6 Years Gone: Myanmar woman escapes brutal China captivity

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In this March 21, 2018, photo, wearing a T-shirt with words which read "I am not a commodity to sell," Marip Lu sits in her family's shelter in a refugee camp in northern Kachin State, Myanmar. (AP)
Updated 08 September 2018
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6 Years Gone: Myanmar woman escapes brutal China captivity

  • In the darkness on the bed that first night, Marip Lu felt like a caged animal
  • When she entered China surreptitiously in September 2011, there were no border guards, no checkpoints

GUCHENG, China: They were the first photos Marip Lu had ever taken of her son, and it broke her heart to think they might be the last.
The little boy was standing in their living room in rural China with his tiny chest puffed out, brown eyes beaming as he watched cartoons on TV. She wanted to remember him this way — smiling, playful, innocent.
Just three years old, he had no idea his mother was facing a heart-wrenching choice that would change their lives: stay with him and the family holding her hostage, or leave him behind and be free.
Six years earlier, Marip Lu had been drugged, kidnapped and trafficked to this place far from her native Myanmar. She had been beaten and abused, forced to “marry” a mentally disabled man, and repeatedly raped, she said.
Now the people organizing her rescue had warned it was too dangerous to take her son. But how could she go without him?
“What if he never has someone to call ‘mama’?” Marip Lu kept asking herself, as the clock ticked down to her escape. “What will they do to him if I’m no longer there?“

As a girl growing up in northern Myanmar, Marip Lu had spent most of her youth in school, in church, and farming her family’s rice fields. But in June 2011, fighting erupted between the army and rebels from an ethnic minority called the Kachin. Marip Lu’s family, who are Kachin, fled to the home of relatives in Laiza, on the Chinese frontier.
The move brought new dangers — from human traffickers who are increasingly luring teenage girls with the false promise of jobs. Once inside China, the girls are kidnapped, then sold to men looking for “brides” for between $5,000 and $10,000, according to the Kachin women’s association, Myu Shayi.
Nobody knows how many have been trafficked, because most are never heard from again or too ashamed to report the crime. However, the US State Department said in its latest report that numbers from Myanmar are rising, and Myu Shayi says the average number of known victims from rebel-held Kachin state — a tiny sliver of Myanmar — has jumped from about 35 annually to 50 last year. Myanmar’s government has reported over 1,100 cases in the country since 2010.
Human Rights Watch’s Heather Barr, who interviewed 37 victims this year, said those figures “are only the tip of the iceberg.”
The phenomenon is a direct consequence of China’s one-child policy, which grossly skewed the nation’s gender balance for decades before the government ended the practice two years ago. Chinese men, though, still outnumber women by more than 30 million, fueling a huge demand for foreign brides that has sucked in countless girls from neighboring Vietnam, Laos and North Korea.
Although Chinese authorities have broken up trafficking rings, rights advocates say anti-trafficking enforcement is weak, and the practice continues.
The Associated Press pieced together Marip Lu’s story through interviews with her, several family members and the women’s group that orchestrated her rescue. Some details were corroborated by 195 photographs on her cell phone. In an effort to ensure Marip Lu’s safety, AP is not using her full name.
The AP also traveled to the village of Gucheng, in Henan province, to interview the couple Marip Lu accuses of buying her — Li Qinggong and his wife, Xu Ying. Both denied all allegations of abuse, but neither was able to explain how Marip Lu had ended up in their faraway village, or how she allegedly met and “married” their mentally disabled son, Li Mingming. When the AP visited their home, Li Mingming was only able to mumble incoherently; his foot was chained to a bed, a practice sometimes employed by families in rural China to keep mentally disabled relatives from wandering away.
Still, Li Qinggong insisted that “we did not abduct her or buy her. ... It’s not true.”
Xu claimed they treated Marip Lu like a daughter, and tearfully accused her of neglecting her son and abandoning them. But she acknowledged knowing Marip Lu wanted to leave and said without explanation that “in some families, they run away after several months — some don’t even last a single month.”
At one point, the couple got into a screaming match as they discussed whether to talk to AP. Li Qinggong hurled his phone at his wife. “You’re asking for trouble,” he told her. “Why don’t you go die?“
“These are all family affairs,” Li Qinggong later said, explaining his reticence. “It’s sad to talk about family affairs, and we don’t bring it up.”

When Marip Lu heard about a job at a barbecue restaurant in Yingjiang, a half-hour’s drive away from Laiza, she had every reason to believe it was real. The offer came from a woman who had lived next to her family for years and attended their church.
After Marip Lu told her parents the news, her mother, Tangbau Hkawn, begged her not to go.
“You’re too young,” she said. “You’ve never traveled out of Myanmar. You’ve never been anywhere alone.”
“Don’t worry mama,” replied Marip Lu, who was just 17 at the time.
When she entered China surreptitiously in September 2011, there were no border guards, no checkpoints. They walked across a shallow creek in broad daylight.
In Yingjiang, after eating a bowl of noodles for breakfast at a local restaurant, Marip Lu began to feel dizzy.
Soon, her vision blurred. Then everything went black.
When Marip Lu regained consciousness, she was slumped on the back of a red motorcycle racing down a highway, a chubby Chinese man holding onto her with one hand.
Rubbing her eyes, she saw rivers and flower parks flashing by. Then things she’d only seen in movies: twinkling skyscrapers with vast crowds walking between them like ants.
When she reached for the phone in her purse, she noticed it was missing along with her Myanmar identification card and the handful of Myanmar kyat — worth only a few US dollars — that she’d brought.
Suddenly, she understood. She’d been tricked, then drugged. And now, she was being trafficked.
Marip Lu began to scream, but she was too weak to resist.
She was handed over to an older man who pulled her aboard a public bus. The night turned into day, then night again, and she was forced into a car that drove into a small village with no paved roads. The car stopped in front of a bland, two-story home made of cement, where a middle-aged couple greeted her excitedly with huge smiles as if she were a long-lost relative.
Li Qinggong, who had dark hair and bushy eyebrows, spoke rapidly and loudly. His wife, who had high cheekbones and a wide face, sat with him, alongside a thickset younger man in his 30s — their son.
The woman offered sunflower seeds, and later, dinner. But Marip Lu was nauseous and frightened. The last thing she wanted to do was eat. She could even not communicate with her captors, who only spoke Chinese.
“Please, dear God,” she prayed, closing her eyes. “Please don’t let anything bad happen to me.”

In the darkness on the bed that first night, Marip Lu felt like a caged animal.
The couple, through hand gestures, had made it clear she was to sleep in the same room as Li Mingming. He had ripped off her clothes, and when she had tried to run they had pushed her back inside and slammed the door shut.
Li Mingming began heaving his naked body against hers, she said, grunting as she recoiled in disgust.
But then, unexpectedly, he stopped. For some reason, he had not raped her, and in the days that followed, she began to understand why: he was mentally disabled in some way.
Sometimes he would mumble or talk to himself, or scream unexpectedly. Sometimes he would stare blankly at the television, his eyes just inches away.
For months, Marip Lu said, her captors never left her alone. The windows upstairs were blocked by dirty white bars. Whenever the couple left, they locked the iron front door — from the outside.
One winter’s night, four weeks into her captivity, Marip Lu said, the couple burst into her bedroom, dragged her into the kitchen and tore off her clothes.
As she lay curled in a ball on the hard marble floor, they kicked and slapped and cursed her. Li Qinggong then poured buckets of ice water over her shivering body.
When the mother sat down, Marip Lu crawled forward and wrapped her arms around her legs.
“Please don’t do this!” she begged in Kachin — a language only she understood. “Oh God! What did I do wrong?“
The next night, the couple barged in again as she slept, according to Marip Lu. This time, they forced her into their bedroom. As Xu sat in a chair barking instructions, Li Qinggong pushed Marip Lu onto the bed and raped her repeatedly, she said. The couple later insisted she had never been raped.
When Marip Lu retreated, shaking with fear, she found her “husband” hiding in their room under a blanket like a child. It was the same thing he did when his parents fought.
As the weeks turned into months, then years, she began following a grim routine. During the day, they made her wash clothes, clean the house and cook — and beat her if she did not. At night, the couple would often drag their “daughter” into their room — or their son’s — and rape her as she cried, she said.
They called her Baobei — “baby.”
One day, Marip Lu looked into the mirror at several bright red imprints on her cheeks where she had been slapped. It was hard to recognize the girl looking back.
She wanted more than anything to escape, but there was nowhere to run. The sheer vastness of China, combined with the fact that she could not speak Chinese, had created the perfect prison. And even if she could get out, she had no money and no way to contact home.
The hardest part was the loneliness.
Marip Lu wanted to tell someone what was happening, but there was nobody to talk to. The first time she tried to wave down a neighbor, she said, Xu yanked her away by the wrist and cursed them both. Even those who entered their house tried to avoid making eye contact.
The neighbors may not have suspected anything was wrong. Foreign brides are not uncommon in rural China, and many women come voluntarily. Marriages are also sometimes seen as transactional events in a country where the traditional practice of paying dowries still exists.
Two years after her arrival, Marip Lu seemed to fall ill. She began throwing up each morning, and for the first time, Xu took her to a clinic.
She was five weeks pregnant.
Xu was overjoyed. But Marip Lu felt numb. The new life inside her belly was the product of the hell in which she existed.
The rape and the beatings came to a halt. Then, on Sept. 23, 2013, Marip Lu gave birth to a healthy boy. She called him Erzi, which means son.
The first time she looked into his eyes, she was overwhelmed by something she had not felt in a long time: love.
She melted when she saw his pouting lips smile involuntarily as he slept. Even his cries were soothing.
Although Marip Lu insists Li Qinggong is the father, she said the couple referred to the boy as their “grandson,” proudly telling everyone in their village he belonged to their son and their “daughter-in-law.” In conversations with the AP, Li Qinggong never replied to the question of whether he was the father.
When the beatings and the rape resumed months later, Marip Lu felt different. The baby was a profound source of comfort; she no longer felt alone.
The day her son turned one, Xu took her and the boy to a photo studio for a souvenir of the moment. The glossy image they received was embossed with a tiny smiley face and a digital slogan written in English: “Happy Day.”

Marip Lu had all but given up on ever returning home when she spotted something strange in the trash: an old, beat-up cell phone.
It was missing a SIM card. But she knew how to get one: by skimming cash from the money the couple gave her to buy food.
It took several weeks. When she inserted the card, she was shocked. It worked.
Immediately, she tried to dial friends or family in Myanmar. But nothing went through.
She began calling numbers at random in Yunnan, a province that borders Myanmar. The idea was simple: try to reach anyone who spoke Kachin.
For weeks she dialed in secret, again and again, number after number. Until one day a woman answered in Kachin — a language she had not spoken or heard in years.
“Who are you? What do you want?“
Marip Lu said she was working in China and had lost contact with her family back home.
“I’m desperate to speak to them,” she said. “Can you help?“
Miraculously, the woman lived in Yingjiang, the same place Marip Lu had been kidnapped from four years before. Even more stunning: one of the woman’s relatives was planning to make her first trip to Myanmar — to Laiza for a wedding.
Marip Lu passed on her brother-in-law’s address, and when the woman crossed the border she knocked on his door.
Numbers were exchanged. And several days later, Marip Lu made a call she thought she’d never be able to make again.
“Marip Lu?” her mother asked.
“Yes, mama. Yes,” she said, and wept into the phone.

In Laiza, Myu Shayi, the women’s association affiliated with the rebel administration, immediately took up the case.
“I want you to be patient,” a case worker named Ja Ring told Marip Lu by phone. “We will get you out as soon we can.”
For months, the two stayed in touch, agreeing that only Marip Lu would call. Then Xu discovered the phone.
“Who are you calling? You have no friends here,” she screamed, her face red with anger as she snatched it away. “You should not be talking to anyone. Your family is here.”
The loss turned out to be a blessing. With money she got to celebrate her son’s second birthday in 2015, and more skimmed cash, Marip Lu secretly purchased a low-cost, Chinese-built smartphone.
Another woman from Myu Shayi told her to install the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat. The woman, Hkawn Shawng, then asked her to send a message by clicking on an icon that looked like a balloon.
When Marip Lu pressed “send,” a digital map appeared on Hkawn Shawng’s phone with a red flag on it. For the first time, it indicated precisely where she was — a house about 2,700 kilometers from Laiza.
Following protocol, Hkawn Shawng wrote a letter to Chinese authorities requesting a rescue.
Then they waited, for months.
Marip Lu was outside her home with her son when a pair of police cars suddenly pulled up months later, red and blue lights flashing. One of the officers turned and asked: “Are you Marip Lu? Is that your name?“
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said, barely able to contain herself.
When the officers said they were taking her down to the police station, Li Qinggong tried to intervene.
“We take good care of her in this house. She’s happy,” he said, smiling meekly. “Just look around, do you see any problem here?“
Marip Lu, frozen, dared not say a word. But when the police took her away, she told them everything.
“Someone sold me to this Chinese family,” she said. “I’m terrified of these people.”
The officers recorded her testimony solemnly. Then they took her photograph.
“Do you want to go home?” one asked.
“Of course,” Marip Lu pleaded. “Very much.”
But hours later, inexplicably, they called the Chinese family to come pick her up. They said they would come back to get her when they received orders from their bosses after the Chinese New Year holiday.
“Don’t be afraid,” one of them said. And “don’t be in a hurry ... Don’t you know there is war in Myanmar? Aren’t you worried about that?“
The next day, Marip Lu called Hkawn Shawng in tears.
“Why didn’t they send me home?” she said, her voice trembling. “When are you going to rescue me? Am I going to die here?“
“You must stay strong,” Hkawn Shawng replied. “Keep praying to God ... we will get you out.”
A few weeks later, Hkawn Shawng received a letter from the police. It claimed Marip Lu had told them she did not want to return.
It was unclear what had happened, but Hkawn Shawng speculated police had either been bought off, or didn’t care. Police in Gucheng declined to speak to AP about the case when contacted by phone.
There was a Plan B. Myu Shayi had surreptitious networks of its own in China that rescue trafficked girls. Hkawn Shawng would send a driver, but Marip Lu would have to get as far away from her house as she could first, to ensure their vehicle was not traced or followed.
“And my son?” Marip Lu asked.
Hkawn Shawng said she could only be rescued alone. The boy was a Chinese citizen, and spiriting him out of the country would be interpreted by Chinese authorities as one thing only: kidnapping.
By now, the couple was so confident Marip Lu would not — or could not — leave, they let her drive their three-wheeled vehicle to the market alone. And when they discovered her new white phone, they shrugged, and let her keep it.

On Wednesday, May 3, 2017, Marip Lu walked her son home from school at 11 a.m., holding his hand just as she always did.
Once there, she packed a small pink bag with two changes of clothes, a little bit of money, and several laminated photos of her son.
He stood beside her, pulling at her leg.
“Mama! Mama!” he said. “I’m hungry.”
Marip Lu told him to go to the kitchen and wait for lunch, but the boy said he did not want to go alone.
“Go on,” she said. “Be a good boy. Mama needs to finish washing the clothes.”
As the boy walked away, he turned back several times, his sad eyes pleading for her to follow. But as soon as he was out of sight, Marip Lu ran down to the garage, where she cranked up the family’s motorcycle.
Xu was in another room at the time, with her elderly mother.
Marip Lu’s eyes welled with tears.
She dared not say bye to her son, or hug him one last time. She knew that if she did, she would never be able to leave.
Half an hour later, she reached a nearby town. She abandoned the motorcycle in an alley, and messaged her GPS location to a driver sent by Myu Shayi who was supposed to pick her up.
Hours later, she saw a van with a man standing outside it in a white shirt.
“Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up!“
Marip Lu began to run.
“Quick! Get in!“
Once inside, Marip Lu took the SIM card out of her phone, rolled down the window and threw it into the wind.
Over the next several days, Marip Lu took 45 photos out the window as they traveled toward the Myanmar border: of bridges and skyscrapers and a Ferris wheel along the endless highways.
Eventually, the van cut through fields of tall sugarcane, then suddenly turned onto a dirt road.
It was Myanmar. Marip Lu was home.

When her family saw her for the first time, there were tears, hugs, and disbelief. It was as if their daughter had returned from the dead.
But they knew the innocent girl who left Myanmar six years earlier would never came back.
“She talks at night when she sleeps now,” her mother, Tangbau Hkawn, says forlornly. “Sometimes she screams. Sometimes she shouts things like ‘don’t touch me!’“
When the Associated Press interviewed Marip Lu in a rebel-controlled part of northern Myanmar’s Kachin state, a year after her escape, she could not hide her hatred for the family she said held her for so long.
“I want them to know what it feels like,” she says through gritted teeth. “They destroyed my life.”
In June, though, Marip Lu was overcome by the desire to contact her son. To do so, she had to muster the courage to call Li Qinggong.
At first, nobody answered, but then a familiar voice called back.
Li Qinggong refused to let her speak to the boy, she said, and asked if she had told the AP what happened in their home. Later, she sent several photos of herself because “I wanted (my son) to know he has a mother somewhere.”
It’s unclear if the boy ever saw the photos. Neither Li Qinggong nor Xu answered repeated calls to their mobile phones from AP. However, the boy seemed otherwise fine when the AP saw him on its visit, despite Marip Lu’s fears.
More than anything else, Marip Lu says she wants to get her son back.
But Hkawn Shawng, the woman who helped engineer her rescue, says that is all but impossible. Her organization has spearheaded the return of more than 200 women to Myanmar since 2011.
All those with children were forced to leave them behind.


Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs acquitted of most serious charges, convicted of prostitution-related offenses

Updated 02 July 2025
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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs acquitted of most serious charges, convicted of prostitution-related offenses

NEW YORK: Sean “Diddy” Combs dropped to his knees and prayed in the courtroom after he was acquitted Wednesday of sex trafficking and racketeering charges that could have put one of hip-hop’s celebrated figures behind bars for life. The rapper was convicted of lesser prostitution-related offenses and still faces prison time but is seeking to be freed from jail to await sentencing.
The mixed result capped a sordid legal odyssey that shattered Combs’ affable “Puff Daddy” image and derailed his career as a Grammy-winning artist and music executive, fashion entrepreneur, brand ambassador and reality TV star.
As the jury foreman spoke and the “not guilty” verdicts piled up, Combs pumped his fist. Each juror affirmed agreement with the verdict as Combs looked toward them, holding his hands up in a prayer motion. Then he hugged defense lawyer Teny Geragos. Combs’ relatives and supporters in the audience could barely contain their relief, despite the judge’s admonition to avoid outbursts: When the first “not guilty” was read aloud, someone shouted, “Yeah!”
Combs, 55, later continued to pump his right fist subtly and nodded, seemingly satisfied that he was acquitted on the most serious charges.
Combs was convicted of flying people around the country, including his girlfriends and male sex workers, to engage in sexual encounters, a felony violation of the federal Mann Act.
The charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, but Combs’ lawyers said that under federal sentencing guidelines he’d likely face about two years in prison. Prosecutors, citing Combs’ violence and other factors, said the guidelines would call for at least four to five years. Jailed since his September arrest, he’s already served nine months behind bars.
In a triumph for Combs, the jury of eight men and four women acquitted him of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges related to allegations that he used his money, power and frightening physical force to manipulate his girlfriends into hundreds of drug-fueled sex marathons with the men.
Combs’ defense team argued that the women were willing participants and that none of his violence justified the severity of the charges.
Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Combs, asked that his client be immediately released because the federal Mann Act crimes were of a “vastly different nature” than sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
Assistant US Attorney Maurene Comey said he should remain incarcerated as a danger to the community and a threat to flee. She cited evidence of physical abuse and “prolific use and distribution of drugs” that emerged during the trial.
“I do believe we’ll be seeking a substantial period of incarceration,” Comey said.
Both sides filed written submissions expanding on their arguments. Judge Arun Subramanian was expected to rule at 5 p.m. on whether to release Combs on bail.
Combs appeared overwhelmed as court adjourned for a few hours. He wiped his face, turning and kneeling at his chair, his head bowed in prayer.
“I’ll be home soon,” he said as he faced his relatives.
“I love you, Mom,” he added.
His relatives applauded him and his lawyers, some of whom had tears in their eyes, as he was led out of court.
There’s no date yet for sentencing, when the judge will decide on Combs’ punishment for the prostitution conviction.
Verdict follows weeks of harrowing testimony
Federal officials involved in the case responded to the outcome by noting that sex crimes “are all too present in many aspects of our society.”
“New Yorkers and all Americans want this scourge stopped and perpetrators brought to justice,” Manhattan-based US Attorney Jay Clayton and Ricky J. Patel, who heads federal Homeland Security Investigations’ New York office, said in a statement.
Jurors deliberated for about 13 hours over three days before announcing their verdict. It came after they said late Tuesday that they had decided on four counts but were stuck on the racketeering one. At that point, the judge told them to keep deliberating and keep the partial verdict under wraps.
Combs did not testify at his trial, which featured 34 witnesses as well as video of the rapper attacking his former girlfriend Cassie, the R&B singer born Casandra Ventura.
Her lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, said in a statement after the verdict that “by coming forward with her experience, Cassie has left an indelible mark on both the entertainment industry and the fight for justice.”
Later, he asked the judge in a letter to deny Combs bail, saying “Ms. Ventura believes that Mr. Combs is likely to pose a danger to the victims who testified in this case, including herself, as well as to the community.”
Cassie testified for four days about her turbulent 11-year relationship with Combs, which began after she signed with his Bad Boy record label.
Cassie said Combs became obsessed with voyeuristic encounters, arranged with the help of his staff, that involved sex workers and copious amounts of baby oil. During the sex events, called “freak-offs” or “hotel nights,” Combs would order Cassie to do things with other men that she found humiliating, she testified.
When things didn’t go Combs’ way, he would beat her, she said.
“I’m not a rag doll. I’m somebody’s child,” Cassie told Combs after he dragged her down a hotel hallway in 2016.
Another ex-girlfriend, testifying under the pseudonym “Jane,” told the jury she repeatedly told Combs she didn’t want to have sex with the men hired for their trysts.
“I’m not an animal. I need a break,” she told him. Nevertheless, she said she felt “obligated” to comply with his demands, in part because he paid her rent.
The AP does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie has.
Defense calls case an invasion of privacy
The trial’s most famous witness, rapper Kid Cudi, said Combs broke into his home in late 2011 after learning he and Cassie were dating. After his car was firebombed a few weeks later, Cudi — whose real name is Scott Mescudi — said he knew Combs “had something to do” with it. Combs denied it.
Combs’ defense team acknowledged that he could be violent but argued that prosecutors were intruding in his personal life. In his closing remarks to the jury, Agnifilo said it wasn’t illegal for Combs to make “homemade porn” with his girlfriends.
Rapper, entrepreneur and criminal defendant
Combs was at the center of the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop battles of the 1990s and became one of the most influential hip-hop producers and executives of the past three decades, diversifying his interests with the Sean John fashion label, Ciroc vodka, a cable TV channel and a film and TV studio.
In 2001, Combs was at the center of one of the biggest hip-hop trials of its era, stemming from a Manhattan nightclub shooting that injured three people in 1999. Combs was acquitted of charges that he took an illegal gun into the club and tried to bribe his driver to take the fall.
His career recovered quickly that time.
Combs’ reputation may have suffered irreparable damage, though, after Cassie sued him in November 2023, alleging years of sexual and physical abuse. He settled the next day for $20 million, but more lawsuits by other women and men followed.
Most are still pending.
 


Snake on a plane delays a flight in Australia

Updated 02 July 2025
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Snake on a plane delays a flight in Australia

MELBOURNE: An Australian domestic flight was delayed for two hours after a stowaway snake was found in the plane’s cargo hold, officials said on Wednesday.
The snake was found on Tuesday as passengers were boarding Virgin Australia Flight VA337 at Melbourne Airport bound for Brisbane, according to snake catcher Mark Pelley.
The snake turned out to be a harmless 60-centimeter (2-foot) green tree snake. But Pelly said he thought it could be venomous when he approached it in the darkened hold.
“It wasn’t until after I caught the snake that I realized that it wasn’t venomous. Until that point, it looked very dangerous to me,” Pelley said.
Most of the world’s most venomous snakes are native to Australia.
When Pelley entered the cargo hold, the snake was half hidden behind a panel and could have disappeared deeper into the plane.
Pelley said he told an aircraft engineer and airline staff that they would have to evacuate the aircraft if the snake disappeared inside the plane.
“I said to them if I don’t get this in one shot, it’s going to sneak through the panels and you’re going to have to evacuate the plane because at that stage I did not know what kind of snake it was,” Pelley said.
“But thankfully, I got it on the first try and captured it,” Pelley added. “If I didn’t get it that first time, the engineers and I would be pulling apart a (Boeing) 737 looking for a snake still right now.”
Pelley said he had taken 30 minutes to drive to the airport and was then delayed by security before he could reach the airliner.
An airline official said the flight was delayed around two hours.
Because the snake is native to the Brisbane region, Pelley suspects it came aboard inside a passenger’s luggage and escaped during the two-hour flight from Brisbane to Melbourne.
For quarantine reasons, the snake can’t be returned to the wild.
The snake, which is a protected species, has been given to a Melbourne veterinarian to find a home with a licensed snake keeper.


Most world heritage sites at risk of drought or flooding: UN

Updated 01 July 2025
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Most world heritage sites at risk of drought or flooding: UN

PARIS: Almost three quarters of the globe’s cultural and natural heritage sites are threatened by too little or too much water, the UN’s cultural agency said on Tuesday.
As a result of rising temperatures, extreme weather events including hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves have become more frequent and intense, scientists warn.
Seventy-three percent of all 1,172 non-marine sites on the UNESCO Heritage List are exposed to at least one severe water risk — including water stress, drought, river flooding or coastal flooding, UNESCO said.
“Water stress is projected to intensify, most notably in regions like the Middle East and North Africa, parts of South Asia and northern China — posing long-term risks to ecosystems, cultural heritage, and the communities and tourism economies that depend on them,” it added.
Cultural sites were most commonly threatened by water scarcity, while more than half of natural sites faced the risk of flooding from a nearby river, the UNESCO study showed.
In India, the Taj Mahal monument in Agra, for example, “faces water scarcity that is increasing pollution and depleting groundwater, both of which are damaging the mausoleum,” the study said.
In the United State, “in 2022, a massive flood closed down all of Yellowstone National Park and cost over $20 million in infrastructure repairs to reopen.”
The report gave four more examples.
Iraq’s southern marshes — the reputed home of the biblical Garden of Eden — “face extremely high water stress, where over 80 percent of the renewable supply is withdrawn to meet human demand,” it added.
And competition for water is expected to increase in the marshes, where migratory birds live and inhabitants raise buffalo, as the region grows hotter in coming years.
On the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, the Victoria Falls — originally called Mosi-oa-Tunya (“the smoke that thunders“) before it was renamed by Scottish explorer David Livingstone — has faced recurring drought and is sometimes reduced to a trickle.
In Peru, the pre-Colombian city of Chan Chan and its delicate 1,000-year-old adobe walls face an extremely high risk of river flooding, UNESCO said.
In China, rising sea levels driven in large part by climate change are leading to coastal flooding, which destroys mudlands where migratory waterbirds find food, it added.
 


In Senegal, luxury sheep shine at a beauty contest and fetch a high price

Updated 01 July 2025
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In Senegal, luxury sheep shine at a beauty contest and fetch a high price

  • As each sheep is led into the open arena, a panel of judges note down their points based on distinct features like beauty, size, height, horns and body texture for each round
  • Winners are rewarded with food and cash prizes

DAKAR: The regal creatures are led into the open arena, stamping their groomed hooves as if to acknowledge the cheers, music and fireworks from the crowd of spectators. Their majestic figures embody pride and status, their towering size, prominent muzzle, curved horns and polished skin on full display as night falls.
Welcome to one of Senegal’s most anticipated beauty pageants – not for humans but for the locally bred Ladoum, the equivalent of a Ferrari among the woolly creatures.
The annual contest featured more than a dozen Ladoum, competing in three different categories as adult male, adult female and young/promising.
As each sheep is led into the open arena, a panel of judges note down their points based on distinct features like beauty, size, height, horns and body texture for each round. Winners, announced at the end, are rewarded with food and cash prizes.
This year’s Best Male Adult sheep is Prive, 1 year and 7months old, whose breeder estimated him to be worth more than $100,000 in the market.
“It feels good to be here, I cherish him so much,” Isaiah Cisse, Prive’s breeder said with a wide grin as he massaged the sheep for a successful outing.
Unlike the more common sheep eaten and used as sacrifices during Muslim celebrations, the crossbreed Ladoum are mainly seen as a living, breathing symbol of social prestige and luxury bred for years before they are sold.
Widely known as one of the world’s most expensive sheep, the older ones usually fetch a price of $70,000, compared to $250 for a regular sheep, and attract buyers from around the world to this West African nation of 18 million people, where livestock is a key source of livelihood.
Mostly weighing up to 400 pounds (181 kilograms) and up to 4 feet (1.21 meters) in height, the Ladoum are known for their physical grandeur with curling and symmetrical horns and lustrous sheen.
As the contest unfolded in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, each sheep is announced before it is led by the breeder onto an elevated stage where it is inspected by the judges, to the elation of the crowd.
Each receives joyful chants from a band troupe, featuring the local Senegalese instrumental Assiko music with the sheep’s praise names ringing out aloud.
“You can’t see a sheep like this in Africa or even in the world,” said Elhadji Ndiaye, a member of the judging panel. “Ladoum is special.”
Many agree with him.
Musa Faye, a 22-year-old breeder, said his 18-month-old sheep was named Diomaye, after Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, to show the sheep’s significance for him and his family.
“I spend a lot of time with him and play with him,” Faye said of his sheep. “I am preparing him for the next competition because I know he will win (the trophy),” he added.
The contest, which has been running for some years, took place alongside an exhibition that featured even young breeders like Ibrahim Diagne. At 12, he is anticipating bringing his Ladoum for the contest someday.
“My parents like this and have always done it, so I like it too,” Diagne said of his passion for the family’s sheep rearing business.
Such passion is common in Senegal where sheep rearing is an age-old tradition deeply woven into family life and culture.
Even animal traditions are passed down through the generations.
Maniane Ndaw’s prized sheep Alou won this year’s Best Junior Male, following in the footsteps of the sheep’s father who won several titles.
“For me, it’s a great, great pleasure,” Ndaw said. “It shows that the lineage is a good one.”


British woman claims record run across Australia

Updated 29 June 2025
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British woman claims record run across Australia

SYDNEY: British former footballer Fran Hurndall completed a 3,800-kilometer (2,360-mile) charity run across Australia on Sunday, claiming the fastest time on record for a woman.
Raising money for victims of domestic violence, Hurndall ran the distance from Perth to Sydney in 60 days, her team said, despite suffering from an Achilles tendon injury and infected blisters.
“The run has been a wild ride and the physical and mental struggle has been unbelievable,” the 33-year-old said in a statement.
“What I have had to go through is absolutely nothing compared to the struggle of those women who live with the threat of domestic violence every single day.”
Hurndall finished 17 days quicker than the previous claimed women’s record in 2023, a team spokeswoman said, adding that she planned to lodge her accomplishment with Guinness World Records.