AUSTRALIA
Killer crocodile shot dead
Rangers have shot dead a 4.2m crocodile after it killed a 12-year-old girl while she was swimming with her family last week, police said yesterday. The girl’s death was the first fatal crocodile attack in the Northern Territory since 2018. Wildlife rangers had been attempting to trap or shoot the crocodile since the girl was attacked in Mango Creek near Palumpa, an Outback indigenous community in the Northern Territory. They shot the animal on Sunday after getting permission from the region’s traditional landowners. Police said that an analysis had confirmed the animal was the one that killed the girl. “The events of last week have had a huge impact on the family and local police are continuing to provide support to everyone impacted,” Senior Sergeant Erica Gibson said. Northern Territory-based crocodile scientist Grahame Webb said a reptile the size of the one shot had to be male and at least 30 years old.
CHINA
Man caught with snakes
A man has been caught trying to smuggle more than 100 live snakes into the nation by cramming them into his trousers, customs officials said in a statement on Tuesday. The unnamed traveler was stopped by customs officers as he sought to exit Hong Kong and into the border city of Shenzhen, the statement said. “Upon inspection, customs officers discovered that the pockets of the trousers the passenger was wearing were packed with six canvas drawstring bags and sealed with tape,” it said. “Once opened, each bag was found to contain living snakes in all kinds of shapes, sizes and colors.” Officers seized 104 of the reptiles, including milk snakes and corn snakes, many of which were non-native species. An accompanying video showed two border agents peering into transparent plastic bags filled with squirming red, pink and white snakes. “Those who break the rules will be ... held liable in accordance with the law,” the statement said, without specifying the man’s punishment.
INDIA
Nine rhinoceroses drown
More than 150 animals, nine of them one-horned rhinoceroses, have drowned in floods at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam state, authorities said. The Kaziranga National Park, with almost one-third of its camps flooded, is home to nearly half of the global population of one-horned rhinos, which stands at about 4,000. The weather department yesterday said that heavy rainfall is expected to lash northern and northeastern states for the next two or three days.
UNITED STATES
Hawaii airport evacuated
A Hawaii airport on Tuesday was briefly evacuated after a Japanese man was found with two inert grenades in his hand luggage, police said following his arrest. Officers cleared the terminal while a bomb squad moved in to investigate the suspicious items, which were picked up on an X-ray machine. “The Hilo International Airport experienced a brief halt in operations” for little over an hour, Hawaii police said in a statement. The bomb squad “determined the items to be inert grenades,” police reported, meaning they were not dangerous. A 41-year-old Japanese man was arrested on a “terroristic threatening” charge and remains in custody, police said. “Police remind the public that replicas of explosives, such as hand grenades, are prohibited in checked and carry-on baggage.”
‘CHINESE ASSET’: The senate cited Bamban Mayor Alice Guo in contempt after a police raid revealed a scam center operating at a facility on land she partially owned The Philippine Senate yesterday threatened to arrest a mayor for contempt during a hearing investigating her alleged ties to Chinese criminal syndicates. The arrest threat came after Bamban Mayor Alice Guo (郭華萍) failed to appear for a second consecutive hearing, citing stress. The case that began in March, when authorities raided a casino in Guo’s farming town of Bamban, has shed light on criminal activity in the mostly Chinese-backed online casino industry in the Philippines. It gained national attention after one senator asked whether Guo might not have been born in the Philippines and could even be a Chinese “asset,” an accusation she
‘DO WHATEVER’: US Representative Nancy Pelosi said on MSNBC the decision was up to Joe Biden, but her lack of a full statement backing him is likely to send a signal The re-election campaign of US President Joe Biden on Wednesday hit new trouble as US Representative Nancy Pelosi said merely “it’s up to the president to decide” if he should stay in the race, celebrity donor George Clooney said he should not run, and Democratic senators and lawmakers expressed fresh fear about his ability to challenge former US president Donald Trump. Late in the evening, US Senator Peter Welch called on Biden to withdraw from the election, becoming the first Senate Democrat to do so. Welch said he is worried because “the stakes could not be higher.” The sudden flurry of pronouncements, despite
‘STARWARS’: The weapons would make South Korea the first country to deploy and operate laser weapons, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration said South Korea is to deploy laser weapons to shoot down North Korean drones this year, becoming the world’s first country to deploy and operate such weapons in the military, the country’s arms procurement agency said yesterday. South Korea has called its laser program the “StarWars project.” The drone-zapping laser weapons that the South Korean military has developed with Hanwha Aerospace are effective and cheap, with each shot costing 2,000 won (US$1.45), and also quiet and “invisible,” the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said in a statement. “Our country is becoming the first country in the world to deploy and operate laser weapons, and
US ELECTIONS: US President Joe Biden mistakenly introduced Ukrainian President Zelenskiy as Russian President Vladimir Putin at a NATO summit on Thursday US President Joe Biden vowed he would remain in this year presidential race, but two critical mistakes in the span of two hours deepened concerns about his mental acuity that threaten his campaign. Biden, 81, saw the culmination of this week’s NATO summit as a chance to reassure allies who for two weeks had fretted about his abilities following his first debate performance against former US president Donald Trump. Over a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and a nearly hour-long news conference, he spoke confidently on a range of complex issues from the tax code and trade policy to