■AUSTRALIA
Jury split on terror verdict
A former Qantas Airways baggage handler may face retrial on a terrorism charge after a jury failed to agree yesterday on whether he had used the Internet to incite others to commit a terrorist act. The same New South Wales state Supreme Court jury convicted Sydney resident Belal Sadallah Khazaal, 38, on Wednesday of another charge of producing a do-it-yourself jihad book knowing it was connected with assisting in a terrorist act. But the jury were discharged yesterday after they told Justice Megan Latham they could not unanimously agree a verdict on a second charge related to the same 110-page book that Khazaal posted online in 2003.
■AUSTRALIA
Elusive frog found
A tiny frog species thought by many experts to be extinct has been rediscovered alive and well in a remote area of the Queensland state, researchers said yesterday. The 40mm Armoured Mistfrog had not been seen since 1991, and many experts assumed it had been wiped out by a devastating fungus that struck the northern state. But two months ago, a doctoral student at James Cook University in Townsville stumbled across what appeared to be several Armoured Mistfrogs in a creek, said professor Ross Alford, head of a research team on threatened frogs at the university. Conrad Hoskin, a researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra who has been studying the evolutionary biology of north Queensland frogs for the past 10 years, conducted DNA tests on tissue samples from the frogs and determined they were the elusive Armoured Mistfrog.
■JAPAN
Three murderers executed
Three death-row inmates were hanged yesterday, officials said, bringing the number of executions this year to 13 as the country steps up its pace in carrying out the death penalty. The inmates had been convicted of murder in separate cases, the justice ministry said. The government does not announce executions beforehand and carries out the hangings in secret. The ministry identified the executed prisoners as Yoshiyuki Mantani, 68, who stabbed several female teenagers in robberies before killing a 19-year-old; Mineteru Yamamoto, 68, who murdered and robbed a cousin and his wife; and Isamu Hirano, 61, who killed a manager and his wife at a ranch where he had worked.
■VIETNAM
Dead baby found in bag
Airport officials in Ho Chi Minh City said they found a dead baby in the suitcase of a passenger who was about to board a flight to Hanoi on Wednesday. Nguyen Van Quat of the airport authority said Vu Van Dat, 20, told investigators that the day-old baby girl belonged to one of his relatives and had died of natural causes shortly after it was born. Quat says Dat told them his relatives asked him take the body to the family’s home village in Thanh Hoa province, some 160km south of Hanoi. The case has been turned over to local police.
■CHINA
Principal executed for rape
A primary school principal was executed in Gansu Province after being convicted of raping and sexually abusing 39 girls during an 18-year reign of terror, state press said yesterday. Luo Yanlin, 48, was executed on Wednesday — National Teacher’s Day in China, the Lanzhou Morning Post reported. Luo was sentenced for raping and sexually abusing 39 girls aged seven to 14 when he worked at three schools in the province between 1988 and 2006, it said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Cat returns nine years on
A couple have been reunited with their missing cat after nine years, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) said on Wednesday. Dixie, a 15-year-old ginger cat, disappeared in 1999 and her owners thought she had been killed by a car. She was found less than a kilometer from her home in Birmingham after a concerned resident called the animal charity to report a thin and disheveled cat that had been in the area for a couple of months. RSPCA animal collection officer Alan Pittaway checked her microchip and confirmed it was Dixie. She was returned to her owners, Alan and Gilly Delaney, within half an hour. “In 29 years of working for the RSPCA I have never seen anyone so excited and happy as Mrs Delaney,” Pittaway said. “It made my day to return Dixie to her owners.”
■GERMANY
Emergency slips into luxury
Emergency patients in the German city of Stuttgart will be rushed to hospital with extra speed and style after the fire brigade added two custom-made luxury Porsche SUVs to its fleet. Each Cayenne model, worth about 70,000 euros (US$97,500), is equipped with a siren that Porsche says can be better heard by drivers and pedestrians and clears the roads faster.
■UAE
Ramadan TV drama axed
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has stopped a Ramadan soap opera after complaints in Saudi Arabia that it was stoking ancient tribal rivalries, Arab media reported this week. The UAE official news agency WAM said on Monday that President Khalifa bin Zayed had ordered Abu Dhabi Television to end broadcasts of Saadoun al-Awajy, which had been running nightly throughout the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Saudi-owned Web site Elaph said a Saudi official visited the UAE on Monday with a letter from King Abdullah asking that the historical drama, set from 1750 to 1830, be canceled following lobbying by descendents of tribesman depicted in the serial.
■LEBANON
Oyster lunch yields pearls
Restaurant owner Raymond Salha and his wife were having oysters for lunch when she made a stunning discovery — a cluster of 26 pearls inside an oyster on her plate. The find 10 days ago at his Al-Fanar Restaurant in the southern port city of Tyre was a “total surprise,” Salha said on Wednesday. It was one of about 200 oysters they had cooked that day at the restaurant. As his wife opened the shell, she let out a gasp and said, “Look at this oyster, there are lots of pearls in it,” Salha said. Salha called the city’s maritime museum, which sent a team that took the oyster — and the pearls still inside it — away for verification. The oyster and pearls have been returned for display at the restaurant.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Brown out of touch: poll
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was dealt a fresh blow yesterday as a new poll showed he was increasingly out of touch with the average voter. The Populus survey for the Times uses a scale of zero to 10, representing the political left to the right. Respondents were asked to rate themselves and the prime minister. Brown was rated at 4.58, a slide to the left of 0.58 compared to a year ago, while the average voter is 5.17, against 5.33 last year. He can take solace, however, in the fact that he is closer to the average voter than opposition Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who is rated as 5.88, a shift to the right of 0.25 over the past year.
■UNITED STATES
Toilets to fuel San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas, unveiled a deal on Tuesday that will make it the first US city to harvest methane gas from human waste on a commercial scale and turn it into clean-burning fuel. San Antonio residents produce about 140,000 tonnes a year of a substance gently referred to as “biosolids,” which can be reprocessed into natural gas, said Steve Clouse, chief operating officer of the city’s water system. “You may call it something else,” Clouse said, but for area utilities, the main byproduct of human waste — methane gas — will soon be converted into natural gas to burn in their power plants.
■UNITED STATES
Firefighter resuscitates cat
A lucky cat owes one of its nine lives to a firefighter who revived it with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Al Machado rescued the cat from a burning apartment on Tuesday, telling the Standard Times of New Bedford, Massachusetts, that he saw immediately that it needed air. Machado began performing mouth to mouth on the animal as he carried it outside. Video shot at the scene shows Machado bent over, breathing into the cat’s mouth several times. The cat, a tiger angora, was revived and resting comfortably soon after. No humans were injured in the fire.
■UNITED STATES
‘Twist’ is No. 1 song
How’s this for a twist: Of all the No. 1 songs in the 50 years of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, Chubby Checker’s The Twist ranks as the most popular single. Elvis and the Beatles did not even make the top five. Checker’s ranking may come as a surprise to some, but not to the classic rocker. “I’m glad they’ve finally recognized it,” said Checker of his early 1960s hit. He compared The Twist — named by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock ‘n’ roll — to the creation of the telephone as a groundbreaking moment, because he said it was the first time people were dancing “apart to the beat.” Santana’s Smooth, featuring Rob Thomas, is the No. 2 most popular, followed by Bobby Darin’s Mack the Knife, Leann Rimes’ How Do I Live and The Macarena by Los Del Rio.
■CANADA
Bear attacks fisherman
A man is recovering in the hospital after a black bear swam across a river, climbed onto a dock, jumped on a boat and attacked him. Conservation officer Gord Hitchcock said on Wednesday the 52-year-old man was fishing at a marina in a tiny coastal community off the Pacific coast when the bear mauled him. Hitchcock says people tried to help the man using hooked poles, knives and a hammer to pull the bear off of him. Fire Chief Dan Tennant said he had never heard of such an incident in an area where the bears are normally docile. Tennant said the man’s friends managed to kill the bear.
■PERU
Fetus found in tomb
Archeologists say they have discovered the jawbone of a fetus among the remains of a sacrificed woman in a pre-Inca tomb, suggesting the Lambayeque culture practiced the atypical sacrifice of pregnant women and their children. The remains of the woman and unborn child were found with three other sacrificed women and several llamas, lead archeologist Carlos Wester La Torre said. The sacrifice of a pregnant woman was “very unusual,” archeologist Walter Alva said. “So this could represent a sacrifice for a very important religious event,” he said.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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