■AUSTRALIA
Pelican bites weatherman
A weatherman has found himself the butt of his colleagues’ jokes after a pelican repeatedly bit his backside during a live broadcast. Steve Jacobs of Channel 9’s Today Show was describing pelicans at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo before his national weather report earlier this month when one of the birds lunged at him. Jacobs kept broadcasting, but the pelican attacked again, pecking his behind until a zoo staffer pulled the bird off the weatherman, who was both screaming and laughing. Jacobs wasn’t hurt, but he had to endure his co-workers’ teasing. Host Karl Stefanovic quipped: “Not the first time he’s been pinched in the butt by a bird.” The video has become a YouTube hit.
■THAILAND
Dogs outperform scanners
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Tuesday he had ordered the military to stop buying a British-made bomb scanner after tests proved it performed worse than a sniffer dog. Abhisit said the country had already spent at least US$21 million on between 700 and 800 of the detectors since 2003. “We consider that a sniffer dog is better than the GT200,” Abhisit told reporters. “Therefore there will be no additional purchases of this machine.” Tests on the GT200 were conducted by Thailand’s science ministry over the weekend following warnings by the British government and showed the scanner detected bombs in only four out of 20 cases. The detectors had already been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, but Britain has since banned them.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Bogus charities uncovered
Criminal gangs have defrauded people out of funds intended for Haiti earthquake victims by setting up bogus charities and seeking contributions online, according to a BBC investigation released on Tuesday. Scam e-mails began appearing online within days of the Jan. 12 earthquake, including some with logos for genuine charities. One for the British Red Cross was traced to a computer in Nigeria, the BBC reported. Another group, calling itself the M E Foundation, emailed the BBC photos of Haiti projects it said it was involved with — but which turned out to be of disaster relief activities from the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. British charity SOS Children said the photos were cut and pasted from their Web site. “The problem is it’s not just about exploiting a donor or a charity, really they’re exploiting the victims,” its boss Andrew Cates said. Another scam email was sent by a charity calling itself Help the World — when the BBC called the mobile number it gave, its reporter was told it focused on repairing schools. But the London address given turned out to be a jazz and blues bar, it said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Low-carbon Lent touted
Several prominent Anglican British bishops are urging Christians to keep their carbon consumption in check this Lent. The 40-day period of penitence before Easter typically sees observant Catholics, Anglicans and Orthodox Christians give up meat, alcohol or chocolate. But this year’s initiative aims to convince those observing Lent to try a day without an iPod or mobile phone in a bid to reduce the use of electricity — and thus trim the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere. Bishop of London Reverend Richard Chartres said that the poorest people in developing countries were the hardest hit by man-made climate change. He said on Tuesday that the “Carbon Fast” was “an opportunity to demonstrate the love of God in a practical way.”
■COLOMBIA
‘Dead’ woman wakes up
Funeral home workers in Cali received the shock of a lifetime when an apparently dead 45-year-old woman suddenly started breathing and moving as they prepared her for burial. Local media said the women had been declared clinically dead at a medical facility on Tuesday after having been hospitalized in serious condition with a neurological condition a day earlier. “The instruments the patient was connected to gave no blood pressure or heart rate readings,” said Miguel Angel Saavedra, a doctor at the clinic where the woman was treated. Medical staff at the facility signed the women’s death certificate and her body was transferred to a funeral home to be prepared for burial. But, in a case of what physicians call “Lazarus Syndrome,” the woman was not actually dead.
■CANADA
Ex-chaplain charged
The military’s former chief chaplain was charged on Tuesday for buggery and indecent assault on a man in 1972, the military police said. Retired brigadier-general Roger Bazin was charged under the civilian criminal justice system for alleged crimes at Canadian Forces Base Borden, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service said. At the time, Bazin held the rank of captain. He would later become chaplain general, the head of the military chaplaincy, from 1992 to 1995. “These types of alleged acts, if proven, are illegal and represent unacceptable conduct,” Colonel Tim Grubb, the Canadian Forces’ provost marshal, said in a statement.
■UNITED STATES
Funeral home dead wrong
A Denver, Colorado funeral home that mistakenly switched the bodies of two women, burying and then exhuming one, will be allowed to continue operating under a state agreement calling for three years of probation. Pipkin Mortuary admitted on Tuesday in an agreement with the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies that there had been a “mix-up” with the handling of the bodies, causing it to bury Imogene Jackson on Jan. 29. The agreement did not detail how the mistake happened. Mortuary owner J. Mark Pipkin did not immediately return a call for comment. He previously said that “human error resulted in a mistake” and apologized to the families involved. Jackson’s body was exhumed after her family told the mortuary another woman was in her casket during a Jan. 29 viewing.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Data on cheaters shocking
A British dating Web site revealed on Tuesday that half of the unfaithful men it polled for a survey on affairs admitted to having a fling with a friend’s wife or girlfriend. The poll conducted by Internet dating company www.benaughty.com showed that of the more than 5,000 men it surveyed who admitted to being unfaithful, a staggering 46.9 percent said they had had a fling with a friend’s wife or girlfriend. “It’s a remarkable figure and well above what we would have thought,” benaughty.com Marketing Manager Sean Wood said in a statement. “Attractions develop very easily between men and women who see each other often, in the same circles. And it is often easier to be together without arousing any suspicions.” The survey was conducted amid a frenzy of tabloid newspaper reporting on former England soccer captain John Terry. Terry was stripped of the captaincy after allegations in the British media that he had had an extramarital affair with the former girlfriend of England team mate Wayne Bridge, who was a club mate of his at Chelsea before joining Manchester City last year.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in