■AUSTRALIA
Six-year-old evades police
A six-year-old boy evaded a major police search involving sniffer dogs and air support by hiding in his friend’s house overnight, officials said yesterday. The Melbourne boy went missing after playing outside his house on Wednesday evening, prompting a frantic hunt by police, neighbors and emergency services, and a media alert. Police combed parks and shopping centers, and the shores of a nearby lake. However, the boy emerged unhurt from his nine-year-old neighbor’s bedroom early yesterday. “He was located at another premises close to where he lives. Inquiries are still pending in that regard, but we understand the child may have been hiding from police,” Inspector Geoffrey Davey said. “We believe it may have been children misunderstanding the actual circumstance of what they were portraying to police and unfortunately it’s led to a long, involved search by police overnight.”
■AUSTRALIA
Cheesy snack killer jailed
A woman was jailed for 25 years yesterday for running down and killing a man who threw cheesy snacks at her car. Sarah May Ward, 38, became “incensed” when 21-year-old Eli Westlake hurled Cheese Balls at her car late one night and drove straight at him, dragging him below the vehicle and then crashing down a stairwell. “She was not provoked, but incensed by the fact that she had been humiliated, as she saw it ... she clearly wanted to teach the young men a lesson,” Justice Roderick Howie told New South Wales Supreme Court. Ward, who had been drinking and taking drugs, was found guilty last month after blaming her shoes for her erratic driving.
■INDONESIA
Workers go on rampage
Thousands of furious factory workers set fire to cars and a warehouse yesterday after an Indian company executive called them “stupid,” police and media reports said. Nine people were reportedly injured when workers went on the rampage at a factory belonging to P.T. Drydock World Graha in Batam City, a special economic area south of Singapore. “An Indian company executive called us, Indonesian workers, ‘stupid’ and this made us very angry,” a worker called Disra was quoted as saying by Antara news agency. About 400 police were called to the scene and they evacuated 41 unidentified foreign staff from the seaside factory in boats, Antara reported. Up to 20 cars were set alight, along with a warehouse belonging to the company.
■NEW ZEALAND
Rare gecko sighted
The country’s largest gecko has been seen on one of the main islands for the first time in almost a century — unfortunately, dead in a mousetrap, an official said yesterday. The Duvaucel’s gecko — which can grow more than 30cm long — was found at the Maungatautari wildlife reserve in North Island’s northern Waikato region. Maungatautari ecologist Chris Smuts-Kennedy told the Waikato Times newspaper the death of the gecko was a cruel irony, but that this meant the reserve may be home to more members of the species. The only confirmed populations of the gecko, which can live up to 50 years, are on predator-free offshore islands. The reptile is vulnerable to attacks by pests, especially rats. The last time the gecko was seen on the mainland was thought to have been in the 1920s in the Thames area, southeast of Auckland, Smuts-Kennedy said.
■BOLIVIA
Morales under fire
President Evo Morales was under fire on Wednesday for suggesting at a global climate change summit that eating hormone-injected chicken could provoke male deviance. Bolivia’s opposition and homosexual groups criticized comments made by Morales at the first “people’s conference” on climate change the previous day, in which he said that chicken producers inject birds with female hormones and “when men eat those chickens, they experience deviances in being men.” The Bolivian president also suggested that the European diet made men go bald. The president of Argentina’s homosexual community, Cesar Cigliutti, said: “It’s an absurdity to think that eating hormone-containing chicken can change the sexual orientation of a person. By following that reasoning, if we put male hormones in a chicken and we make a homosexual eat it, he will transform into a heterosexual.
■LEBANON
Psychic avoids beheading
A Lebanese TV psychic, who was condemned to death for witchcraft by a Saudi court while visiting the country, will not be beheaded, his lawyer said on Wednesday. May al-Khansa said the Saudi ambassador in Beirut informed the Lebanese justice minister that the execution of Ali Sibat would not take place. “He confirmed to me that there will be no execution,” al-Khansa said about her conversation with Ibrahim Najjar, Lebanon’s justice minister. Sibat is one of scores of people reported arrested every year in the kingdom on charges of practicing sorcery, witchcraft, black magic and fortunetelling, which are considered to be polytheism by the country’s ultraconservative judiciary. He was arrested by the Saudi religious police while making a pilgrimage in May 2008 and sentenced to death last November on charges of practicing witchcraft. Sibat, 49, made predictions on a satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Cameron egged on
Prime ministerial candidate David Cameron had an egg thrown at him at an election event in Cornwall on Wednesday and later joked it was “the first of the campaign.” Television footage showed a young man wearing a grey hooded top throwing the egg toward the Conservative leader as he left Cornwall College’s Saltash campus where he had been talking to students. A Conservative party spokesman said the egg had brushed Cameron’s shoulder. Cameron said afterwards: “Now I know which came first, the chicken not the egg,” local media reports said. In 2006, Cameron’s call for more understanding of why young people commit crime became famously dubbed by his critics as the “hug a hoodie” policy.
■RUSSIA
Scientology texts banned
Prosecutors said on Wednesday that texts and recordings by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard had been ruled “extremist” and would be banned. The ban relates to 28 books and audio-video discs containing lectures by Hubbard, a US science fiction author who founded Scientology in 1954, the statement said. The ruling was the latest blow to the Church of Scientology, an organization that some countries treat as a legitimate faith but that others consider a cult designed to trick members out of large sums of money. The ban on the Scientology materials was imposed by a court in the city of Surgut in Siberia, which decided they should be added to a list of literature banned in Russia for extremist content, the statement said.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Sri Lanka’s fragile economic recovery could be hampered by threatened trade union strikes over reduced benefits for government employees in this year’s budget, the IMF said yesterday. Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s maiden budget raised public sector salaries, but also made deep cuts to longstanding perks in a continuing effort to repair the island nation’s tattered finances. Sri Lanka’s main doctors’ union is considering a strike from today to protest against cuts to their allowances, while teachers are also considering stoppages. IMF senior mission chief for Sri Lanka Peter Breuer said the budget was the “last big push” for the country’s austerity
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