Shark kills spearfishing man in Australia
Canberra: A man has died after being attacked by a shark while he was spearfishing off the east coast of Australia, officials said.
The 36-year-old was bitten on the leg in waters near Queensland’s Fraser Island, north of Brisbane, the BBC quoted the police as saying on Saturday.
A doctor and nurse provided first aid treatment on shore, but the man was later pronounced dead at the scene when paramedics arrived.
It is the fourth fatal shark attack in Australian waters so far this year.
Last month, a 60-year-old man died after he was mauled by a 10-feet great white shark while surfing in northern New South Wales.
In April, a 23-year-old Queensland ranger was killed in an attack on the Great Barrier Reef. And in January, a 57-year-old diver was killed off Western Australia. No deaths were recorded last year. (IANS)
Kansas newspaper’s post equates mask mandate with Holocaust
Topeka (US): A weekly Kansas newspaper whose publisher is a county Republican Party chairman posted a cartoon on its Facebook page likening the Democratic governor’s order requiring people to wear masks in public to the roundup and murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust.
The cartoon on the Anderson County Review’s Facebook page depicts Gov. Laura Kelly wearing a mask with a Jewish Star of David on it, next to a drawing of people being loaded onto train cars.
Its caption is, Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask … and step onto the cattle car.
The newspaper posted the cartoon on Friday, the day that Kelly’s mask order aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus took effect. It’s drawn several hundred comments, many of them strongly critical.
Publisher Dane Hicks, who is also Anderson County’s GOP chairman, told The Associated Press on Saturday that he would answer emailed questions about the cartoon once he could reach a computer.
His newspaper is based in the county seat of Garnett, about 65 miles (105 kilometres) southwest of Kansas City and has a circulation of about 2,100, according to the Kansas Press Association.
Kelly, who is Catholic, issued a statement saying, “Mr. Hicks’ decision to publish anti-Semitic imagery is deeply offensive and he should remove it immediately.” Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, called the cartoon appalling and disgusting and said anyone connected to its posting to be fired.
Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, said most if not all comparisons of current political events to the Holocaust are odious” and said it’s incoherent to equate an action designed to save lives with mass murder. Finally, he said, putting the Star of David on Kelly’s mask is anti-Semitic because it implies nefarious Jews are behind her actions.
This thing is like the trifecta of garbage, Rieber said, calling on Republican leaders to repudiate the cartoon and Hicks immediately. (AP)