■AUSTRALIA
Six-year-old evades police
A six-year-old boy evaded a major police search involving sniffer dogs and air support by hiding in his friend’s house overnight, officials said yesterday. The Melbourne boy went missing after playing outside his house on Wednesday evening, prompting a frantic hunt by police, neighbors and emergency services, and a media alert. Police combed parks and shopping centers, and the shores of a nearby lake. However, the boy emerged unhurt from his nine-year-old neighbor’s bedroom early yesterday. “He was located at another premises close to where he lives. Inquiries are still pending in that regard, but we understand the child may have been hiding from police,” Inspector Geoffrey Davey said. “We believe it may have been children misunderstanding the actual circumstance of what they were portraying to police and unfortunately it’s led to a long, involved search by police overnight.”
■AUSTRALIA
Cheesy snack killer jailed
A woman was jailed for 25 years yesterday for running down and killing a man who threw cheesy snacks at her car. Sarah May Ward, 38, became “incensed” when 21-year-old Eli Westlake hurled Cheese Balls at her car late one night and drove straight at him, dragging him below the vehicle and then crashing down a stairwell. “She was not provoked, but incensed by the fact that she had been humiliated, as she saw it ... she clearly wanted to teach the young men a lesson,” Justice Roderick Howie told New South Wales Supreme Court. Ward, who had been drinking and taking drugs, was found guilty last month after blaming her shoes for her erratic driving.
■INDONESIA
Workers go on rampage
Thousands of furious factory workers set fire to cars and a warehouse yesterday after an Indian company executive called them “stupid,” police and media reports said. Nine people were reportedly injured when workers went on the rampage at a factory belonging to P.T. Drydock World Graha in Batam City, a special economic area south of Singapore. “An Indian company executive called us, Indonesian workers, ‘stupid’ and this made us very angry,” a worker called Disra was quoted as saying by Antara news agency. About 400 police were called to the scene and they evacuated 41 unidentified foreign staff from the seaside factory in boats, Antara reported. Up to 20 cars were set alight, along with a warehouse belonging to the company.
■NEW ZEALAND
Rare gecko sighted
The country’s largest gecko has been seen on one of the main islands for the first time in almost a century — unfortunately, dead in a mousetrap, an official said yesterday. The Duvaucel’s gecko — which can grow more than 30cm long — was found at the Maungatautari wildlife reserve in North Island’s northern Waikato region. Maungatautari ecologist Chris Smuts-Kennedy told the Waikato Times newspaper the death of the gecko was a cruel irony, but that this meant the reserve may be home to more members of the species. The only confirmed populations of the gecko, which can live up to 50 years, are on predator-free offshore islands. The reptile is vulnerable to attacks by pests, especially rats. The last time the gecko was seen on the mainland was thought to have been in the 1920s in the Thames area, southeast of Auckland, Smuts-Kennedy said.
■BOLIVIA
Morales under fire
President Evo Morales was under fire on Wednesday for suggesting at a global climate change summit that eating hormone-injected chicken could provoke male deviance. Bolivia’s opposition and homosexual groups criticized comments made by Morales at the first “people’s conference” on climate change the previous day, in which he said that chicken producers inject birds with female hormones and “when men eat those chickens, they experience deviances in being men.” The Bolivian president also suggested that the European diet made men go bald. The president of Argentina’s homosexual community, Cesar Cigliutti, said: “It’s an absurdity to think that eating hormone-containing chicken can change the sexual orientation of a person. By following that reasoning, if we put male hormones in a chicken and we make a homosexual eat it, he will transform into a heterosexual.
■LEBANON
Psychic avoids beheading
A Lebanese TV psychic, who was condemned to death for witchcraft by a Saudi court while visiting the country, will not be beheaded, his lawyer said on Wednesday. May al-Khansa said the Saudi ambassador in Beirut informed the Lebanese justice minister that the execution of Ali Sibat would not take place. “He confirmed to me that there will be no execution,” al-Khansa said about her conversation with Ibrahim Najjar, Lebanon’s justice minister. Sibat is one of scores of people reported arrested every year in the kingdom on charges of practicing sorcery, witchcraft, black magic and fortunetelling, which are considered to be polytheism by the country’s ultraconservative judiciary. He was arrested by the Saudi religious police while making a pilgrimage in May 2008 and sentenced to death last November on charges of practicing witchcraft. Sibat, 49, made predictions on a satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Cameron egged on
Prime ministerial candidate David Cameron had an egg thrown at him at an election event in Cornwall on Wednesday and later joked it was “the first of the campaign.” Television footage showed a young man wearing a grey hooded top throwing the egg toward the Conservative leader as he left Cornwall College’s Saltash campus where he had been talking to students. A Conservative party spokesman said the egg had brushed Cameron’s shoulder. Cameron said afterwards: “Now I know which came first, the chicken not the egg,” local media reports said. In 2006, Cameron’s call for more understanding of why young people commit crime became famously dubbed by his critics as the “hug a hoodie” policy.
■RUSSIA
Scientology texts banned
Prosecutors said on Wednesday that texts and recordings by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard had been ruled “extremist” and would be banned. The ban relates to 28 books and audio-video discs containing lectures by Hubbard, a US science fiction author who founded Scientology in 1954, the statement said. The ruling was the latest blow to the Church of Scientology, an organization that some countries treat as a legitimate faith but that others consider a cult designed to trick members out of large sums of money. The ban on the Scientology materials was imposed by a court in the city of Surgut in Siberia, which decided they should be added to a list of literature banned in Russia for extremist content, the statement said.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
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