Surfer saves drowning Kangaroo in Australia

SYEDNEY: An Australian man has saved a kangaroo from drowning in shark-infested waters by using his surfboard to rescue the exhausted animal. In a story that could only come from Queensland, Neil McCallum was on an early morning walk with his son on a Gold Coast tourist beach when a young kangaroo hopped past the pair, bounded into the surf and started swimming out to sea.Mindful that two hammerhead sharks had been spotted in the area in the past few days, Mr McCallum, 48, decided to keep an eye on the adventurous marsupial.However, it wasn't long before the animal started to struggle in the waves. Mr McCallum realised the kangaroo had become stuck in a dangerous rip current and was pulled being about 200 yards offshore."A guy came up and said: 'Gee your dog's a long way out'," he told Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper. "I said: 'That's not a dog, that's a kangaroo'."Mr McCallum quickly ran home to fetch his surfboard and wake his wife so that she could film the unfolding drama.Back at the beach, he paddled out to the stricken kangaroo and attempted to help it on to his surfboard."It was very frightened by the time I got to it. I grabbed it on the back and it sort of shook me off like a wild animal. So I tried to wrestle him on to my surfboard and he found it difficult to stay on board."Eventually he managed to herd the kangaroo into a sand bar where it recovered before hopping away.Mr McCallum said it was the first time he had seen a kangaroo on Kirra Beach, a built-up beach 12 miles from Surfer's Paradise.

Comments

India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

Thursday, August 13, 2009 MOSUL: At least 18 people, most of them members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect, were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday in a packed cafe in northern Iraq, a local government official said.At least 31 people were also wounded after the bombers detonated suicide belts packed with explosives in the cafe in Kalaa town, in the district of Sanjar, local district chief Dakheel Qassem Hasoon, told a foreign news agency."Two suicide bombers entered the Cafe Barbaroz at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and blew themselves up, killing 18 civilians and wounding 31. Most of the victims were Yazidis," Hasoon said.Kalaa, northwest of the insurgent stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh province is predominantly populated by the minority Yazidi religious sect, as well as Arabs and Kurds.The attack is the deadliest since Monday, when 51 people were killed across Iraq, including 28 members of the tiny Shabak sect cut down when two truck bombs det...

US drones to target Taliban in Afghan war

Friday, July 31, 2009 WASHINGTON: The US military plans to use more drone aircraft to target Taliban militants in Afghanistan while focusing less on hunting down Al-Qaeda figures, report said on Thursday.Although defeating the Al-Qaeda terror network remains an overriding goal for Washington, officials now believe the best way to pursue that objective is to ensure stability in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan instead of Al-Qaeda manhunts, the paper said, citing US government and Defense Department officials.It was more important to prevent a slide towards violence and anarchy that could be exploited by Al-Qaeda, which used Afghanistan to stage its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the officials said."We might still be too focused on Bin Laden," an official said. "We should probably reassess our priorities."The shift in priorities for the drone fleet comes despite President Barack Obama's declaration that defeating and dismantling Al-Qaeda ...

ONE NEWS

Search This Blog