AUSTRALIA
Dingo wakes sleeping teen
A teenager described yesterday how her sleeping bag was torn off by a dingo as she slept at a campsite, weeks after a landmark ruling that a baby was snatched in 1980 by one of the wild dogs. Rebecca Robinson, 13, was sleeping on a mattress under a caravan awning at the Aurora Kakadu Lodge, about 250km from the northern city of Darwin, on Sunday when she was woken by a dragging sensation. “I could feel someone pulling me, I was not going anywhere, but I could feel the sleeping bag getting dragged,” she told the Northern Territory News. “I woke up and there was a dingo there, chewing at my sleeping bag.” Robinson’s mother said the teenager shouted at the animal and it ran off, adding that she had been told it was the fourth such event at the lodge this year — an unusual spate of incidents. It comes after a coroner ruled last month that baby Azaria Chamberlain had been taken from a tent at Uluru, or Ayers Rock, 32 years ago, exonerating her mother Lindy, who spent three years in jail convicted of her murder.
UNITED STATES
Well-traveled cat recovering
A three-month-old kitten is recovering in California after surviving a journey across the Pacific in a shipping container from China, without food or water, officials said on Tuesday. The orange-and-white animal has been named Ni Hao after being found when the container was opened last week, following the two-week, 10,450km trip from Shanghai. At first he was too weak to stand, but the short-haired kitten is finally taking his first steps — and officials are now seeking a local cat-lover to adopt him. “Ni Hao greeted the medical team with his first meows this morning and is attempting to stand,” said Marcia Mayeda, head of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Care and Control. In theory, he has to remain in quarantine for 60 days, but he “may be allowed to finish the quarantine period under the care and supervision of a foster family if his health continues to improve,” Mayeda said.
FRANCE
Party held for orangutan
A Sumatran orangutan believed to be the oldest reproductive specimen in captivity celebrated his 50th birthday on Tuesday at a zoo in western France. As photographers snapped pictures, Major, a 125kg father of 16, blew out the candles on a strawberry birthday cake at the zoo in La Boissiere-du-Dore near Nantes where he has lived for more than 20 years. Born in 1962 in Indonesia, Major was captured seven years later and held in zoos in Germany, before being transferred to France in 1989. His keepers said Major, who lives at the zoo with his three female companions and four children, is especially prized for his reproductive prowess. “When you know that an interval of four to five years is needed between each birth for a female, it’s exceptional,” zoo director Sebastien Laurent said.
NEW ZEALAND
Top soldier quits military
The nation’s most highly decorated soldier is quitting the military to work with young people. Corporal Willie Apiata is the only living New Zealander to hold the country’s top award for battlefield gallantry, the Victoria Cross. The 40-year-old won the honor after saving the life of a severely injured soldier in Afghanistan in 2004. According to his Army citation, Apiata carried the bleeding soldier 70m through enemy fire to safety. Prime Minister John Key confirmed that Apiata is joining the High Wire Charitable Trust to work with vulnerable youths.
UNITED STATES
Wanted pilot crashes plane
A US pilot on the run for alleged murder stole a plane and crashed it into an airport terminal before killing himself, officials and reports said on Tuesday. Brian Joseph Hedglin was wanted for questioning over the death in Colorado last week of his former partner, when he gained access to the plane at St George Municipal Airport in neighboring Utah. The 40-year-old, a SkyWest pilot, caused damage to both the aircraft — which was empty and out of service — and to vehicles and part of the terminal building, according to ABC4 television. “While the airport was closed overnight, a SkyWest aircraft at the St George Municipal Airport in Utah was involved in a ground incident while the aircraft was not in service,” an airline spokesman said.
UNITED STATES
Man catches falling girl
A New York bus driver has become a surprise hero after saving a seven-year-old girl who accidentally fell three stories from a Brooklyn apartment building. “I just said ‘Please, let me catch her, Lord, please let me catch her,’” Stephen St Bernard told local NY1 television about Monday’s rescue in the Brooklyn’s Coney Island neighborhood. A video of the incident taken on a mobile phone and broadcast by the channel showed the girl standing on an air conditioning unit outside her apartment window more than 10m from the ground. Amid cries from people watching the scene unfold from the ground, the girl fell into the arms of St Bernard. St Bernard, who said he cried after saving the girl, suffered a torn tendon in his arm from the impact. The girl has been identified as Keyla McCree.
PUERTO RICO
Policeman shoots up car
Authorities are investigating a policeman accused of firing at an 85-year-old handicapped woman who failed to stop after she backed into a car while leaving the grocery store. The officer, who was on his bicycle, shot at the woman’s car nine times and hit it five times, Victor Carbonell, director of a special investigations unit that probes police shootings, said on Tuesday. One bullet went through the windshield on the driver’s side and another through the driver’s side window, he said. However, no bullets struck the woman. “It’s a miracle she’s alive,” Carbonell said, adding that it is unclear whether Catalina Reyes Rivera knew she had hit someone when she put the car in reverse. He said the woman inside the car that Reyes hit flagged down the officers who gave chase and forced Reyes out of the car at gunpoint and ordered her to kneel. Reyes’s daughter, Rosa Elsie Rosado, told reporters that her mother has two prosthetic knees.
CHILE
Mouse tail burger is real
Health authorities on Tuesday confirmed what one man has claimed for weeks: That he found a mouse tail in his McDonald’s hamburger. Back in June, the man noticed something unusual when he bit into the hamburger he bought at a McDonald’s restaurant in the southern town of Temuco, about 700km south of the capital, Santiago. He said it appeared to be a mouse tail, and filed a complaint with local health authorities. On Tuesday Waldo Armstrong, head of the regional health department, confirmed what the customer had feared. “There were traces of the tail stuck between the cheese and the bread, and the tail had undergone a cooking process,” Armstrong said. The restaurant was closed, and a probe revealed mouse feces inside the restaurant — and that the tail was placed inside the hamburger on purpose.
‘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
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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