AUSTRALIA
Shark attacks surf-ski
A man had a lucky escape on Wednesday after being thrown from his surf-ski when it was rammed and then attacked by a shark, forcing a friend to rush to his rescue, officials said. The man was out paddling with friends on the surf-ski at Perth’s Mullaloo Beach when he felt a “significant thump on the back half of his surf-ski,” Surf Life Saving WA said. Initially he thought a jet-ski had hit him. “He was flung into the water and turned around to see the tail of the shark moving through,” Chris Peck, the surf authority’s community manager, told local media. The shark — believed to be a 3m great white — then attacked the kayak with its jaws, Peck said. Authorities commended the bravery of a fellow paddler who went to the marooned man’s rescue, paddling past the shark to pick him up. “Who knows what might have happened if he had to have swum 150 meters into shore and not had someone there to help out,” Peck said.
AUSTRALIA
Diprotodon graves opened
Scientists yesterday unveiled the biggest-ever graveyard of an ancient rhino-sized mega-wombat called diprotodon, with the site potentially holding valuable clues on the species’ extinction. The remote fossil deposit in Queensland is thought to contain at least 20 diprotodon skeletons, including a huge specimen named Kenny, whose jawbone alone is 70cm. The lead scientist on the dig, Scott Hocknull from the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, said Kenny was one of the largest diprotodons he had ever seen and one of the best preserved specimens of the species unearthed in Queensland. Hocknull said the deposit contained the largest concentration of mega-wombat fossils ever discovered in the nation and could hold important clues on how the diprotodon lived and what caused it to perish. Diprotodon, the largest marsupial ever to roam the Earth, weighing up to 2.8 tonnes, lived between 2 million and 50,000 years ago and died out around the same time indigenous tribes first appeared.
JAPAN
Squirrels break out of zoo
Zookeepers in Tokyo were yesterday hunting a group of squirrels that made a break for freedom under cover of a powerful of the bushy-tailed creatures saw their chance when Typhoon Guchol felled a tree near their enclosure at Inokashira Park Zoo, cutting a hole in the netting that held them captive. Park workers used nets and traps to recapture 18 animals on Wednesday and yesterday morning, but were still on the lookout for a determined dozen. The zoo is near the busy shopping hub of Kichijoji, an area where wild squirrels are not usually found.
SERBIA
Mammoth field found
Archeologists say they have discovered a rare mammoth field containing the remains of at least five of the giant beasts that lived tens of thousands of years ago. The discovery last week at the Kostolac coal mine, east of Belgrade, is the first of its kind in the region. It could offer important insight into the ice age in the Balkans, said Miomir Korac from the Archeology Institute. “There are millions of mammoth fragments in the world, but they are rarely so accessible for exploration,” he said. The remains were found during coal excavation about 20m below ground. Korac said the mammoth field stretches over about 8 hectares of sandy terrain. The bones discovered last month likely belong to the so-called woolly mammoth, which disappeared about 10,000 years ago, said Sanja Alaburic, a mammoth expert from the Museum of Natural History.
UNITED STATES
Dad cleared in killing rapist
A Texas father who beat a man to death with his bare hands after catching him sexually assaulting his five-year-old daughter should not face criminal charges, a grand jury has ruled. Prosecutors said at a press conference on Tuesday that the jury determined that there was ample evidence that it was a justifiable homicide. They played a tape of the distraught father’s desperate 911 call as he tried to save the man’s life after realizing what he had done. “I need an ambulance. This guy was raping my daughter and I beat him up and I don’t know ... I don’t know what to do,” he sobbed into the phone, so overcome with emotion that he couldn’t provide directions to his father’s ranch. “I need help. This guy is dying on me ... oh my God ... I’m going to try to load him up on the truck and take him to the hospital.” Lavaca County District Attorney Heather McMinn said that under Texas law deadly force is both “authorized and justified” in order to stop a sexual assault.
UNITED STATES
‘Joe the Plumber’ under fire
The Ohio Republican congressional candidate who became famous as “Joe the Plumber” by confronting Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign is running a video in which he suggests that Nazi gun control laws contributed to deaths during the Holocaust because Jews did not have firearms to defend themselves. The ad drew strong rebukes from Democrats and Jewish organizations. In the video, Samuel Wurzelbacher loads a shotgun and fires at lemons and tomatoes placed on wooden posts. “In 1939, Germany established gun control,” he says. “From 1939 to 1945, 6 million Jews and 7 million others, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated,” he says before ending the video by saying: “I love America.” Gun control opponents have long held that Adolf Hitler was able to seize power in Germany in part because of controls on firearms. Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern said the video was “incredibly offensive” and called on Republicans and Democrats to condemn “the despicable actions of this very desperate man.”
UNITED STATES
Ellison buys Hawaii island
Billionaire Oracle CEO Larry Ellison bought 98 percent of Hawaii’s sixth-largest island, Lanai, Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie announced on Wednesday. Ellison, the third-richest man in the US, is purchasing the property from fellow billionaire David Murdock. Murdock’s Castle and Cooke Inc, which owns all but 2 percent of Lanai’s 365km2, filed a transfer application with Hawaii’s Public Utilities Commission. Previous media reports put the price tag at between US$500 million and US$600 million, but the price was not revealed in Wednesday’s filing. Once known for its pineapple fields, Lanai is now visited for its two Four Seasons resorts, golf courses and luxury housing. Bill Gates booked every hotel room on the island for his 1994 wedding.
COLOMBIA
Paid killer gets 40 years
A judge has sentenced a man to more than 40 years in prison for murdering two Bogota priests who allegedly paid him to end their lives. Gilberto Penate had confessed to shooting to death Roman Catholic Reverends Rafael Reatiga and Richard Piffano early last year and make it appear like a robbery. Prosecutors say Reatiga was suffering from AIDS and syphilis and prosecutors determined that the priests had paid Penate and another gunman US$8,400 to kill them.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not