Australia lifted protection levels yesterday for the world's largest surviving marsupial carnivore, the Tasmanian devil, listing the animal as endangered due to a deadly facial tumour outbreak.
Devils, the size of a small dog and made famous by the fierce Looney Tunes cartoon character known as "Taz", have been in decline since the 1990s when devil facial tumour disease ravaged the wild population, confined to the island state of Tasmania.
"This disease has led to the decline of about 70 per cent of the Tasmanian devil population since the disease was first reported in 1996," Environment Minister Peter Garrett said.
The devil was listed as endangered on the United Nation's Red List in 2008 and Australia had now moved its status from vulnerable to endangered, bringing extra protections.
Devils are nocturnal hunters and widespread across Tasmania, living mostly on carrion but also capable of hunting small animals including wallabies, which are like small kangaroos.
Convicted of alcohol breast milk death
A baby in Russia's far east died from his drunken mother's breast milk after she downed half a litre of ethanol before feeding him.
Yelena Sinitsyna was handed a one-year suspended sentence and a three-year probation period on Wednesday for death by negligence of her four-month-old son in Sretensk, near China, and six hours east of Moscow.
"On April 3 between 2 and 3 p.m., she drank half a litre of spirit alcohol. In her drunken state she then breastfed her son," the official report said. "The immediate cause of the child's death, according to a forensic examination of the corpse, was acute ethanol poisoning." Ms Sinitsyna was given a relatively light sentence as she must care for her surviving toddler, it added. Eighty per cent of crimes committed in Russia are connected to alcohol consumption, the interior ministry said yesterday.
Russians are some of the world's heaviest drinkers and demographers often cite high alcohol consumption as a factor in the low life expectancy of Russian men.
Chinese hospitals must kick the habit
China will ban smoking in all hospitals and medical facilities from 2011, the Health Ministry said yesterday, as the world's most populous nation struggles to get its people to kick one of their favourite habits.
China is the world's largest cigarette producer and Chinese are the world's most enthusiastic smokers, with a growing market of about 320 million making it a magnet for multinationals and focus of international health concerns. Chinese cigarettes are also among the cheapest in the world, with a packet costing as little as a few cents. More than half of all male Chinese doctors also smoke.
Military hospitals will also be banned from offering cigarettes to important visitors, the rules state.
It remains to be seen how easy it will be to enforce the new regulation as non-smoking signs and laws are generally given short shrift in China.
Appeals ban on female metro drivers
A young Russian woman will challenge regulations that ban women from driving trains on the metro after the Supreme Court rejected her legal case on Thursday.
Student Anna Klevets applied to work as an assistant driver on the chandeliered underground system in Russia's second city, St Petersburg, last November. But she was turned down on grounds that women cannot work with dangerous heavy equipment, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Ms Klevets took her case to the Supreme Court in March.
"The Supreme Court acknowledged the decision (that women are banned) and has made no amendments," Itar-Tass quoted the court's spokesman as saying. Ms Klevets will now appeal to a St Petersburg court to challenge the working conditions on the city's metro.
Newspaper Izvestia reports that a 2000 law bans women from 456 jobs, including stallion-breeding and oil drilling. Russia was the second country in the world to give women full voting rights after Finland.
Tycoon cedes estates for debt
Russian tycoon Shalva Chigirinsky has handed over his French Riviera villa and a London mansion to his oil company which is suing him for $400 million.
Sibir Energy said yesterday it had "received a charge" over shares in the company which controls Villa Marina Irina on France's Cap Martin and a pledge of future profits from the sale of Hugh House in London's upscale Belgravia district.
Russia's billionaire oligarchs have so far avoided losing their luxury investments such as property, yachts and soccer clubs despite seeing their collective wealth plunge by $378 billion over the past year.
Mr Chigirinsky, an oil and property tycoon who engaged British architect Norman Foster to build Europe's tallest skyscraper in Moscow but abandoned the project when the crisis stalled construction, has fled Russia.
Sibir suggested the property and shares handed over to the company would not cover the full amount owed, saying it was seeking further security from Chigirinsky.