AUSTRALIA
Wedged woman freed
A woman was wedged between boulders for seven hours after she slipped headfirst into a 3m crevice while trying to retrieve her phone in New South Wales (NSW). Matilda Campbell’s friends initially spent an hour attempting to free her while she was hanging upside down before they called for help, NSW Ambulance said this week. The operation to free her from the “unlikely predicament” in the Hunter Valley on Saturday involved a team of “multidisciplinary” emergency workers. They removed several heavy boulders to create a safe access point. Then, “with both feet now accessible,” the workers navigated Campbell, in her early 20s, feet first up through a “tight S bend,” which took an hour. A specialist winch was used to move one 500kg boulder. A hardwood frame was also constructed to “ensure stability” during the rescue. “In my 10 years as a rescue paramedic I had never encountered a job quite like this,” Peter Watts, a specialist rescue paramedic, said on Monday. “It was challenging, but incredibly rewarding.” Campbell was freed with only minor scratches and bruises.
UNITED KINGDOM
Paddington gets a passport
He has been one of the the kingdom’s favorite and most prominent refugees for two-thirds of a century. Now Paddington Bear — official name Paddington Brown — has been granted a British passport. The coproducer of the latest Paddington film said the Home Office had issued the document to the fictional Peruvian-born character — listing for completeness the official observation that he is, in fact, a bear. “We wrote to the Home Office asking if we could get a replica, and they actually issued Paddington with an official passport — there’s only one of these,” Rob Silva told the Radio Times. He produced the document, complete with Paddington’s photograph inside, adding: “You wouldn’t think the Home Office would have a sense of humor, but under official observations, they’ve just listed him as ‘Bear.’” In the latest film Paddington in Peru the bear travels to the nation of his birth to visit his Aunt Lucy, but discovers from the guitar-playing nun who runs the home for retired bears that his aunt went missing during a scientific mission.
CHILE
Dog vaccine launched
The University of Chile has launched a vaccine described as the first of its kind that sterilizes dogs for a year and is expected to be sold in several dozen nations. The injection prevents sexual behavior and reproduction, offering an alternative to irreversible surgical castration, its creators say. “This is the first vaccine of this type in the world for dogs,” said Leonardo Saenz, from the university’s veterinary sciences faculty. The researcher and his team have been working since 2009 to develop the vaccine, which began to be distributed this month. It stimulates antibodies and stops the production of sex hormones for a year in both male and female dogs. “Everything is blocked: sexual activity and fertility,” Saenz said. The Egalitte vaccine has been patented in 40 nations, including the US, Argentina and Brazil, as well as in the EU. In Chile, it costs US$50 a shot. Ivan Gutierrez, a 27-year-old student, took his dog Franchesco to a veterinary clinic in Santiago to be given the injection. “I didn’t really want him to have the operation,” he said. He is not alone in having concerns about surgical castration. “Most owners are afraid of surgery,” said Mariela del Saz, the clinic’s veterinarian, noting the risk of cardiorespiratory arrest.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is constructing a new counter-stealth radar system on a disputed reef in the South China Sea that would significantly expand its surveillance capabilities in the region, satellite imagery suggests. Analysis by London-based think tank Chatham House suggests China is upgrading its outpost on Triton Island (Jhongjian Island, 中建島) on the southwest corner of the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), building what might be a launching point for an anti-ship missile battery and sophisticated radar system. “By constraining the US ability to operate stealth aircraft, and threaten stealth aircraft, these capabilities in the South China Sea send
HAVANA: Repeated blackouts have left residents of the Cuban capital concerned about food, water supply and the nation’s future, but so far, there have been few protests Maria Elena Cardenas, 76, lives in a municipal shelter on Amargura Street in Havana’s colonial old town. The building has an elegant past, but for the last few days Maria has been cooking with sticks she had found on the street. “You know, we Cubans manage the best we can,” she said. She lives in the shelter because her home collapsed, a regular occurrence in the poorest, oldest parts of the beautiful city. Cuba’s government has spent the last days attempting to get the island’s national grid functioning after repeated island-wide blackouts. Without power, sleep becomes difficult in the heat, food
U-TURN? Trami was moving northwest toward Vietnam yesterday, but high-pressure winds and other factors could force it to turn back toward the Philippines Tropical Storm Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines yesterday, leaving at least 65 people dead in landslides and extensive flooding that forced authorities to scramble for more rescue boats to save thousands of terrified people, who were trapped, some on their roofs. However, the onslaught might not be over: State forecasters raised the rare possibility that the storm — the 11th and one of the deadliest to hit the Philippines this year — could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea. A Philippine provincial police chief yesterday said that 33
PROPAGANDA: The leaflets attacked the South Korean president and first lady with phrases such as: ‘It’s fortunate that President Yoon and his wife have no children’ North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital, Seoul, yesterday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady. The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border. They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable. The leaflets included photographs of the
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