■AUSTRALIA
Toilet glue pranksters sought
Police and civic leaders yesterday appealed for help catching pranksters who glued a man to a public toilet seat, forcing an embarrassing rescue by ambulance officers. A 58-year-old was taken to hospital with the toilet seat still attached to his behind after he used a booby-trapped convenience in a shopping center in Cairns on Saturday. Police investigating the incident made a public appeal for help finding the joker, while furious city officials described the stunt as a “sick joke.” “I’m disgusted that a gentleman has had to go through that because someone thinks it’s funny — it’s a sick joke,” Cairns City Council community safety committee chair Di Forsyth told the Australian Associated Press.
■AUSTRALIA
Post sets weight limit
Workers too heavy for the motorbikes that Australia Post uses to deliver letters will be taken off the road until they get below 100kg, the company said on Sunday. “It’s about how to ensure we’ve got a consistent approach, how riders can be safe and continue riding the bikes,” Australia Post spokesman Alex Twomey told the Daily Telegraph. The too-heavy riders will be redeployed to the sorting office or on walking routes. The union claims the weight restriction breaks anti-discrimination laws and has pledged court action to challenge it. Communications Workers Union spokesman Cameron Thiele said Australia Post should get bigger motorbikes rather than insist on smaller postal workers.
■INDONESIA
Thieves kill tiger at zoo
A group of thieves killed an endangered tiger at an Indonesian zoo and stole most of its body, zoo officials said on Sunday, a theft police suspect was motivated by the animal’s valuable fur and bones. The remains of the female Sumatran tiger were found by staff on Saturday at the Taman Rimba Zoo in Jambi Province on Sumatra island, zoo director Adrianis said. “It was sadistic,” Adrianis said of the attack. “The killers left only its intestines in the cage.” Posma Lubis, lead detective for the Jambi police department, said they were searching for the perpetrators.
■HONG KONG
Group targets disposables
A green organization yesterday called for a levy on disposable cups and cutlery after revealing McDonald’s had given away about 400 million such items during lunchtimes alone in the last three years. Green Senses is demanding the government introduce a levy of US$0.06 on every item given to customers in a bid to force the fast-food chain to cut down on the number it uses. The environmental group based its estimate on a survey, which had tracked 50 of the McDonald’s outlets in the administrative region since 2006.
■VIETNAM
Elephant tusks found
Customs inspectors have discovered more than 2 tonnes of elephant tusks hidden in a shipping container full of snail shells from Kenya, an official said yesterday. Bui Hoang Duong, head of the customs inspection department at the northern port of Haiphong, said inspectors opened the container on Friday as part of enhanced scrutiny of shipping from Tanzania because of recent cases of ivory smuggling. The container’s waybill said it had been loaded by a Vietnamese carrier, Vinashin Mariner, in the Tanzanian port of Zanjiba. The elephant tusks were cut into three to four pieces and hidden in the middle of thousands of packages of snail shells. A total of 326 pieces of ivory were found in the container.
■GERMANY
T-rex was a coward: study
Forget the movie image of Tyrannosaurus rex engaged in battle with other brutes his own size. In fact, T-rex was a cowardly bully who preferred to pick on runts who were no match for him, a team of German scientists said. Fossil evidence collected by researchers led by Oliver Rauhut, a palaeontologist at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, indicates that Tyrannosaurus tended to go after juvenile plant-eating weaklings who were far smaller and no match. “Unlike their adult and well-armed relatives these young animals hardly posed any risk to the predators,” Rauhut said. “And their tender bones would have added important minerals to a theropod’s diet.” In a news release announcing the surprise findings, he said: “Animals such as T-rex are often seen as the perfect ‘killing machines’ with extremely powerful bites ... but the very few fossils that reflect the hunt of predatory dinosaurs on large herbivores tell a tale of failure — the prey either got away, or both prey and predator were killed.”
■IRAN
Review nuke policy: Tehran
Tehran told world powers yesterday they must stop working against its atomic drive and instead adopt a policy of interaction with the Islamic republic to resolve the nuclear crisis. “It is the right time for the other parties to review their policy. Rather than countering Iran, they should interact with Iran,” foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi told reporters. Ghashghavi also dismissed threats of additional sanctions on Iran if it fails to abide by international demands to halt uranium enrichment, a process which makes fuel for nuclear plants but can also be diverted to make the core of an atomic bomb. “Past experience has shown that sanctions are futile. Sanctions will not prevent us from pursuing our legal rights,” he said.
■EGYPT
Israel envoy summoned
Egypt summoned the Israeli charge d’affaires on Sunday to protest the cross-border shooting of an Egyptian security officer by an Israeli patrol this month, a foreign ministry statement said. The Israeli embassy confirmed the charge d’affaires, Shani Cooper-Zubida, had been summoned but did not give details. The foreign ministry statement said Egypt formed a team to investigate the wounding in the middle of this month of the 21-year-old conscript and when “the mistake from the Israeli side” was confirmed, the ministry issued the summons. It said the charge d’affaires was informed about “Egypt’s strong condemnation represented in this irresponsible Israeli behavior on the border” and said Egypt requested an apology from the Israeli government. The Israeli military said the soldiers on patrol mistook the Egyptian for an enemy infiltrator.
■JORDAN
King talks to Netanyahu
King Abdullah II on Sunday telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to urge him to create conditions conducive to the two-state solution, a statement from the Jordanian royal court said. The two leaders discussed “efforts under way to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of the two-state vision and within a regional perspective that leads to comprehensive and durable peace in the region,” the statement said. The monarch urged Netanyahu to “work intensively to create the conditions conducive to the re-launching of serious and effective negotiations at the earliest possible time and in accordance with the agreed references, particularly the Arab peace initiative,” it added.
■UNITED STATES
Keyboardist Knechtel dies
Larry Knechtel, a Grammy award-winning keyboard artist who accompanied leading musicians and combos from Elvis Presley and Ray Charles to Elvis Costello and the Dixie Chicks, has died at 69. Knechtel died on Thursday at a hospital in Yakima, Washington, of an apparent heart attack. Knechtel performed live and in studio recordings with a wide range of artists, including Neil Diamond, Randy Newman, Ray Charles, The Beach Boys, The Doors, Elvis Presley, Hank Williams Jr and Elvis Costello. He earned a Grammy for his arrangement of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, played keyboard on the Dixie Chicks’ Grammy award-winning album Taking the Long Way and performed on the group’s tour of the same name.
■UNITED STATES
Cars hit plane on freeway
The Federal Aviation Administration said a small airplane was struck by three vehicles just after it made an emergency landing on a California freeway. Agency spokesman Ian Gregor says the Piper PA-24 Comanche with two people on board was bound for Santa Barbara Airport on Sunday when the pilot told air traffic controllers he had no fuel remaining and landed on the southbound side of US Highway 101, about 1.6km northeast of the airport. California Highway Patrol Officer James Richards says three cars were unable to avoid the plane and crashed into it. The occupants of the plane and the cars were not injured.
■CHILE
Sea lions dying en masse
At least 200 sea lions have been found dead along the country’s northern coast near Iquique. The national fishing service says many of the dead apparently are young sea lions abandoned when their mothers were drawn too far offshore hunting food. It says the El Nino phenomenon has made prey scarce near shore. Environmental groups said on Saturday they suspect a local molybdenum plant or other industry may be to blame.
■UNITED STATES
French teens killed in crash
Two French teenagers were killed and five other French nationals were injured when the driver of their van fell asleep, causing the vehicle to veer off the road and roll over, the California Highway Patrol said on Sunday. The accident happened on Saturday morning on State Route 190 in California’s Death Valley National Park, about 60km west of Las Vegas, Captain Tim Lepper said. The driver of the rented passenger van, 31-year-old Nassera Soudani of Levallois Perret, France, will likely be charged with vehicular manslaughter, Lepper said. “She admitted to being tired and falling asleep,” he said. “It’s a very desolate area out there. You drive for miles and miles before you see anything other than landscape.”
■VENEZUELA
Chavez slams bases pact
President Hugo Chavez on Sunday charged that the controversial new US deal to use Colombian military bases means US troops can move anywhere within the South American country. “They are turning all of Colombia into a [US] base,” Chavez said in his TV and radio program Alo Presidente. “They cannot keep this a secret; the details are coming out. Gringo miltary staff have been authorized to operate anywhere in Colombia,” he said. He displayed a document that he said was from the US Air Mobility Command to justify his claims. He said he would bring it to a meeting of Latin American leaders on Friday in Bariloche, Argentina, which has been called to discuss the US military presence in Colombia.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
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