World Briefs

Thai customs officials have found 431 turtles and other rare reptiles stuffed into four suitcases and smuggled into the Bangkok airport.

Gharials – a type of crocodile native to India – and Indian star and roofed tortoises were among the endangered species found in the luggage. Customs Department Director-General Prasong Poontaneat says many of the reptiles found are banned from international trade.

They were discovered when an Indian traveller arriving from Bangladesh failed to retrieve his bags. Mr Prasong said the animals would be held for evidence and taken care of by wildlife officials.

Longevity traits

Newborn girls in one UK suburb can expect to live to the age of 119 – almost 40 years longer than national predicted lifespan.

But while the figures released by Office of National Statistics may seem like good news for the women of Moreton Hall, on the outskirts of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, they have been dismissed as a statistical anomaly.

The forecast is based on numbers of deaths over a five-year period, and small changes in local death rates can distort the figures.

When combined with the predicted lifespan of 81 for boys born in the suburb, the estimated average life expectancy is 93.

The UK national predicted lifespan for boys is 77.7 years for a newborn boy and 81.9 for a girl.

Seeing double

The graduating class at an Ohio high school features a multitude of multiples: 10 sets of twins and one set of triplets who make up eight per cent of the 282 pupils receiving their diplomas from Canfield High School this month

Principal John Tullio said the 23 students from multiple births all have come up from kindergarten in the Canfield school district, about 60 miles south-east of Cleveland.

Alex and Christian Syrianoudis are the only set of twins who are identical, and they are splitting up for college.

Dangerous ATM

People may moan about cash machines charging an arm and a leg to give you your cash, but one in Pennsylvania very nearly did.

Firefighters had to free a woman who got her hand stuck in an ATM in Pittsburgh on Monday using special equipment.

The rescue was that fire department’s second strange call in less than a year as they freed a toddler who climbed into a toy machine at a shopping centre in December.

Balloon sale

The American couple who told authorities their son floated away in a helium balloon have made a video saying they will auction off the inflatable to raise money for Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief.

Richard and Mayumi Heene’s son was not in the balloon when it floated away in 2009. Mayumi Heene served 20 days in jail for filing a false report. Richard Heene served 30 days in jail for a felony count of attempting to influence a public servant.

Terms of their probation say they cannot profit from their story until 2013.

Hubcap art

Art gallery owner Ken Marquis’s exhibits in north-eastern Pennsylvania are not the sort one would see at the Louvre, or even the Tate Modern.

He has persuaded artists from every US state and 52 countries to transform discarded wheel trims into objects of wonder. He has filled two rooms and a hallway with more than 800 works to date including an oil-soaked mermaid, a dog chomping on a frisbee, a pasta machine, and a guy named Barack Obama.

Beyond the wow factor is an environmental message. Mr Marquis says the goal of the Landfillart Project is to get people thinking about the amount of rubbish they generate.

Blooming smelly

One of the world’s biggest – and smelliest – flowering plants, which rarely blooms and only lasts for 48 hours when it does, has burst into life in Cornwall.

The Eden Project believes its massive Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanium), also know as the Corpse Flower because of its smell of rotting flesh, is one of the largest in Britain at 2.91m (9ft 6ins) tall.

The plant has started spreading its fetid stench around the attraction’s Rainforest Biome. It is native to the rainforests of western Sumatra, one of the islands of Indonesia, and is under threat in the wild because of deforestation.