odds ’n’ ends

PROVIDENCE, RI: Maybe the state should be called Rhode Iceland.

Rhode Island officials yanked a new tourism video, designed to draw visitors to the state, off YouTube in embarrassment on Tuesday after eagle-eyed viewers complained it showed a scene shot in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.

The state’s economic development agency, the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, confirmed the goof and blamed an editing company.

The state released the video at a meeting on Monday night and posted it online Tuesday for a new campaign. The video’s intro features a skateboarder outside a glass building and has a narrator saying, “Imagine a place that feels like home but holds enough uniqueness that you’re never bored.” People on social media said: Hey, that’s not Rhode Island — that’s the Harpa concert hall and conference center in Reykjavik.

Designer Greg Nemes visited Iceland in October and said he recognized the photogenic building, which has a steel framework and an exterior skin of differently colored glass panels.

“It was pretty unmistakable to me, so I did some digging around and posted on Facebook about it,” he said.

Social media users agreed with him, posting side-by-side photos of the building in the Rhode Island ad and Harpa.

Early Tuesday, the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation’s art director said he could “assure that all shots” were in Rhode Island. But later Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the agency confirmed that the building in the state’s tourism ad is Harpa and said an editing company used the wrong footage.

“As the Commerce Corporation put this presentation video together, explicit instructions were given to the local firm that helped with editing to use only Rhode Island footage,” spokeswoman Kayla Rosen said in an email. “A mistake was made. Once the mistake was identified, the video was removed.”

She said the video, which cost $22,000 to make, is being updated at no cost to the Commerce Corporation or the state. (AP)

JOHANNESBURG: A runaway South African lion who may be euthanized after repeatedly escaping from a national park has been re-captured, officials said Thursday, adding that a decision would soon be made on his fate.

Sylvester the lion slipped out of the Karoo National Park in the south of the country at the weekend, triggering a major hunt for him by wildlife authorities.

He was caught after being shot with a tranquiliser dart fired from a helicopter, the South Africa National Parks authority (SAN-Parks) announced, without saying when.

The escape was Sylvester’s second in as many years. On his latest prowl he killed a cow on a private farm, local media reported. (AFP)

NAIROBI, Kenya: A Kenyan wildlife official says a tracking team including a helicopter has been deployed to locate two lions that were reported to have strayed out of the Nairobi National park, a day after another lion was killed after it injured a man.

Kenya Wildlife Service spokesman Paul Gathitu said Thursday the two lions were reported to have been seen near a settlement in the southern side of the park which is not fenced.

KWS said Wednesday they had no choice but to kill a lion in Nairobi’s outskirts after it became too agitated by the noise of a gathering crowd. (AP)