Billionaire investor Warren Buffett (centre) has hosted a private gathering at an Arizona resort for American billionaires who have pledged to give away at least half their wealth.
Mr Buffett knew only about 12 of the 61 people at the dinner before the famously gregarious Berkshire Hathaway chief executive worked the room and made 40 new friends. “They all more than fulfilled my expectations,” he said.
The media was banned from the first annual meeting of the group that has accepted the giving challenge by Mr Buffett and his friend, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Boy mauled in zoo
A boy on a school trip to a Kansas zoo was mauled by a leopard after he scaled a railing and approached the animal’s cage, a zoo spokesman said.
The Wichita Eagle website said the boy received lacerations to his head and neck after the cat stuck a paw through its cage and grabbed the boy by the side of the head. He was taken to a hospital, where he was listed in fair condition.
Jim Marlett, spokesman for Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, said the boy, aged seven or eight, climbed the 1.2 metre-railing surrounding the leopard exhibit, crossed a 2.5-metre gap and stood next to the metal mesh fence of the animal’s cage.
Mexico deploys soldiers in drugs war
Mexico’s government is sending hundreds of soldiers and federal police to a northern region where drug cartel violence has been on the rise and a prominent businessman was recently killed.
The forces are going to the Comarca Lagunera region area that straddles Coahuila and Durango states, the Interior Department said.
The announcement came three days after Interior Secretary Francisco Blake met the governors of the two states. The troops and federal police are being deployed because of “weak local governments and a rise in crime including kidnapping, extortion and homicide”, the statement said.
UN warning over Sudan border clash
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the military stand-off in Sudan’s fertile border region of Abyei is unacceptable and threatens peace.
Mr Ban is calling on both sides in the conflict – the north’s National Congress Party and the south’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – to refrain from declaring ownership of the Abyei area, which has been claimed by both sides.
The UN chief is concerned that new fighting could result in more loss of life and jeopardise the future relationship between north and south.
Religious charity starts housing project in Haiti
A religious charity said it has started a housing project north of Haiti’s capital that will ultimately provide low-cost shelter for about 2,500 people, many of them victims of last year’s devastating earthquake.
The Mission of Hope project near the town of Cabaret will consist of 500 simple homes in bright pastel colours, each with a couple of fruit trees to provide food and a source of extra income to the families, said Jay Cherry, who is co-ordinating the project for the charity based in Fort Myers, Florida.
Haiti’s government provided 120 acres for the project, and Mission of Hope is raising the three million US dollars cost of construction through donations, Mr Cherry said.
Lizard smugglers jailed in New Zealand
Two German men have been sentenced to prison in New Zealand after they admitted they travelled to the country to steal and smuggle out rare native lizards.
Dieter Ernst, 56, and Thorsten Richartz, 47, were sentenced to four months in jail after they pleaded guilty to charges of hunting protected wildlife and possessing four rare native jewelled geckos.
Judge Stephen Coyle told Dunedin District Court it was the longest sentence the men could receive, given their guilty pleas. The maximum sentence for the charge is six months in prison.
Filipino engineer freed in Yemen
The Philippines government has said a Filipino abducted in Yemen has been freed after 18 days.
Ramon de Castro, an engineer at a power generator rental company in Yemen’s Ma’arib province was seized on April 18 while en route to the capital, Sanaa, with a Sri Lankan colleague and two Yemenis. The two Yemenis were quickly freed but the abductors had demanded jobs, a school and electricity service for the foreigners’ release.