■ AUSTRALIA
Amorous stag gores man
A man was gored in the thigh on Friday by an amorous stag after entering a deer paddock in the middle of the breeding season. The 26-year-old worker at the tourist farm near Sydney ignored signs on the paddock gate warning people to keep out and was charged by the stag, the husband of the farm’s owner said. “It was the middle of the rut, that is why the animal was acting like it did,” Barry Hibbard said. The man, who was apparently trying to feed some grass cuttings to the deer, was taken to a hospital after the incident and was expected to be sent home later on Friday. Hibbard said the animal was usually very docile, but did not take kindly to the intrusion of another male into its territory.
■ AUSTRALIA
Kangaroos to be killed
Hundreds of kangaroos will be culled at a former naval site near Sydney after the defense department said plans to relocate the animals fell through. The department called off the cull of about 400 eastern gray kangaroos earlier this year after a public outcry, but said it now had no option but to call in contractors to kill the animals. The federal government had withdrawn support for a plan to relocate the kangaroos because it would cost millions of dollars and was not considered an effective use of taxpayers’ money, the department said. The cull is expected to begin immediately and take a few weeks.
■ JAPAN
Mini-helicopter to take flight
A man who developed the world’s smallest helicopter will take flight in the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci in tribute to the Renaissance genius’ original idea. Gennai Yanagisawa, 75, said on Thursday that a demonstration flight of his one-man helicopter is planned in the city of Vinci, near Florence, Italy, next Sunday. Yanagisawa developed the GEN H-4 helicopter — with rotors, a chair, footrest and handle bar — in the late 1990s. “The concept of my helicopter comes from Italy, and I’ve always wanted to fly it in da Vinci’s birthplace,” Yanagisawa said from Matsumoto, where he runs an electronics equipment company. Yanagisawa said Vinci Mayor Dario Parrini offered him an opportunity to fly his helicopter when the two met in the Italian city in February. Although the 75kg helicopter can ascend up to 150m, Yanagisawa said he will fly 5m above ground during his three, 10-minute demonstrations “so the audience can see me and enjoy the flight.” Yanagisawa has sold five GEN H-4s in Japan and two in the US for recreational use. The helicopters sell for about ¥6 million (US$57,140). “I hope someday this can be used just like a scooter,” he said.
■ SINGAPORE
Mother arrested, son dead
The mother of a 13-year-old boy was arrested for allegedly killing him after she was found unconscious and bleeding with cuts on her wrists in the bedroom she shared with her son, news reports said yesterday. On the same mattress, Tan Eu-Jin, 13, was lying unconscious, the Straits Times said. Eu-Jin was rushed to Tan Tock Seng Hospital but died 40 minutes later. The boy’s grandparents, who lived with the mother and son, found the 36-year-old woman and boy in the room and called for an ambulance. The mother, who reportedly suffered from depression, was hospitalized on Friday under the watch of police officers. Police were investigating how the boy died. They were seen picking tablet wrappers from a rubbish bin by the family’s flat, the report said. Neighbors said they were shocked as the mother and boy appeared “very close” and seemed happy.
■ ALBANIA
Cat, mouse cut power
A cat chasing a mouse in Tirana’s main power station caused a 72-hour blackout across parts of the capital, the electricity company said on Friday. “A cat and a mouse ran into the high-voltage cables,” a company spokeswoman said, showing pictures of the electrocuted animals. “We took pictures because we’ve never had anything like this.” Locals complain bitterly about the power cuts that have plagued them for decades and are mostly blamed on drought and the dilapidation of the communist-era grid. Most homes and shops in Tirana rely on petrol generators.
■ AUSTRIA
Monks celebrate major deal
Monks hailed a “miracle” on Friday as they released an album of Gregorian chants under the same record label as Amy Winehouse and Eminem. The Cistercian monks were signed up by Universal Music — beating more than 200 entries from around the world — after they sent in a YouTube video in response to its international advertisement for a choir. “I did not even know what Universal Music was. For us it is like a miracle,” said the order’s Father Karl as the CD Chant — Music for Paradise went on sale in Germany and Austria ahead of a wider international release.
■ DENMARK
Minister repays expenses
The finance minister said on Friday he would pay 12,758 Danish crowns (US$2,650) to charity in amends for expenses he filed from 1998 for cigarettes and visits to casinos and discotheques. Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a statement he had hired accountants to identify expenses filed while he was in local government and later serving as interior and health minister that “today could seem a little awry.” An official audit has cleared Lokke Rasmussen of wrongdoing. Lokke Rasmussen — seen as prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s heir apparent — ordered his own audit after several months of bickering with a former political ally in local government about his expenses.
■ LIBYA
Qaddafi berates EU
President Muammar Qaddafi has accused European states of killing hundreds of African migrants by deliberately sinking their boats to stop them reaching Europe. “This tragedy is unfolding. A war on the Mediterranean sea is being waged against Africans,” Qaddafi told leaders of African trade unions he met in Tripoli late on Thursday. It was the first time he had made such allegations and he did not name any country in particular. The EU’s executive Commission declined to comment. Migrant advocacy groups say many migrants die from starvation or drown after overloaded boats sink. “Europe seeks to defend itself and is doing anything it can to prevent migrants from reaching Europe. So they hit the boat and then announce all the people on board died,” he said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
'Moob' ogling sparks debate
A British court ruling that it is legal to ogle a man’s chest, but not a woman’s breasts, triggered a lively online debate about censorship on Friday. The case emerged after a court last year found Kevin Bassett, 44, guilty under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act after he secretly filmed a man in his swimming trunks at a swimming pool. But lawyers for the care home worker argued that the man’s chest did not constitute “private parts” under the act, which referred only to women’s breasts. This was the case even if the man in question was obese and had “man breasts” or “moobs,” the Daily Telegraph quoted them as saying.
■ UNITED STATES
Pythons colonize Florida
Giant pythons capable of swallowing a dog and even an alligator are rapidly making south Florida their home, potentially threatening other southeastern states, a study said on Thursday. “Pythons are likely to colonize anywhere alligators live, including north Florida, Georgia and Louisiana,” said Frank Mazzotti, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences professor, in his two-year study. From 2002 to 2005, 201 of the beasts were caught by state authorities, but in the last two years the number has more than doubled to 418, Mazzotti said in his study published on the university Web site.
■ UNITED STATES
Two charged in organ case
The former head of the cadaver program at the University of California, Los Angeles and a businessman were indicted on Friday on eight felony counts involving black market sales of donated human body parts in a scheme that allegedly cheated the university out of more than US$1 million. Henry Reid, the former director of UCLA’s willed body program, allegedly sold body parts to businessman Ernest Nelson, who then resold them to medical, pharmaceutical and hospital research companies.
■ CANADA
Church ordains gay pastor
A Lutheran church said it was to ordain its first gay pastor, who is married to another man, at a ceremony on Friday evening, despite likely sanctions for breaking church teachings. “The people of Holy Cross have issued a call to Lionel Ketola to serve as associate pastor,” the Toronto-area church said on its Web site. It said the ordination is “in violation of the ELCIC’s [Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada] discriminatory policy of excluding ‘self-declared and practicing homosexuals’ from the office of ordained ministry,” but they would ordain him nonetheless.
■ MEXICO
Head dumped in Monterrey
Suspected drug hit men dumped the head of a murdered man on top of a car in the street, police said on Friday, in a rare outrage in the wealthy city of Monterrey. The head, found on Thursday night on the roof of a car parked in a middle-class residential area, had a written message next to it signed by the Gulf cartel, the country’s most violent drug organization. The ears were chopped off, a senior state police officer told reporters on condition of anonymity. Mexican drug gangs, engaged in a bitter fight with each other and security forces, often behead opponents to scare rival traffickers but this was the first such decapitation in Monterrey, home to large corporations and a wealthy business elite.
■ MEXICO
Fake agents free men
A group of men pretending to be federal police agents helped six alleged drug-trafficking hit men escape from a prison on Friday. Veracruz state prison director Zeferino Tejeda said prison officials told authorities that a group of men dressed as federal police and carrying official documents walked into the prison and said they had orders to move the six men to Mexico City. Prison officials said they discovered later that it was all a setup. Officials are searching for the fugitive prisoners, and authorities are investigating further to ensure no prison employees were involved in the escape. All six escapees were arrested in March of last year as they allegedly attempted to kidnap a businessman.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
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