Rescue workers were losing hope yesterday of finding a priest who disappeared off the southern coast of Brazil after drifting out to sea four days ago suspended from hundreds of helium-filled party balloons.
Fr Adelir Antonio de Carli went missing on Sunday night after he called friends from his mobile phone to say his contraption made of some thousand balloons would soon crash into the Atlantic Ocean. The chaplain staged the stunt to help raise money for a chapel for truckers in his highway parish.
Brazil's air force suspended its search for Fr de Carli yesterday, a spokesman said. The navy continued to patrol waters off the coast of Santa Catarina state but was considering halting operations.
Teased elephant kills three
At least three people were trampled to death by an elephant and several injured when an intoxicated man teased the animal during a Hindu festival in southern India, police said yesterday.
The male elephant went berserk in a town in Kerala state on Wednesday and destroyed a temple's theatre and tower, as hundreds of people ran in fear.
"The elephant was provoked by a man who was drunk," police official P.S. Suresh said yesterday.
Indian television channels showed pictures of the elephant repeatedly trampling the man, hurling another with its trunk and attacking other elephants.
Drinking companions for dad
Found: Drinking companions to join elderly gentleman for a friendly beer at his local pub.
Mike Hammond was bombarded with offers after advertising in his village post office for someone to accompany his 88-year-old father Jack on visits to a southern England pub from a nursing home.
He offered the lucky winner £7 an hour plus expenses and, after sifting through the applicants, decided on a job-share.
Drinking duties are to be divided between a retired doctor and a former military man.
"Dad's now going to be going down to the pub several times a week - three with his new friends and twice with me," Mr Hammond told The Times yesterday. "I want to give him some of his old life back."
Sea lions get reprieve
A US federal court has given a stay of execution to 85 sea lions slated to be killed yesterday to help boost salmon stocks below a dam connecting the states of Washington and Oregon.
A lower court denied an initial request for a preliminary injunction but, in a late afternoon ruling on Wednesday, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals moved to save the sea lions pending further review of the case.
"The lethal taking of the California sea lions is, by definition, irreparable. This logic also applies to the salmon consumed by the sea lions," the court said in response to an emergency motion.
In balancing whether to let the California sea lions be killed to protect the salmon, the court noted that the 2008 salmon run on the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River was estimated to have 269,000 fish.
The sea lions were estimated to consume between 212 and 2,094 of the Chinook salmon - 4.4 per cent of the total at the high end of that estimate.
Grizzly bear kills trainer
A grizzly bear featured in the recent Will Ferrell film Semi-Pro and touted as one of the "best trained" in show business has killed its handler, but officials yesterday said they were puzzled by what provoked the attack.
The 700-pound bear, which stands seven and a half feet tall, bit Stephan Miller, 39, in the neck on Tuesday at a facility where wild animals are trained for film and TV productions near the mountain resort of Big Bear Lake, east of Los Angeles.
Two other trainers at the facility, called Randy Miller's Predators in Action, subdued the bruin with pepper spray and were unhurt in the incident, said San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department spokesman Arden Wiltshire.
The enclosed compound and the bear, a five-year-old male named Rocky, were examined afterward by wardens of the California state Fish and Game Department, which found no permit violations or danger to public safety, agency spokesman Harry Morse said. Authorities said that assuming no wrongdoing turns up in the investigation, it would be left up to the owners of the bear to decide whether to destroy it or keep it alive.
Mr Wiltshire said the attack occurred during a training session being videotaped while three experienced handlers, including Mr Miller, the owner's cousin, were present.