World briefs

Leo Fiyalko, 92 years old and legally blind, got his first hole-in-one last month after playing golf for more than 60 years, a Florida newspaper reported yesterday.

In his prime, Mr Fiyalko had a seven handicap but now needs help lining up his shots and finding his ball, the St Petersburg Times said.

"It was my first hole-in-one, and I never saw it," Mr Fiyalko said. "I was just trying to put the ball on the green."

One of his playing partners said it was obvious Leo had hit a pretty good shot. But the group didn't realise it was a hole-in-one until they got to the green and couldn't find the ball - until they looked in the hole.

Kiss of life for tiger cub

A German medical student got some unexpected practical experience at the zoo when she gave the kiss of life to a baby tiger choking on a piece of meat, the zoo director said yesterday.

The student was passing the enclosure with her toddler son on a visit several weeks ago when she noticed the four-month-old tiger choking and offered her assistance to the helpless keeper, said Andreas Jacob, director of the zoo in the eastern German city of Halle.

"The tiger tried to eat a piece of meat that was too big and started choking and shaking and then fell over," the student, Janine Bauer, told MDR radio.

"We got the piece out but he wasn't breathing so I tried mouth-to-mouth and heart massage," she added. "After 3-5 minutes he came to, thank God."

Rambo movie hits raw nerve

Police in Myanmar have given DVD hawkers strict orders not to stock the new Rambo movie, which features the Vietnam War veteran taking on the former Burma's ruling military junta, a Yangon resident told Reuters yesterday.

Despite the prohibition, pirated copies of the movie are widely available on the streets of the former capital, where it is fast becoming a talking point among a population eager to shake off 45 years of military rule.

"People are going crazy with the quote 'Live for nothing, die for something'," one resident said, referring to the tagline of the fourth Rambo instalment, which opened in the US this week.

Even though it received lukewarm reviews, it is likely to be a sure-fire hit with opponents of the junta, with some even hoping it could spur a change of regime in the impoverished southeast Asian nation.

New shrew-like mammal found

A new type of shrew-like creature with a snout similar to an elephant's trunk has been found in the mountains of Tanzania, the first new species of the mammal found since the 19th century, scientists said.

The creature, a type of elephant shrew to be named the grey-faced sengi, was found in the Udzungwa mountains of south-central Tanzania by scientists from Italy's Trento Museum of Natural Sciences and the California Academy of Sciences.

"It is the first new species of giant elephant shrew to be discovered in more than 126 years," Galen Rathbun of the California Academy of Sciences said in a statement distributed by US-based Conservation International.

The creature has a distinctive grey face and a black lower rump and weighs about 700 grammes, or 25 per cent more than any of the other known 15 species of sengi. Elephant shrews use the snout to help probe for insects, their main food.

Enemas put tourists in hospital

Russians visiting a health resort received a rude shock when a nurse used hydrogen peroxide instead of water to give them enemas.

Itar-Tass news agency reported that 17 tourists in the Caucasus spa town of Yessentuki had to be treated in hospital after the mix-up.

Sources at the sanatorium said the mistake was explained by water and hydrogen peroxide looking the same. Hydrogen peroxide, which can be used to bleach hair, is used as a disinfectant but should not be ingested.

Mexican dentists cheaper

It was fear of the hefty bill as much as fear of the drill that kept American musician Don Clay away from US dental clinics for 30 years. When a sorely infected tooth eventually drove him to the dentist last month, it was to a clinic in a Mexican border city better known for violent crime and drug cartels.

Shrugging off concerns about hygiene and Mexico's brutal drug war, thousands of Americans are heading to Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican border cities for cheap dental treatment.

"I had to get my teeth fixed. I need a perfect smile to make a successful career in music. Treatment in the US is so pricey," said Clay, a Texan trying to get a record deal as a hip-hop artist.

US dental treatment costs up to four times as much as in Mexico, making it tough for uninsured Americans to treat common problems such as abscessed teeth or pay for dentures.