GLOBAL SNAPSHOT

1 Jail sex slave payout

LOS ANGELES: A US jury awarded $65,000 to a convicted murderer in California’s San Quentin State Prison after finding a female prison instructor turned him into a “sex slave”. William Cordoba sued vocational instructor Silvia Pulido because he said she coerced him into trading sex acts after promising to get him a lawyer to help free him.

2 Whale poo scrutiny

WELLINGTON: How whale poo affects the Antarctic ecosystem will be one of many studies New Zealand scientists hope to undertake during an expedition to the world’s largest marine reserve. The multidisciplinary science expedition by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research was set to leave New Zealand yesterday for a week-long journey to the Ross Sea shelf break.

3 US launches strikes

DAMASCUS: America has launched air strikes on Syrian Government-backed troops after they attacked Syrian opposition forces in Deir el-Zour Province. It’s a rare strike against forces that support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

4 Corpse assaulted

MOSCOW: A morgue worker has been sacked for having sex with the corpse of a murdered reality TV star. Oksana Aplekaeva, from Russia’s top reality show Dom-2, was murdered in 2008. Police exhumed her body for further tests and found she had been sexually violated after her death. A forensic morgue technician named only as 37-year-old Alexander was the culprit.

5 Stocktake at zoo

LONDON: Gibbons Jimmy and Yoda, Max the Eurasian eagle owl and Bhanu the lion have stood up to be counted as London Zoo conducts its annual audit. Zookeepers tallied 19,289 animals in the annual count of every mammal, bird, reptile, fish, amphibian and insect at the famous zoo.