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.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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