UNITED STATES
Cat crawls from grave
Bart the cat was hit by a car, buried and crawled back from the dead. Earlier this month, a car hit the one-and-a-half-year-old cat in Tampa, Florida. Bart’s owner, Owner Ellis, was so distraught that he could not stand the thought of burying him, so he asked a neighbor to dig a shallow grave. Five days later, on Jan. 21, a matted and injured Bart emerged, meowing for food. “At first it blew me away,” said Dusty Albritton, the neighbor who buried Bart. “All I knew was this cat was dead and Pet Sematary is real.” Bart had a broken jaw, a ruptured eye and a torn-up face. He was dehydrated and hungry, but alive. Hutson did not know what to do. “It was unbelievable,” he told the Tampa Bay Times. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” On Tuesday, the cat underwent surgery to remove an eye, wire his jaw shut and insert a feeding tube, which cost more than US$1,000, but it was expected to recover in about six weeks.
UNITED STATES
‘Mr Incredible’ convicted
A man who dresses as the comic superhero Mr Incredible has been sentenced to three years probation after pleading guilty to attacking a woman costumed as Batgirl in a Hollywood Boulevard turf dispute, prosecutors said on Tuesday. Muhammet Bilik, 35, was also ordered to attend anger management therapy, perform 20 days of roadside cleanup and stay away from the so-called Hollywood Entertainment District where the spat erupted. Prosecutors say Bilik attacked the woman clad as Batgirl, whose civilian identity was not revealed by authorities, following a disagreement over sidewalk territory along a stretch of Hollywood Boulevard. A video of the incident captured by a passerby and posted on YouTube shows Bilik, in his Mr Incredible costume, slamming Batgirl into a rack of souvenir baseball caps as Chewbacca and Freddy Krueger characters try to intervene.
LITHUANIA
Caiman finds new home
A baby caiman has found a new home at a zoo after its previous owner tried to sell it online, apparently upon realizing that the reptile was not a harmless lizard. Officials at the national zoo in Kaunas said authorities confiscated the caiman from a student who had posted an ad for a large lizard. They said the student had kept it for several months, but stunned by how fast it was growing, decided to get rid of it. Local law prohibits raising dangerous animals at home. The 1.3kg, 63cm caiman, named “Croc,” was handed to the zoo, where visitors could see it for the first time on Wednesday.
UNITED STATES
Cemetery to restrict access
New Orleans’ oldest cemetery will soon be closed to visitors without an official escort or familial ties to the deceased, the result of a spate of vandalism that has included the tomb of voodoo queen Marie Laveau. Vandalism is not a new problem at Laveau’s tomb and others at St Louis Cemetery No. 1, which dates to the late 1700s. However, the defacement, which includes X’s written in marker on the Laveau tomb as part of a local ritual for good luck, has accelerated in recent months, said Sarah McDonald, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, which owns the cemetery. “It became apparent that we needed to take some action to protect the sanctity of the space, as well as the historic nature of the cemetery,” she said. In one particularly egregious incident last year, someone broke into the cemetery and painted the entire Laveau tomb pink, triggering a tedious restoration, McDonald said.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was