AUSTRALIA
Man survives croc ordeal
A man has been rescued after a three-day ordeal trapped in a remote flooded fishing hut where he was stalked by 4m crocodiles, a report said yesterday. Terry Donovan, 65, was at the Staaten River Fishing and Wilderness Lodge in crocodile-infested northern Queensland when he became isolated this week, the Cairns Post said. He told the newspaper he saw huge saltwater crocs lurking in the water and was afraid that if the water rose much higher one of them might swim in and attack him. “The first one I saw was sitting out the back on the veranda in about a foot [30cm] of water, maybe a bit more,” he said. “I thought to myself: ‘Well, there’s a warning, there’s a crocodile there. Where there’s one, there’s probably two or three or more.’” The report said Donovan positioned himself in the highest place he could find, taking refuge on a billiard table which he packed with supplies. He was eventually spotted by a passing helicopter which had gone to check on him after he failed to answer his satellite phone. Officials then alerted local fishermen, who rescued him.
AUSTRALIA
Suspected hooker set on fire
A woman, reported to be a prostitute, was being treated in hospital for severe burns yesterday after a man set her on fire on an inner-city Sydney street, police said. “Police believe a man approached her and set her alight,” News South Wales State police said of the incident on Thursday evening in the city’s Chippendale area. “The woman was taken inside a nearby business and assisted by an employee who extinguished the flames.” ABC radio said she was a prostitute, and her colleagues at a nearby brothel heard her screaming and rushed out to douse the flames. Inspector Sam Crisafulli told the broadcaster the woman, 33, was in hospital in a critical, but stable condition with severe burns. “She is unfortunately not in a condition where she can tell us exactly what happened at this point in time,” he said. “Hopefully later on she’ll recover, but we don’t know whether she knew her attacker, whether it was random or what the motive is.”
CHINA
Alarm system installed
Beijing has installed a silent alarm system inside every house in a border town as part of a crackdown on fugitives from North Korea, a report said yesterday. The system is designed to let residents secretly send a signal to police if North Koreans come to their homes asking for help, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said. It can transmit dialogue between the owner of a house and visitors, and the authorities plan to expand it to other border areas, the agency said. “If you push the red button on the wall, a signal goes directly to a police station,” Yonhap quoted one man as saying. The man said he saw the device during a recent trip to see a relative in the Yanbian border area in Jilin Province.
SLOVAKIA
Men try to hijack tram
Two passengers on an early-morning tram in Bratislava threatened the driver with a gun on Thursday in a bid to change its destination. “Two men armed with a gun threatened the driver, claiming they did not like the tram’s direction,” Bratislava Transport Authority spokeswoman Agata Stanekova said. The driver called police, but the would-be hijackers got off the tram and escaped before they arrived, Stanekova said. Nobody was injured during the incident, she added. Bratislava’s public transport system — especially trams — underwent major itinerary changes as of Monday, requiring passengers to get used to new routes and schedules.
DENMARK
Lottery billions an error
Three hundred Danes believed a dream lifestyle of champagne and caviar awaited them this week after they were announced billionaire lottery winners — until they discovered it was a mistake. All 300 had received an email from the head of the state-run lottery company Danske Spil congratulating them on the astronomical sums they had won, Danske Spil spokesman Thomas Roersig said. “Three hundred of our lottery players who won the lottery, the Keno, received a message saying they had won a sum in the billions. And they never won that amount ... We are of course very sorry. We have now written to them to inform them of the sum that they really won,” Roersig said.
RUSSIA
Killer escapes by helicopter
A convicted killer broke out of a high-security prison with the help of a hijacked helicopter on Thursday, only to be caught hours later and 100km away headed toward Moscow in a taxi. Alexei Shestakov, 34, who was serving a 24-year sentence for murder, escaped by climbing a rope lowered by helicopter into the prison yard on Thursday morning in the Vologda region north of Moscow, local investigator Natalia Letenkova said. Prison guards shot at the fugitive as he was lifted skyward but missed their mark, she said. “The helicopter was hijacked along with the crew. With a gun to their heads the crew was forced to change course,” she said. The convict, who had served half his prison sentence, was caught hours later on the road to Moscow. Police were searching for his accomplices, who rented the helicopter and then forced the crew to take part in the prison break.
UNITED KINGDOM
Boy, 12, convicted of rioting
A boy who was aged 11 when he took part in last year’s London riots, becoming the youngest person to be prosecuted over the disorder, was given six months’ detention by a court on Thursday, police said. The youth, who is now aged 12, pleaded guilty to violent disorder after admitting that he kicked in a shop window causing ￡6,000 (US$9,500) damage during the mass looting in August last year, a Scotland Yard statement said. Security camera footage showed him encouraging others to join in the attempt to break into the florist in Romford, east London. He was later identified from CCTV images and arrested in February.
BRAZIL
Uniform stops truancy
Grade-school students are using uniforms embedded with a computer chip to let their parents know if they are in school or cutting classes. The education secretary of the northeastern city of Vitoria da Conquista says 20,000 students in 25 of the city’s 213 public schools started using T-shirts with the chips this week. Coriolano Moraes says that by the end of next year all 43,000 public school students in the city will be using the T-shirts. He said parents are told when their children enter school through a text message and are alerted if they do not show up within 20 minutes after classes begin.
BOLIVIA
Doctors remove huge tumor
Doctors said on Thursday they had successfully removed a 15kg tumor from a woman in her 35th week of pregnancy who had since given birth to a healthy girl. “We took out a tumor of 15kg and there were multiple cysts inside. The lady was a 25-year-old woman who was 35 weeks pregnant and this was her first pregnancy,” medical team leader Ariel Tapia said.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
RSS