NORWAY
Fisherman trawls sex toy
An unexpectedly sexy catch ended up in the net of a fisherman, who said on Friday that he had landed a cod with a dildo in its stomach. Bjoern Frilund, 64, this week found a 5 or 6kg cod in his net while fishing for herring on the west coast and noticed the unusual shape of its stomach when he gutted it. “First two herrings came out, and then I found this rubber thing,” he said. Frilund added that, at a guess, the orange-colored sex toy was “15 or 16cm.” “I knew cods swallow pretty much anything, but I couldn’t expect this,” he said. “The odds of something like this happening are the same as being hit by a meteorite in the head.” Frilund thought the cod had mistaken the dildo, which still had its motor, but had no batteries, for a squid. As for its origin, “maybe a frustrated lady threw it overboard from the Coastal Express,” a tourist ship which cruises along the coast, he said.
SOUTH SUDAN
Nile walk hits fourth nation
Close calls with crocodiles and a brutal civil war have not deterred a British man from attempting to walk the length of the Nile River. The year-long, 6,840km journey along the world’s longest river is to take the former British Army captain through seven countries. After four months trekking through Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, Levinson Wood is now in South Sudan, a country with little infrastructure, which has been destabilized by months of fighting between pro- and anti-government forces. The 31-year-old Wood said it took three years to plan the walk from Rwanda to Egypt. Wood said he faces many dangers on the walk from people and beast, but added that past explorers did not have the luxury of a satellite telephone or Google maps.
KENYA
Poaching prompts takeover
The central government says it will oversee the running of the country’s wildlife authority for the next three months in a bid to stop the poaching of elephants and rhinos. Richard Lesiyampe of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources said on Friday that six senior Kenya Wildlife officials have been placed on leave to pave the way for investigations into the wildlife service’s operations. Lesiyampe outlined a raft of changes the organization is to undergo in the coming days. Last month, Richard Leakey, a famed scientist and founding head of Kenya Wildlife Service, alleged that the service had been infiltrated by people enriching themselves from poaching. He urged the government to overhaul management at the service. Poachers have killed 18 rhinos and 51 elephants so far this year.
UNITED STATES
Chimps plot zoo escape
Seven chimpanzees used an improvised ladder from a tree to scale a wall and briefly escape their enclosure at the Kansas City Zoo on Thursday, a zoo official said. One of the chimps apparently pulled a log or a branch and leaned it against the wall of the enclosure, giving the primates a leg-up to the top, zoo director Randy Wisthoff said. The animals did not have any contact with zoo visitors, as they escaped into an area reserved for zookeepers, he added. There are 12 chimps in total at the zoo, which was closed after the incident. “We had a ringleader,” Wisthoff said. “He got up on the log and got some others to join him.” Using food to entice them, the zookeepers herded the wayward chimps back into an indoor enclosure. The chimps were on the loose for about an hour.
UNITED STATES
Stiletto killer sentenced
A woman was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for fatally stabbing her boyfriend with the stiletto heel of her shoe, striking him at least 25 times in the face and head. Ana Trujillo was convicted of murder on Tuesday by the same jury for killing 59-year-old Alf Stefan Andersson, a native of Sweden who became a US citizen, during an argument in June last year at his Houston condominium. Defense attorneys argued that Trujillo, 45, was defending herself from an attack by Andersson, who was a University of Houston professor and researcher. Prosecutors said that jurors told them that it was the physical evidence that proved to them this was not self-defense. “She hit him 25 times in the head. That is a hard thing to overcome,” prosecutor John Jordan said.
UNITED STATES
Crash further investigated
The investigation into a fiery crash between a FedEx tractor-trailer and a bus that killed 10 people in northern California, five of them teenage students en route to a college recruitment event, focused on Friday on what caused the truck to veer out of control. A day after the accident, it remained unclear whether the FedEx driver was somehow distracted or lost consciousness, or whether a mechanical failure occurred when his truck swerved across the median of Interstate 5 and slammed head-on into the motor coach full of students from the Los Angeles area. The California Highway Patrol also raised the possibility that a separate collision on the truck’s side of the highway might have been a factor in Thursday evening’s fatal crash. According to early highway patrol accounts of the accident, the truck side-swiped a car after crossing the center divider but before hitting the bus.
UNITED STATES
Ex-marine secretly retried
Iranian-American Amir Hekmati, a former US marine whose previous death sentence in Iran on espionage charges was overturned, has been secretly retried, convicted of collaborating with the US government and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the New York Times reported on Friday, quoting his lawyer. The newspaper quoted lawyer Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei as saying Hekmati, held since 2011, was not told by Iranian officials about the retrial, conviction or prison sentence. The Times quoted Tabatabaei as saying Hekmati was retried by a revolutionary court in December last year and convicted of “practical collaboration with the American government.”
CANADA
Suspended senator to detox
A court on Friday ordered a suspended senator to attend an alcohol and drugs detox program, a day after his arrest for alleged assault. Patrick Brazeau, 39, was taken into custody on Thursday at an Ottawa area residence, and charged with assault, cocaine possession and making death threats. Crown prosecutor Stephanie Robitaille said Brazeau had “specific conditions to respect, one of them is to go to therapy for drug and alcohol problems.” He was also told to respect a curfew from 11pm to 6am. Brazeau was already on bail after being arrested last year for allegedly sexually assaulting his former girlfriend. He and two other lawmakers were suspended from the Senate in November last year after collectively charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for travel and housing expenses in a political scandal that has been a drag on the ruling Conservatives’ popularity. Since being booted from the Senate, Brazeau has been working as the day manager at an Ottawa strip club.
PAKISTAN
Baby accused of murder freed
A lawyer says a judge has freed a nine-month-old boy accused of attempting to murder police in Lahore after police withdrew charges. Lawyer Irfan Tarar says the judge announced the decision after yesterday’s court hearing during which police said it had dropped the charge against the boy. He says police had registered the case against the toddler and his family members without investigating the matter and the judge had sought an explanation. The case highlights the country’s dysfunctional criminal justice system, where even children are not immune from questionable legal decisions. The toddler was brought to court on Friday last week as part of an investigation relating to an incident where residents in his neighborhood clashed with police.
DUBAI
Paramedic dies from virus
The interior ministry says one of its paramedics has died after contracting Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and that five others are also infected. State news agency WAM quoted the ministry on Friday as saying that the victims are all Philippine nationals. It did not provide further details on their identities. It says the five infected paramedics have been placed under quarantine and that people who have recently been treated by them are being checked for infection. The five were found during routine check-ups to have contracted the virus. MERS belongs to a family of viruses known as coronaviruses that include both the common cold and SARS, which killed about 800 people in a global outbreak in 2003. It can cause fever, breathing problems, pneumonia and kidney failure.
GERMANY
Store sorry for Hitler mugs
A furniture store chain has apologized for selling coffee mugs featuring faint portraits of Adolf Hitler it had mistakenly ordered from a Chinese supplier, a news report said on Thursday. The vintage-style ceramic cups feature a faint image of a Nazi-era postage stamp that shows a black-and-white profile of Hitler, postmarked with a swastika stamp, all obscured by other design elements, including a rose and cursive script. The Zurbrueggen furniture chain had ordered a batch of 5,000 mugs and had already sold at least 175 when the mistake was noticed, reported the Neue Westfaelische Zeitung daily from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The owner blamed the “terrible” mistake on “a stupid chain of unfortunate circumstances” involving a Chinese designer who has mistakenly chosen the image of the Nazi leader, the news report said. “No one noticed the problem during unpacking,” the store owner told the newspaper, adding that every customer who had bought a mug would be compensated with a 20 euro (US$27) gift voucher.
UNITED STATES
Croc left outside pet store
Do not shed any tears for a crocodile that was captured wandering outside a pet store at a northern California shopping mall. California Fish and Wildlife officials have taken custody of the croc, are feeding it rainbow trout and will likely donate it to a zoo. Police say the crocodile was apparently left outside the Roseville store by someone who did not want it anymore. The animal had grown to 1.2m, and its jaws had been wrapped shut with heavy-duty tape. There was a note identifying it as a Nile crocodile and requesting someone “call rescue.” Police say no one was hurt on Wednesday when the animal was picked up with the help of a catch-pole typically used to nab stray dogs.
‘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