AUSTRALIA
Croc goes in pot
A saltwater crocodile that had terrorized a remote community by snapping up dogs and lunging at children met its end in a feast cooked up by locals. The 3.6m reptile “had been stalking and lunging out of the water at children and adults,” Northern Territory police said in a statement. “The crocodile had also reportedly taken multiple community dogs,” it added. After talking to elders and landowners in the Bulla community, police shot and killed the scaly predator on Tuesday, police said. “The community prepared it for a feast in the traditional manner,” they said. The animal ended up as the main ingredient in various meals, Sergeant Andrew McBride told Australian public broadcaster ABC. “I believe he was cooked up into crocodile tail soup, it was on the barbecue, a few pieces were wrapped up in banana leaves and cooked underground,” McBride said.
Photo: AP
PEURTO RICO
Power outage hits
A widespread power outage hit the US territory on Wednesday night, leaving more than 340,000 customers without electricity after two power plants shut down. The capital of San Juan was left without power, as well as neighboring municipalities, including Bayamon, Caguas and Carolina. Luma Energy, which operates transmission and distribution for the power authority, wrote on X that the outage was tied to an issue with the power plants’ transmission lines.
UNITED STATES
NASA errs with broadcast
NASA on Wednesday accidentally broadcast a simulation of astronauts being treated for decompression sickness on the International Space Station (ISS). At about 5:28pm, NASA’s live YouTube channel broadcast audio that indicated a crew member was experiencing the effects of decompression sickness, NASA said on X. A female voice asks crew members to “get commander back in his suit,” check his pulse and provide him with oxygen, later saying his prognosis was “tenuous,” according to copies of the audio posted on social media. NASA did not verify the recordings or republish the audio. Several space enthusiasts posted a link to the audio on X with warnings that there was a serious emergency on the ISS. “This audio was inadvertently misrouted from an ongoing simulation where crew members and ground teams train for various scenarios in space and is not related to a real emergency,” NASA wrote. “There is no emergency situation going on aboard the International Space Station,” it added.
UNITED STATES
Bear filmed in hammock
Noah and Kristen Dweck have seen several black bears around their home in Vermont, but this was a first: a bear relaxing on their hammock. Noah Dweck filmed two young bears in their yard in Waitsfield on Tuesday, with one sitting on the swinging hammock before he shooed them away. “It was adorable. It was a funny sight,” he said. Noah Dweck said that he was sitting at a desk with the screen doors open in their home near the Sugarbush ski resort when he heard the jingling of the hammock. He then realized there was no wind. “So immediately I knew it was the bears,” he said. He ran upstairs and looked out the window and saw one bear looking curiously at the other bear who was hanging around on the hammock, he said. He took some video and then scared the bears away. “We live in a very active bear basin. The bears are very used to human contact, so I’m assuming they have found other people’s hammocks before,” he said.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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