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.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
A former flight attendant for a Canadian airline posed as a commercial pilot and as a current flight attendant to obtain hundreds of free flights from US airlines, authorities said on Tuesday. Dallas Pokornik, 33, of Toronto, was arrested in Panama after being indicted on wire fraud charges in US federal court in Hawaii in October last year. He pleaded not guilty on Tuesday following his extradition to the US. Pokornik was a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019, then used fake employee identification from that carrier to obtain tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants on three other
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