Authorities say a 69-year-old central Florida woman found an 8-foot-long alligator prowling in her kitchen late Monday night. Sandra Frosti says the gator must have pushed through the back porch screen door and then went inside through an open sliding glass door at her home in Oldsmar, just north of Tampa. It then apparently strolled through the living room, down a hall and into the kitchen. A trapper with Animal Capture of Florida removed the alligator, which was cut by a plate that was knocked to the ground during the chaos. But no one inside the house was injured.
Gas and oil prices moved further into record high territory Tuesday, with retail gas reaching a national average of $3.51 for the first time and crude oil passing $118 as the dollar fell to a new low against the euro. At the pump, the national average price of a gallon of regular gas rose 0.8 of a penny Tuesday to $3.511, according to a survey of stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Prices for diesel also rose overnight to a new record of $4.204 a gallon. Gas prices are nearly 66 cents higher than last year, when prices peaked at a then-record of $3.23 in late May.
Police briefly detained at least eight people and seized flags from pro-Tibet activists Tuesday during a rowdy demonstration against the Olympic torch relay in Indonesia. Water cannons and 3,000 officers were deployed around the main sports stadium in the capital, Jakarta. Jakarta’s governor started the relay, becoming the first of 80 torchbearers to follow a route that circled the stadium five times. The Chinese Embassy had insisted the Jakarta relay be shortened and open only to 5,000 invited guests, many of them local school children.
Haitians fleeing their impoverished homeland met tragedy when their boat went down off the Bahamas, killing at least 20 people and leaving only three known survivors, including an alleged migrant smuggler, authorities said Monday. Survivors said the boat was carrying 24 people when it capsized Saturday night, according to U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Luis Diaz in Miami. Just before dawn Sunday, fishermen heard screams. Volunteers searched for bodies, tying life preservers onto them so they could be recovered by the U.S. Coast Guard, said Chris Lloyd of the Bahamas Air Sea Rescue Association.
Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy in an audiotape Tuesday accused Shiite Iran of trying to discredit the Sunni al-Qaida terror network by spreading the conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Al-Zawahri has accused Iran in recent messages of seeking to extend its power in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and through its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. The authenticity of the two-hour audio recording posted on an Islamic Web site could not be independently confirmed. But the voice sounded like past audiotapes from the terror leader, and the posting where it was found bore the logo of Al-Sahab, al-Qaida’s official media arm.
