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.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
Africa has established the continent’s first space agency to boost Earth observation and data sharing at a time when a more hostile global context is limiting the availability of climate and weather information. The African Space Agency opened its doors last month under the umbrella of the African Union and is headquartered in Cairo. The new organization, which is still being set up and hiring people in key positions, is to coordinate existing national space programs. It aims to improve the continent’s space infrastructure by launching satellites, setting up weather stations and making sure data can be shared across
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