Bat attacks ex-NRL coach

Grant Bell says he will need to have more vaccines for a month after he was attacked by a flying fox. Picture: Evan Morgan Source: Townsville Bulletin

FORMER North Queensland rugby league coach Grant Bell has been given 14 injections of vaccine after a bat scratched at his eye socket, face and chin.

Mr Bell was at a children's birthday party on Friday night in the Townsville suburb of Railway East when a flying fox latched onto his face, The Townsville Bulletin reports.

"I was picking up my kids from a birthday party and I said "come on, let's go" and I don't know if that startled it, but it just dropped down," he told The Bulletin.

"It wasn't like I was standing in a colony, it just dropped down and I happened to be where it landed.

"I then shook my head and it just dropped down on to the ground," he said.

The popular ABC commentator said the tragic death last month of an eight year-old boy from the bat-borne lyssavirus convinced him to seek medical treatment for his scratches. 

"I went up to the hospital and had it not been for that dreadfully sad situation with a child dying, I probably would have done nothing," he said.

"There's so many bats around up here, we're not necessarily aware of the potential risk, and there's a significant risk."

Mr Bell was given 14 different  needles including the rabies vaccine when he sought treatment at a local hospital and will have ongoing vaccinations for a month.

Dr Lee Skerratt from James Cook University said that while bats rarely violent towards humans, anyone who has been attacked by a flying fox has a "high risk" of being infected with lyssavirus.

In the past 16 years, lyssavirus has claimed three lives in Queensland and experts say it in untreatable once it takes hold.

Read more about this story in The Townsville Bulletin.

View the original article here

DNA link to cold case sex attacks

A car similar to the one described by the victims.

Police have released enhanced FACE images of the man they believe may be responsible for the crimes.

Police have released enhanced FACE images of the man they believe may be responsible for the crimes.

A DNA breakthrough has linked a man in Victoria to a series of violent sex attacks on teenage girls in the 1980s.

Police believe the man sexually assaulted four girls, kidnapping several at knifepoint in 1985 and 1986.

Sexual crimes squad detectives have re-opened a series of four sexual offences committed in Victoria in the mid-1980s after recent advancements in forensics triggered exposed crucial new evidence in the cases.

Police have ascertained a single offender is responsible for the series of child sex offences after a DNA match established a link in three of the cases. The fourth incident is also believed to have been committed by the same man.

Det-Acting Insp Darren Cooper said police had relaunched the cases in a bid to provide some closure to the victims and pleaded for public information.

“Someone out there must know something about these crimes,” Insp Cooper said.

“Two decades have passed and now is the time for anyone with any information to come forward to help us provide justice to these victims.”

The first offence occurred on December 1 in 1985 as a 14-year-old girl was riding her bike through Victoria Park in Ballarat around 4pm.The girl spotted a man standing kicking the tyres of a green station wagon with a white roof.

As she girl rode past the vehicle, the man standing alongside the car grabbed her and threw her into his car.

The man drove to girl to the vicinity of the local tip, threatened her with a knife and forced the girl to drink beer before sexually assaulting her.

The man proceeded to drive the girl to a second unknown location, but released her near her home a short time later.  Detectives believe the same man tried to approach the same girl a few months later in March, 1986 as she was walking home from school. But the girl screamed and ran home.

On January 20, 1986, a 15-year-old girl was walking home from shops in Bell St, Heidelberg when she was approached by a male stranger around 3.45pm.

The man asked the teenager to help him fix the steering of his car - also a green station wagon with a white roof - and instructed her to sit in the driver’s seat while he tightened a bolt under the car.

When the girl got into the car, the man forced her on to the floor and threatened her with a knife before driving to an unspecified location and sexually assaulting her.

The man also released the girl near her home after the attack.

Ten days later, the alarm was raised with authorities when a 13-year-old girl was sexually assaulted in a supermarket carpark in Peel St, Ballarat.

The teenager was lying down in her mother’s car in the car park around 1.15pm when the man got into the car, grabbing the victim by the hair and sexually assaulting her before leaving.

The last case occurred on August 2 the same year, when a 16-year-old girl was riding her bike on Venice St in Mentone en route to a ballet lesson.

As she rode past a man kneeling in front of a car around 2pm, the man told her he was having steering problems and asked her to help.

The girl got into the car to assist the man before he threatened her with a knife, forcing her into the front seat.

The man indecently assaulted and sexually assaulted her at that scene before driving her to a second location where he continued to sexually assault her. She was later dropped off in Mordialloc.

Insp Cooper said in each case the victims had described the car used as a green station wagon with a white roof.

Police have released colourised and enhanced FACE images of the man they believe may be responsible for the crimes.

These images are updated versions of those released at the time of the incidents in 1985 and 1986.

The man is also described as being between 20-30 years of age at the time of the incidents, around 177cm tall with light brown hair, moustache and a fair complexion.

Investigators have also released an image of a car similar to the one used to commit the offences.

Police believe he may have had some connection to the Ballarat area.

- with AAP

View the original article here

Komodo dragon attacks tour guide

An Indonesian tour guide was rushed to hospital for stitches after he was attacked by a Komodo dragon. Source: AFP

A KOMODO dragon mauled a tour guide in an Indonesian national park, just two weeks after a previous attack there by one of the giant lizards.

The reptile, over two metres long, appeared when the guide passed its lair while he was trekking with four Indonesian visitors to Rinca island - one of two Komodo-inhabited islands frequently visited by tourists.

"He tried to protect himself with a stick but the Komodo was stronger and faster than him, and he was bitten on his right calf," the administrative official of the Komodo National Park, Heru Rudiharto, told AFP by telephone.

The 25-year-old guide named Abdurahman was taken to hospital on the nearby island of Flores where his wounds were being stitched, said Stefanus Jalak, a colleague who accompanied him.

Until recently, Komodos were believed to hunt with a "bite and wait" strategy - using toxic bacteria in their saliva to weaken or kill their prey before descending in numbers to feast.

But recent research found that the dragons' jaws have highly sophisticated poison glands that can cause paralysis, spasms and shock through haemorrhaging.

They are native to several Indonesian islands and are considered a vulnerable species, with only a few thousand left in the world. Their normal diet consists of large mammals, reptiles and birds.

Komodos, the world's largest monitor lizards, can grow up to three metres and typically weigh to 70 kilograms.

Earlier this month one attacked two park employees, leaving them hospitalised with serious injuries.

In that attack, a 50-year-old park ranger was sitting at his desk at the Rinca island front office, where tourists usually check in, when the two-metre-long lizard sneaked into his room.

Another employee, aged 35, heard the ranger scream and quickly ran to his aid but the lizard also attacked him too, biting his leg.

View the original article here