■AUSTRALIA
Pelican bites weatherman
A weatherman has found himself the butt of his colleagues’ jokes after a pelican repeatedly bit his backside during a live broadcast. Steve Jacobs of Channel 9’s Today Show was describing pelicans at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo before his national weather report earlier this month when one of the birds lunged at him. Jacobs kept broadcasting, but the pelican attacked again, pecking his behind until a zoo staffer pulled the bird off the weatherman, who was both screaming and laughing. Jacobs wasn’t hurt, but he had to endure his co-workers’ teasing. Host Karl Stefanovic quipped: “Not the first time he’s been pinched in the butt by a bird.” The video has become a YouTube hit.
■THAILAND
Dogs outperform scanners
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Tuesday he had ordered the military to stop buying a British-made bomb scanner after tests proved it performed worse than a sniffer dog. Abhisit said the country had already spent at least US$21 million on between 700 and 800 of the detectors since 2003. “We consider that a sniffer dog is better than the GT200,” Abhisit told reporters. “Therefore there will be no additional purchases of this machine.” Tests on the GT200 were conducted by Thailand’s science ministry over the weekend following warnings by the British government and showed the scanner detected bombs in only four out of 20 cases. The detectors had already been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, but Britain has since banned them.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Bogus charities uncovered
Criminal gangs have defrauded people out of funds intended for Haiti earthquake victims by setting up bogus charities and seeking contributions online, according to a BBC investigation released on Tuesday. Scam e-mails began appearing online within days of the Jan. 12 earthquake, including some with logos for genuine charities. One for the British Red Cross was traced to a computer in Nigeria, the BBC reported. Another group, calling itself the M E Foundation, emailed the BBC photos of Haiti projects it said it was involved with — but which turned out to be of disaster relief activities from the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. British charity SOS Children said the photos were cut and pasted from their Web site. “The problem is it’s not just about exploiting a donor or a charity, really they’re exploiting the victims,” its boss Andrew Cates said. Another scam email was sent by a charity calling itself Help the World — when the BBC called the mobile number it gave, its reporter was told it focused on repairing schools. But the London address given turned out to be a jazz and blues bar, it said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Low-carbon Lent touted
Several prominent Anglican British bishops are urging Christians to keep their carbon consumption in check this Lent. The 40-day period of penitence before Easter typically sees observant Catholics, Anglicans and Orthodox Christians give up meat, alcohol or chocolate. But this year’s initiative aims to convince those observing Lent to try a day without an iPod or mobile phone in a bid to reduce the use of electricity — and thus trim the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere. Bishop of London Reverend Richard Chartres said that the poorest people in developing countries were the hardest hit by man-made climate change. He said on Tuesday that the “Carbon Fast” was “an opportunity to demonstrate the love of God in a practical way.”
■COLOMBIA
‘Dead’ woman wakes up
Funeral home workers in Cali received the shock of a lifetime when an apparently dead 45-year-old woman suddenly started breathing and moving as they prepared her for burial. Local media said the women had been declared clinically dead at a medical facility on Tuesday after having been hospitalized in serious condition with a neurological condition a day earlier. “The instruments the patient was connected to gave no blood pressure or heart rate readings,” said Miguel Angel Saavedra, a doctor at the clinic where the woman was treated. Medical staff at the facility signed the women’s death certificate and her body was transferred to a funeral home to be prepared for burial. But, in a case of what physicians call “Lazarus Syndrome,” the woman was not actually dead.
■CANADA
Ex-chaplain charged
The military’s former chief chaplain was charged on Tuesday for buggery and indecent assault on a man in 1972, the military police said. Retired brigadier-general Roger Bazin was charged under the civilian criminal justice system for alleged crimes at Canadian Forces Base Borden, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service said. At the time, Bazin held the rank of captain. He would later become chaplain general, the head of the military chaplaincy, from 1992 to 1995. “These types of alleged acts, if proven, are illegal and represent unacceptable conduct,” Colonel Tim Grubb, the Canadian Forces’ provost marshal, said in a statement.
■UNITED STATES
Funeral home dead wrong
A Denver, Colorado funeral home that mistakenly switched the bodies of two women, burying and then exhuming one, will be allowed to continue operating under a state agreement calling for three years of probation. Pipkin Mortuary admitted on Tuesday in an agreement with the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies that there had been a “mix-up” with the handling of the bodies, causing it to bury Imogene Jackson on Jan. 29. The agreement did not detail how the mistake happened. Mortuary owner J. Mark Pipkin did not immediately return a call for comment. He previously said that “human error resulted in a mistake” and apologized to the families involved. Jackson’s body was exhumed after her family told the mortuary another woman was in her casket during a Jan. 29 viewing.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Data on cheaters shocking
A British dating Web site revealed on Tuesday that half of the unfaithful men it polled for a survey on affairs admitted to having a fling with a friend’s wife or girlfriend. The poll conducted by Internet dating company www.benaughty.com showed that of the more than 5,000 men it surveyed who admitted to being unfaithful, a staggering 46.9 percent said they had had a fling with a friend’s wife or girlfriend. “It’s a remarkable figure and well above what we would have thought,” benaughty.com Marketing Manager Sean Wood said in a statement. “Attractions develop very easily between men and women who see each other often, in the same circles. And it is often easier to be together without arousing any suspicions.” The survey was conducted amid a frenzy of tabloid newspaper reporting on former England soccer captain John Terry. Terry was stripped of the captaincy after allegations in the British media that he had had an extramarital affair with the former girlfriend of England team mate Wayne Bridge, who was a club mate of his at Chelsea before joining Manchester City last year.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
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