A crocodile took a dip in a luxury hotel pool in northeastern Australia last weekend, but failed to stir guests relaxing in the sun a few steps away.
Video posted on social media showed the juvenile carnivore lying on the bottom of the pool at the Sheraton Grand Mirage Resort in Port Douglas.
“I don’t want to alarm anyone, but there is a crocodile in the Sheraton pool,” TikTok user Lisa Keller said in a video showing the scaly predator.
Photo: Reuters
A handful of tourists could be seen taking it easy on sun lounges around the edge of the pool, although none ventured into the water.
“Not a single person cares,” Keller said.
The video matched images of the pool on the hotel’s Web site.
Hotel manager Joseph Amerio said the crocodile was spotted early on Saturday morning, and the pool was cordoned off until Queensland state wildlife officers removed it in the afternoon.
“At no time were guests and the baby animal in the pool at the same time,” he said.
State wildlife rangers “rehomed” the animal, and put up crocodile warning signs in the area, an environment department spokesperson said.
It was not immediately clear whether the animal was a saltwater or less aggressive freshwater crocodile.
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
EXTRADITION FEARS: The legislative changes come five years after a treaty was suspended in response to the territory’s crackdown on democracy advocates Exiled Hong Kong dissidents said they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the territory could put them in greater danger, adding that Hong Kong authorities would use any pretext to pursue them. An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to a government crackdown on the democracy movement and its imposition of a National Security Law. The British Home Office said that the suspension of the treaty made all extraditions with Hong Kong impossible “even if
Former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, best known for making a statement apologizing over World War II, died yesterday aged 101, officials said. Murayama in 1995 expressed “deep remorse” over the country’s atrocities in Asia. The statement became a benchmark for Tokyo’s subsequent apologies over World War II. “Tomiichi Murayama, the father of Japanese politics, passed away today at 11:28am at a hospital in Oita City at the age of 101,” Social Democratic Party Chairwoman Mizuho Fukushima said. Party Secretary-General Hiroyuki Takano said he had been informed that the former prime minister died of old age. In the landmark statement in August 1995, Murayama said