Hungry crocs, streaking politicians, escaping prisoners

Crocodile Rock

A 60-year-old woman jumped on the back of a 12.6-foot crocodile as it… Crocodile Rock

A 60-year-old woman jumped on the back of a 12.6-foot crocodile as it dragged a man from his tent, Australia’s ABC network reported Tuesday morning.

The crocodile promptly attacked the woman and was dragging her toward the ocean when a fellow camper killed it. The man, 34, was sleeping in a tent with his wife and child on the shores of Bathhurst Bay, on the northeastern tip of Australia, when the crocodile walked in, apparently looking for food.

Both the man and the woman suffered broken limbs, cuts and bruises for their ordeal, said rescue officials on the scene.

Baring All

The tight election race between two Texan congressmen took a bizarre turn Monday when Democrats circulated newspaper clippings of a 1974 streaking stunt, reported the Reuters news network. Hundreds of students from Southwest Texas State University were involved, including then-18-year-old Pete Sessions, now a Republican representative in Dallas.

Sessions, a conservative who wrote a damning column earlier in the year about Janet Jackson’s inadvertent display of nudity at the Super Bowl, paraded his bare behind for the cameras. Newspapers reported that students at Southwest Texas were attempting to break a nationwide streaking record. The stunt ended in arrests and clashes with police.

Democrat Rep. Martin Frost lambasted Sessions after the photos were publicized.

“Pete Sessions exposed himself to children and strangers,” said Frost’s spokesman, Justin Kitsch, adding that he had also “exposed himself as a hypocrite.”

Politician sees Iraq similarities

A political storm is brewing in the United Kingdom after Government Minister Clare Short likened insurgents in Iraq to the French resistance that battled the German occupation during World War II, and to the Americans who fought the British in the Revolutionary War.

Short, who resigned her position in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet over the Iraq war in May 2003, told the Dubai-based Gulf News that “killing civilians is always wrong … but I think the cause is just.” As the Americans fought British colonialism, she said, “so the Iraqis should be able to resist occupation.”

Although Short has been vilified in the English conservative press, family members of British soldiers killed in Iraq have emerged to echo her views.

The BBC reported that Tony Hamilton-Jewell, whose brother fell victim to a mob as he manned an Iraqi police station, suggested the insurgents were entitled to stand up for their beliefs.

Short added in her interview, “It [is] not good enough for the world to say “state violence is OK and non-state violence is not OK.”

Prison break in Rio de Janeiro

Forty-eight prisoners escaped from a Rio de Janeiro prison Sunday night, using sheets and towels to lower themselves down from their window.

This is the second mass breakout in four days, officials told Reuters. On Thursday, 69 prisoners escaped a detention center through a tunnel dug from the jail’s courtyard.

Authorities believe guards were bribed, in the case of the towel-and-sheet-escapees, after it emerged that a turret on the wall was not staffed during the escape. The guards have been arrested.

From jail to mayor’s office

The Associated Press reported that Anterio Manica, a Brazilian rancher accused of “ordering the killing of four government agents” who were inspecting claims of slavery at his brother Noberto’s plantation, has been released from jail after being elected mayor of his hometown Unai.

In this strange saga, a Brazilian court ruled that Manica can take office on Jan. 1, after winning the election by a landslide with support from Brazilian Vice President Jose Alencar.

Manica allegedly ordered the killing of agents investigating reports of forced labor on a black-bean plantation owned by Noberto, one of the world’s top bean growers. Noberto has remained in police custody.

Reuters reported, “Brazil’s government estimates some 25,000 rural workers are forced to stay on isolated farms and work in slave-like conditions.” Human rights organizations in Brazil dispute these figures, saying the number is likely much higher.

Satan’s sport

Many Americans may think they take their sports seriously, but during the weekend, Bangladesh proved that it tops the table when it comes to fanatical interest.

About 500 Muslims protested in the capital Dhaka against the introduction of the country’s first women’s soccer league, the Guardian reported.

The first game of the league took place Monday. The demonstration leaders told Reuters in Dhaka that they would besiege the national sports council “if the satanic women’s football league is not abandoned immediately.”

Trash that’s out of this world

Astronomers working for the European Space Agency warned earlier in the week that Earth’s outer-hemisphere is so full of junk that it has become a significant danger to the people and satellites in it.

The Guardian reported that a team from the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics predicted it would detect about 100,000 fragments of space junk as it compiles a comprehensive survey of the situation.

Debris already found includes defunct satellites, spent rockets, waste from spacecraft and tools dropped by astronauts performing maintenance work.

“Rubbish in space is no threat to the earth’s population, since it doesn’t tend to fall,” said Miquel Serra from the Institute. The danger, he told the Spanish news agency EFE, was for “missions in space.”

More than 600 working satellites currently operate in near-earth orbit, and in 2002, European Space Agency estimated that the amount of space debris increases by 5 percent each year from the continuing missions.

The BBC science department reported that, although space debris consists mostly of small objects, collisions can be dramatic because the objects can achieve fantastic velocity — an average, relative impact speed of 21,600 mph. A metal sphere the size of a tennis ball would have the same effect as 25 sticks of dynamite, capable of causing serious damage to spacecraft.