■AUSTRALIA
Six-year-old evades police
A six-year-old boy evaded a major police search involving sniffer dogs and air support by hiding in his friend’s house overnight, officials said yesterday. The Melbourne boy went missing after playing outside his house on Wednesday evening, prompting a frantic hunt by police, neighbors and emergency services, and a media alert. Police combed parks and shopping centers, and the shores of a nearby lake. However, the boy emerged unhurt from his nine-year-old neighbor’s bedroom early yesterday. “He was located at another premises close to where he lives. Inquiries are still pending in that regard, but we understand the child may have been hiding from police,” Inspector Geoffrey Davey said. “We believe it may have been children misunderstanding the actual circumstance of what they were portraying to police and unfortunately it’s led to a long, involved search by police overnight.”
■AUSTRALIA
Cheesy snack killer jailed
A woman was jailed for 25 years yesterday for running down and killing a man who threw cheesy snacks at her car. Sarah May Ward, 38, became “incensed” when 21-year-old Eli Westlake hurled Cheese Balls at her car late one night and drove straight at him, dragging him below the vehicle and then crashing down a stairwell. “She was not provoked, but incensed by the fact that she had been humiliated, as she saw it ... she clearly wanted to teach the young men a lesson,” Justice Roderick Howie told New South Wales Supreme Court. Ward, who had been drinking and taking drugs, was found guilty last month after blaming her shoes for her erratic driving.
■INDONESIA
Workers go on rampage
Thousands of furious factory workers set fire to cars and a warehouse yesterday after an Indian company executive called them “stupid,” police and media reports said. Nine people were reportedly injured when workers went on the rampage at a factory belonging to P.T. Drydock World Graha in Batam City, a special economic area south of Singapore. “An Indian company executive called us, Indonesian workers, ‘stupid’ and this made us very angry,” a worker called Disra was quoted as saying by Antara news agency. About 400 police were called to the scene and they evacuated 41 unidentified foreign staff from the seaside factory in boats, Antara reported. Up to 20 cars were set alight, along with a warehouse belonging to the company.
■NEW ZEALAND
Rare gecko sighted
The country’s largest gecko has been seen on one of the main islands for the first time in almost a century — unfortunately, dead in a mousetrap, an official said yesterday. The Duvaucel’s gecko — which can grow more than 30cm long — was found at the Maungatautari wildlife reserve in North Island’s northern Waikato region. Maungatautari ecologist Chris Smuts-Kennedy told the Waikato Times newspaper the death of the gecko was a cruel irony, but that this meant the reserve may be home to more members of the species. The only confirmed populations of the gecko, which can live up to 50 years, are on predator-free offshore islands. The reptile is vulnerable to attacks by pests, especially rats. The last time the gecko was seen on the mainland was thought to have been in the 1920s in the Thames area, southeast of Auckland, Smuts-Kennedy said.
■BOLIVIA
Morales under fire
President Evo Morales was under fire on Wednesday for suggesting at a global climate change summit that eating hormone-injected chicken could provoke male deviance. Bolivia’s opposition and homosexual groups criticized comments made by Morales at the first “people’s conference” on climate change the previous day, in which he said that chicken producers inject birds with female hormones and “when men eat those chickens, they experience deviances in being men.” The Bolivian president also suggested that the European diet made men go bald. The president of Argentina’s homosexual community, Cesar Cigliutti, said: “It’s an absurdity to think that eating hormone-containing chicken can change the sexual orientation of a person. By following that reasoning, if we put male hormones in a chicken and we make a homosexual eat it, he will transform into a heterosexual.
■LEBANON
Psychic avoids beheading
A Lebanese TV psychic, who was condemned to death for witchcraft by a Saudi court while visiting the country, will not be beheaded, his lawyer said on Wednesday. May al-Khansa said the Saudi ambassador in Beirut informed the Lebanese justice minister that the execution of Ali Sibat would not take place. “He confirmed to me that there will be no execution,” al-Khansa said about her conversation with Ibrahim Najjar, Lebanon’s justice minister. Sibat is one of scores of people reported arrested every year in the kingdom on charges of practicing sorcery, witchcraft, black magic and fortunetelling, which are considered to be polytheism by the country’s ultraconservative judiciary. He was arrested by the Saudi religious police while making a pilgrimage in May 2008 and sentenced to death last November on charges of practicing witchcraft. Sibat, 49, made predictions on a satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Cameron egged on
Prime ministerial candidate David Cameron had an egg thrown at him at an election event in Cornwall on Wednesday and later joked it was “the first of the campaign.” Television footage showed a young man wearing a grey hooded top throwing the egg toward the Conservative leader as he left Cornwall College’s Saltash campus where he had been talking to students. A Conservative party spokesman said the egg had brushed Cameron’s shoulder. Cameron said afterwards: “Now I know which came first, the chicken not the egg,” local media reports said. In 2006, Cameron’s call for more understanding of why young people commit crime became famously dubbed by his critics as the “hug a hoodie” policy.
■RUSSIA
Scientology texts banned
Prosecutors said on Wednesday that texts and recordings by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard had been ruled “extremist” and would be banned. The ban relates to 28 books and audio-video discs containing lectures by Hubbard, a US science fiction author who founded Scientology in 1954, the statement said. The ruling was the latest blow to the Church of Scientology, an organization that some countries treat as a legitimate faith but that others consider a cult designed to trick members out of large sums of money. The ban on the Scientology materials was imposed by a court in the city of Surgut in Siberia, which decided they should be added to a list of literature banned in Russia for extremist content, the statement said.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
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
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
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