 20 people, but bad weather was hampering the mission, the navy said.
■AUSTRALIA
Kangaroos smuggle drugs
Drugs are being smuggled into Aboriginal communities in the far north inside dead kangaroos, the Northern Territory parliament was told yesterday. Former indigenous affairs minister Alison Anderson said cannabis was being sewn inside kangaroo carcasses to get it past police patrols. Outback roads are often littered with kangaroos killed by vehicles and the roadkill is often collected. Anderson said women were also stuffing cannabis into their underwear as police are not permitted to frisk females.
■AUSTRALIA
Jetstar apologizes to athlete
Budget airline Jetstar apologized on Tuesday after making a Paralympic champion check in his wheelchair before a flight. Kurt Fearnley, who had just completed a grueling 96km crawl along a Papua New Guinea jungle track, complained bitterly about the weekend incident. Fearnley, 28, hauled himself around Brisbane airport using his hands and onto his flight in protest when Jetstar asked him to check in his personal wheelchair. He spurned the airline’s wheelchair, specially designed for planes, complaining that he would lose his mobility and have to be pushed around by airport staff.
■FRANCE
Bank robber turns cult hero
A suspected bank robber may not be most girls’ idea of Mr Right, but women are proposing marriage to a jailed van driver accused of stealing millions of euros, his lawyer said on Monday. Toni Musulin, 39, has become a cult sensation after he drove off from Lyon with 11.6 million euros (US$17 million) in his van on Nov. 5, before surrendering to police after 11 days on the run. “Contrary to what you might think, Toni Musulin is far from being the crook that we want to describe him as. He is an interesting man,” defense lawyer Herve Banabanaste told a press conference in Lyon. “He receives marriage proposals and requests for his face to appear on T-shirts. We are in quite an absurd situation, but he is taking it with a lot of humor,” he said, without saying how many proposals he had received. More than 9 million euros were recovered by police in an underground Lyon parking lot two days after his disappearance, but Musulin has refused to provide any information on the missing 2.5 million euros.
RSS