odds ’n’ ends

HONOLULU:

The US Air Force will reduce exterior lighting at a Hawaii facility to help protect endangered and threatened seabirds there.

The Air Force agreed to reduce lighting at a mountaintop radar facility on the island of Kauai, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Sunday. After the announcement, the Center for Biological Diversity said it no longer intends to sue the Air Force.

The nonprofit conservation group says the threatened Newell’s shearwater and Hawaiian petrel are attracted to bright lights at night, which can cause crashes onto the ground and sometimes death.

The center believes lights at the Kokee Air Force Station caused more than 130 birds to fall out of the air in 2015, including Hawaiian petrels, endangered band-rumped storm petrels and Newell’s shearwaters. Most of them died, the center said.

The Kokee Air Force Station was founded in 1961 to detect and track all aircraft operating near Hawaii. The Air Force has taken steps to try to reduce the bird losses over the years, including switching from white and yellow exterior bulbs to green ones in 2013, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. (AP)

KATHMANDU:

Nepal’s only international airport was briefly shut down Monday after a leopard was spotted on the runway, officials said.

Tribhuwan International Airport, located in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, was closed Monday morning as soon as the animal was spotted on the runway, said airport official Prem Nath Thakur.

Police and forest officers were immediately called and the storm drains where the leopard was believed to be hiding were blocked.

Flights resumed after a shutdown that lasted about half an hour. The search for the animal was continuing. (AP)

DANA POINT, California: Boaters were asked Sunday to be on the lookout for a gray whale tangled in an unknown material heading north along Southern California’s coast.

Capt Frank Brennan was leading a whale-watching tour Saturday when he spotted the whale with what looks like some kind of metal frame around its head about 2 miles (3.2 kms) off Dana Point.

“The whale was being evasive because there were so many boats around it,” Brennan told the Orange County Register.

He saw it a second time later in the day off Laguna Beach. (AP)