Indonesian airport officials said Saturday they had foiled an attempt by two Kuwaitis to smuggle 40 pythons in their luggage.
Suspects Yaqub Ebrahim and Ali Hasan were caught on Friday at Jakarta’s international airport as they tried to carry the sedated serpents onto an Emirates Airlines flight to Dubai.
“From many foiled cases, people often use the flights to Dubai to smuggle illegal animals,” Salahudin Rafi, operational and technical director at airport operator Angkasa Pura II, said in an emailed statement to AFP.
He said the suspects usually sedated the animals so officers could not detect them.
The two suspects were questioned by airport authorities and the pythons were taken to the animal quarantine centre at the airport. (AFP)
Nasty surprise
An internet installer had a nasty surprise when he found a decomposing corpse in a Stockholm apartment that he had visited to link up to the web, Swedish police said yesterday.
The body found Wednesday appeared to be of an elderly man and police had no reason to suspect foul play, deputy Flemingsberg police commander Jonas Winloef said.
“We think he had been dead for at least three years,” he said.
Police found piles of post in the apartment dated from 2007 and food in the fridge with an expiry date of 2008, he said.
The internet installation man had been able to walk into the apartment in the city’s Tumba suburb because it was not locked. (AFP)
Beefy present
Sudan is sending 5,000 cows that it promised as a gift to Egypt, the foreign ministry said on Saturday, just ahead of a two-day visit by Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.
“During his last trip to Egypt (at the beginning of March), President Omar al-Bashir announced that he would give the Egyptians 5,000 cows as a present,” foreign ministry spokesman Khalid Musa said.
Mr Sharaf, who was appointed by the army this month after President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February, heads an Egyptian delegation that will include the foreign, agriculture and irrigation ministers.
Their trip comes just three weeks after Mr Bashir became the first Arab leader to visit Cairo since Mr Mubarak was toppled after weeks of protests.
Egypt has been a key ally of Sudan, and of Mr Bashir in particular, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and genocide in Darfur. (AFP)
New ethics code
Russian lawmakers and their aides will soon have to follow a new ethics code forbidding mini-skirts and indiscreet behaviour that may tarnish the image of Parliament.
The so-called Code of Ethics impacts everyone working in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of Parliament, including deputies and their staff members, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily said.
The code recommends a “business style marked by formality, restraint, tradition, and neatness”, which might spell the end of mini-skirts and low-cut blouses for many parliamentary assistants. (AFP)
Squirrel shock
A British entrepreneur has told of his surprise at finding a squirrel in his toilet bowl.
Duncan Goose was in Malawi to check on the humanitarian aid projects funded by his company’s One projects when he came to the animal’s rescue.
The Edinburgh-born 42-year-old, whose company Global Ethics also produces One-branded toilet roll, got a shock when he lifted the toilet lid in his hotel room one night to discover the squirrel.
Mr Goose, who now lives in Kew, south west London said: “It was a real shock as my immediate reaction was that it was a rat and, particularly in developing countries, they carry lots of disease.” (PA)
Adders’ habitat
Experts are running DNA tests on wild adders amid concerns that populations of the UK’s only venomous snake are vanishing.
Conservationists say that in the last decade adders have gone into decline as their habitat is lost, becomes less suitable for them or is broken up so they cannot move between sites. (PA)