Showing posts with label human news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human news. Show all posts
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
Boy, 7, goes on killing spree in zoo, feeding reptiles to crocodile
Sophie Tedmanson, Sydney
An “expressionless” seven-year-old boy broke into a zoo, bludgeoned to death giant lizards and fed them – and other live animals - to a crocodile named Terry in Outback Australia this week.
Zookeepers were horrified when they arrived at work on Wednesday morning to see Terry, an 11-foot long saltwater crocodile, feasting on his fellow showcase reptilians at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre in the Northern Territory.
At first they thought the animals, including the zoo’s favourite, metre-long, 20-year-old goanna, had escaped from their outdoor pens and accidentally become breakfast for Terry - the local zoo’s prize attraction.
But further investigation uncovered CCTV footage of the local boy’s horrific 35-minute killing spree which began when he scaled the fence of the zoo, located in the centre of Alice Springs, a popular tourist destination town in central Australia, just before 8am on Wednesday morning.
The blank-faced boy, who had evaded security cameras because of his slight size, then began his deadly rampage, smashing rocks on the heads of the reptiles and throwing them and other live animals into the crocodile enclosure, according to the zoo’s director Rex Neindorf.
The boy killed 13 animals in total, including a large turtle, bearded dragons, goannas and lizards including Thorny Devils and Western Blue tongues, which are hard to find in captivity.
“It’s absolutely devastating for us, we’re just horrified,” Mr Neindorf told Times Online today.
“The goanna was 20 years old, she was an absolute doll.”
The boy was so brazen he even climbed over an outer fence to get a closer look at the action.
“He was lucky because if he got in there with the goanna, she would have torn him to pieces,” Mr Neindorf said.
Police were called and questioned the boy, who comes from a family well known in the local area, but because of his age they are unable to do anything. According to Northern Territory law, children under 10 are not liable for criminal offences.
“I thought for the sheer consequences of what he did that there would have to be some severe punishment, but he’s only seven, they can’t do anything to kids under 10,” Mr Neindorf said.
“We’re going to see what we can do, maybe try and sue the family in the civil court, we’ll look down that avenue.”
According to Mr Neindorf, the “nasty” boy’s brother was part of a group who attacked Terry the crocodile about five years ago.
He said they often get kids trying to throw rocks at the animal enclosures from a nearby hill, but this incident is the worst that has happened in the history of the zoo.
“He will just get worse and worse and worse, by the time he’s 10 he will be a hardened criminal,” Mr Neindorf said of the boy.
The Alice Springs Reptile Centre is in central Australia, almost 300 miles from Uluru (Ayres Rock), and has 200 animals on display, including Perentie Goanna, Frill Neck Lizards, Thorny Devils, pythons, taipans and death adders, and, of course, Terry, the 440-pound salt-water crocodile.
Earlier this week Scottish-born Vietnam veteran Arthur Booker disappeared while camping in a remote part of north-eastern Queensland. A three-day search uncovered nothing but his sandals and wrist watch. He is thought to have been taken by a salt-water crocodile.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Tenants Say Dead Cats Used To Try To Evict Them
Landlord Lets Smell Of Dead Cats Out The Bag; Hoped Stench Would Make Tenants Flee
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ― Tenants of a Brooklyn building say their landlord came up with a new idea for how to kick them out: Let the smell of the cats out of the bag. Dead cats, that is.
The stench from the carcasses did catch the tenants' attention -- but they stayed and sued.
One tenant, Daisy Terry, told a City Hall news conference on Sunday it was so bad she had to hold her nose coming down the stairs.
The building in Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood was purchased last year by a company listed in court papers as Heskel. A call to Heskel Properties in Manhattan was not immediately returned.
Terry says the landlord used the dead cats to try to push out rent-stabilized tenants.
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ― Tenants of a Brooklyn building say their landlord came up with a new idea for how to kick them out: Let the smell of the cats out of the bag. Dead cats, that is.
The stench from the carcasses did catch the tenants' attention -- but they stayed and sued.
One tenant, Daisy Terry, told a City Hall news conference on Sunday it was so bad she had to hold her nose coming down the stairs.
The building in Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood was purchased last year by a company listed in court papers as Heskel. A call to Heskel Properties in Manhattan was not immediately returned.
Terry says the landlord used the dead cats to try to push out rent-stabilized tenants.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Cadbury recalls Chinese-made chocolate tainted with industrial chemical melamine
By MIN LEE, Associated Press Writer
2:22 PM PDT, September 29, 2008
HONG KONG (AP) _ British candy maker Cadbury announced a recall Monday of chocolate made in its Beijing factory after it was found to contain melamine, the industrial chemical that has sickened tens of thousands of Chinese children.
The 11 recalled items were sold in parts of Asia and the Pacific, the company said in a statement. Cadbury's chocolates sold in the United States were not affected, said a spokesman for Hershey's, Cadbury's sole U.S. distributor.
Meanwhile, Kraft Foods, the maker of Oreo cookies, and Mars, the maker of M
&
Ms and Snickers candy, questioned the findings of Indonesian tests that identified melamine in samples of their products made in China.
Both Kraft Foods and Mars said they would comply with an Indonesian recall but planned to conduct their own tests and look into the possibility the tainted products were counterfeits.
Melamine-laced baby formula and other dairy products in China have been blamed for sickening nearly 54,000 children and leading to four infant deaths. The industrial chemical, which is high in nitrogen, is believed to have been added to watered-down milk to mask the resulting protein deficiency and fool quality tests.
Preliminary tests showed melamine in Cadbury chocolates produced at the candy maker's Beijing factory, but it was too early to say how much of the chemical was in them, said a Cadbury spokesman who declined to be identified because of company policy.
Another official reached through the company's London office said there was no way the contaminated chocolate could find its way into other countries because the Chinese factory only supplies Australia, Taiwan, Nauru, Hong Kong and Christmas Island.
"That factory in Beijing only exports to those markets. It's only a small factory," said the official. He said Chinese production makes up only 0.5 percent of Cadbury's global sales, and the recalled items are "less than that because it's only chocolate."
The recalled products included Cadbury Dark Chocette, Cadbury Eclairs, Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate, Cadbury Dairy Milk Hazelnut Chocolate, Cadbury Dairy Milk Cookies Chocolate and Cadbury Hazelnut Praline Chocolate.
In the United States, Hershey's spokesman Kirk Saville said the Cadbury distributor "has never purchased milk, including powdered milk, from China," and that he was "positive" no Hershey's suppliers receive milk products from the country.
Indonesia's Food and Drug Monitoring Agency said tests last week found melamine in a dozen products distributed nationwide, including M
&
Ms, Snickers bars and Oreo wafers.
Manufacturers Kraft and Mars questioned the findings.
"We don't use any milk ingredients from China in any Oreo products, no matter where they are made or sold," said Kraft spokeswoman Claire Regan.
Tod Gimbel, Kraft's director of corporate affairs for the Asia Pacific, said the company "was trying to understand what methodology was used" in Indonesia's testing.
Mars, in a statement on its Web site, called the Indonesian results "completely inconsistent" with test findings from other government and independent labs in Asia and Europe.
"The vastly different results give Mars significant reason to question the validity of the Indonesian laboratory results," the company said.
So far, only a local agency has checked the products for melamine, but the levels found were considered very high.
No level of melamine deliberately added to a food product is legal in the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
But the agency said it is conducting a health risk assessment to try to determine if there is a minimal amount that would be acceptable in cases where the chemical finds its way into a product through some other means. For example, melamine could be present in the meat or milk of an animal that was fed tainted feed or it could find its way into food processed in a factory.
Some experts in Asia say small amounts of melamine, which is used to make plastics, may be transferred during food processing.
Guidelines in Hong Kong and New Zealand say melamine in food products is considered safe at 2.5 parts per million or less, though Hong Kong has lowered the level for children under 3 and pregnant or lactating women to 1 part per million.
In China, the government continued its investigation into questionable milk sources.
Police raided dairy farms and milk purchasing stations in northern China, detaining 22 people accused of being involved in a network that manufactured, sold and added melamine to milk, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday. Police also seized more than 485 pounds of the chemical.
Chinese officials had previously arrested at least 18 people and detained more than two dozen suspects.
Asian countries continued to tighten controls on Chinese dairy products.
Myanmar's Commerce Ministry said all Chinese dairy imports had been barred since last week, according to the government affiliated weekly Myanmar Times — a significant move because China is the country's biggest trade partner. Chinese dairy products are widely sold in impoverished Myanmar, though there have been no reported cases of illnesses.
____
Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington, Carley Petesch in New York and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.
2:22 PM PDT, September 29, 2008
HONG KONG (AP) _ British candy maker Cadbury announced a recall Monday of chocolate made in its Beijing factory after it was found to contain melamine, the industrial chemical that has sickened tens of thousands of Chinese children.
The 11 recalled items were sold in parts of Asia and the Pacific, the company said in a statement. Cadbury's chocolates sold in the United States were not affected, said a spokesman for Hershey's, Cadbury's sole U.S. distributor.
Meanwhile, Kraft Foods, the maker of Oreo cookies, and Mars, the maker of M
&
Ms and Snickers candy, questioned the findings of Indonesian tests that identified melamine in samples of their products made in China.
Both Kraft Foods and Mars said they would comply with an Indonesian recall but planned to conduct their own tests and look into the possibility the tainted products were counterfeits.
Melamine-laced baby formula and other dairy products in China have been blamed for sickening nearly 54,000 children and leading to four infant deaths. The industrial chemical, which is high in nitrogen, is believed to have been added to watered-down milk to mask the resulting protein deficiency and fool quality tests.
Preliminary tests showed melamine in Cadbury chocolates produced at the candy maker's Beijing factory, but it was too early to say how much of the chemical was in them, said a Cadbury spokesman who declined to be identified because of company policy.
Another official reached through the company's London office said there was no way the contaminated chocolate could find its way into other countries because the Chinese factory only supplies Australia, Taiwan, Nauru, Hong Kong and Christmas Island.
"That factory in Beijing only exports to those markets. It's only a small factory," said the official. He said Chinese production makes up only 0.5 percent of Cadbury's global sales, and the recalled items are "less than that because it's only chocolate."
The recalled products included Cadbury Dark Chocette, Cadbury Eclairs, Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate, Cadbury Dairy Milk Hazelnut Chocolate, Cadbury Dairy Milk Cookies Chocolate and Cadbury Hazelnut Praline Chocolate.
In the United States, Hershey's spokesman Kirk Saville said the Cadbury distributor "has never purchased milk, including powdered milk, from China," and that he was "positive" no Hershey's suppliers receive milk products from the country.
Indonesia's Food and Drug Monitoring Agency said tests last week found melamine in a dozen products distributed nationwide, including M
&
Ms, Snickers bars and Oreo wafers.
Manufacturers Kraft and Mars questioned the findings.
"We don't use any milk ingredients from China in any Oreo products, no matter where they are made or sold," said Kraft spokeswoman Claire Regan.
Tod Gimbel, Kraft's director of corporate affairs for the Asia Pacific, said the company "was trying to understand what methodology was used" in Indonesia's testing.
Mars, in a statement on its Web site, called the Indonesian results "completely inconsistent" with test findings from other government and independent labs in Asia and Europe.
"The vastly different results give Mars significant reason to question the validity of the Indonesian laboratory results," the company said.
So far, only a local agency has checked the products for melamine, but the levels found were considered very high.
No level of melamine deliberately added to a food product is legal in the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
But the agency said it is conducting a health risk assessment to try to determine if there is a minimal amount that would be acceptable in cases where the chemical finds its way into a product through some other means. For example, melamine could be present in the meat or milk of an animal that was fed tainted feed or it could find its way into food processed in a factory.
Some experts in Asia say small amounts of melamine, which is used to make plastics, may be transferred during food processing.
Guidelines in Hong Kong and New Zealand say melamine in food products is considered safe at 2.5 parts per million or less, though Hong Kong has lowered the level for children under 3 and pregnant or lactating women to 1 part per million.
In China, the government continued its investigation into questionable milk sources.
Police raided dairy farms and milk purchasing stations in northern China, detaining 22 people accused of being involved in a network that manufactured, sold and added melamine to milk, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday. Police also seized more than 485 pounds of the chemical.
Chinese officials had previously arrested at least 18 people and detained more than two dozen suspects.
Asian countries continued to tighten controls on Chinese dairy products.
Myanmar's Commerce Ministry said all Chinese dairy imports had been barred since last week, according to the government affiliated weekly Myanmar Times — a significant move because China is the country's biggest trade partner. Chinese dairy products are widely sold in impoverished Myanmar, though there have been no reported cases of illnesses.
____
Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington, Carley Petesch in New York and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.
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