AUSTRALIA
Man survives croc attack
A man searching for food in a river by a remote Aboriginal community has survived multiple bite wounds after a crocodile mauled his chest and arm, paramedics said yesterday. The 54-year-old was “collecting food in the local waterway” in Palumpa, 353km southwest of Darwin, on Tuesday afternoon when he was attacked, NT CareFlight Rescue Helicopter said. “He was able to fend off the crocodile which was 2m in length — a juvenile saltwater crocodile,” CareFlight’s David Wheeldon said. The man, who was not named, suffered multiple bites and was “bleeding a lot,” but was able to walk away from the Daly River and get someone to drive him to a local medical center, Wheeldon said. He was treated and then taken by CareFlight to the Royal Darwin Hospital, where he remains in a stable condition. “There was nothing out of the ordinary [in what the man was doing], it’s a natural hazard which has been there for thousands of years,” Wheeldon said. “He knew how to handle himself and luckily ... the community looked after him to get him to the care he needed.”
AUSTRALIA
Baby breastfed in Senate
A Greens senator made political history by becoming the first person to breastfeed a baby in the federal parliament. Larissa Waters on Tuesday returned to the Senate for the first time since giving birth to her second child and brought the baby in for a feed during a vote. “So proud that my daughter Alia is the first baby to be breastfed in the federal Parliament! We need more #women & parents in Parli,” she wrote on Twitter. Being able to breastfeed in the chamber follows new rules introduced last year to create a more a “family friendly” parliament in the wake of what has been described as a “baby boom” among politicians. Under previous rules, children were technically banned.
CHINA
Knife attack injures 18
Police in Changchun said 18 people were injured when a man attacked people on a city street with a knife. The Changchun police department said on its microblog that the 50-year-old suspect in Tuesday’s attack was taken into custody after being shot. It said none of the injuries were life-threatening and officers were looking further into any possible motivations. The police blog cited family members as saying that the suspect, Wang Yunwei (王運維), had formerly been hospitalized for mental health issues.
UNITED KINGDOM
Girl dies after park accident
An 11-year-old girl on Tuesday died in hospital after falling from a water ride during a school trip to a theme park, police said. The accident happened while she and classmates were on the “Splash Canyon” ride, described by Drayton Manor Park in central England as “the most unpredictable and thrilling of river rapid rides.” The young girl was rescued from the water by park employees before the emergency services arrived. She was then airlifted to hospital where she died of her injuries, police said. “Ambulance staff administered advanced life support before she was flown to Birmingham Children’s Hospital, with the doctor continuing treatment enroute. Unfortunately, shortly after arrival at hospital the girl passed away,” an ambulance spokesman said, without giving the girl’s name or details of her injuries. A visitor to the park, Fiona Fletcher, told the BBC she saw Drayton staff with “tears running down their face.”
UNITED STATES
Diddy sued by personal chef
Rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has been sued by a personal chef who says she worked long hours without extra pay and was made uneasy by serving meals after sex parties. Cindy Rueda sought an unspecified amount in damages for allegations — denied by Combs — that include sexual harassment and failure to pay overtime wages. Rueda said she sometimes worked from 9am to 2am as she cooked at the Los Angeles home of Combs, who was formerly known as Puff Daddy. The lawsuit filed on Monday in a Los Angeles court said the rapper would ask Rueda “to prepare and serve entrees and appetizers to him and his guests while Mr Combs and his guests were engaged in or immediately following sexual activity.” The lawsuit said she at least once “was summoned by Mr Combs to serve him a post-coital meal” in which he made suggestive remarks. On at least one other occasion, she said a naked male visitor entered the kitchen as she cooked and asked her “to look at and admire his genitals after he had engaged in sexual activity with another house guest.”
UNITED STATES
Teen eyes Twitter nuggets
A Twitter plea from a Nevada teen for a year of free chicken nuggets from Wendy’s is now the most retweeted post of all time. Carter Wilkerson last month asked the fast food chain on Twitter how many retweets it would take for him to get free nuggets for a year. Wendy’s replied, “18 million.” Wilkerson’s screenshot of the exchange has moved past Ellen DeGeneres’ viral tweet from the 2014 Oscars on Tuesday with more than 3.4 million retweets. Twitter on Tuesday confirmed the record to reporters. Wendy’s said Wilkerson has earned the nuggets despite not hitting the 18 million mark. Wilkerson appeared on DeGeneres’ show last month. She gave him a year’s worth of Ellen-branded underwear and a TV, but threatened to take the gifts back if he passed her.
UNITED STATES
Friendly deer licks shotgun
Some daring deer approached a group of hunters in central Indiana over the weekend and one was so unafraid that it licked the barrel of a shotgun and allowed one of the men to stroke its neck. Perhaps they knew the men were hoping to bag a turkey? Leon Champine said the young animals did not have their mother with them “to teach them what is dangerous.” Champine, of Indianapolis, told WXIN-TV that he and his friends encountered the inquisitive animals in Hendricks County. One of the men, Corey Cook, recorded video footage showing the deer wandering toward the camouflaged men who are hidden in the undergrowth. The video shows one nuzzling the barrel of a gun in the waning afternoon sunlight. Champine calls it a “once in a lifetime encounter.”
UNITED STATES
Escapee python back home
A 5.2m-long python that had caused concern in a community north of Anchorage, Alaska, since it went missing two weeks ago has returned home. Matanuska-Susitna Borough Animal Care reports that Sam slithered back into view on Monday in the living room of its owners’ home in the town of Meadow Lakes. Sam had attracted international media attention after it went missing 14 days ago. One of its owners told the borough’s Animal Care department that Sam was fed a 11kg rabbit before it disappeared. Animal Care Officer Darla Erskine reported that the owner did not know where Sam had been hiding. There are no wild snakes in most of Alaska.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
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