Accused killer Elected Mayor in Brazil

BRASILIA, Brazil- A Brazilian rancher accused of ordering the killing of four government agents inspecting claims of slavery has been released from jail after being elected mayor of his home town. Anterio Manica was let out of prison on Tuesday night after being elected mayor of Unai, 90 miles from the capital Brasilia, in a landslide victory on Sunday with support from Brazil's Vice President, Jose Alencar. A Brazilian court ruled Manica could take office on Jan. 1 while the justice system investigates federal police accusations he and his brother hired the gang that executed three labor ministry inspectors and their driver in January. "As he was elected mayor there was little concern he would try to flee," said a Federal Police spokesman in Brasilia. The killings highlighted the problem of continued forced labor in Brazil's countryside more than a century after the nation formally abolished slavery. "He (Anterio Manica) is a person with a clean record...he has not been convicted," said a spokesman for Alencar, explaining the vice president's support. The agents were ambushed near Unai as they investigated reports of forced labor on a black bean plantation owned by Manica's brother, Norberto, who is one of the world's top bean growers. Norberto remains in custody. Brazil's government estimates some 25,000 rural workers are forced to stay on isolated farms and work in slave-like conditions, often after incurring large debts. Human rights organizations say the figure could be much higher.

A state worker mowed down 28,000 young trees that had been planted as part of a $33,000 US highway beautification project

PERRYSBURG, Ohio- It was a clear-cut error: a state worker mowed down 28,000 young trees that had been planted as part of a $33,000 US highway beautification project. The only thing left behind were signs that read: Do not mow or spray. "Shame on us. We wasted all that effort," Joe Rutherford, a spokesman with the Ohio Transportation Department, said Friday. The oaks, ash, birches, maples and sycamores were planted in 2002 and 2003 at the interchange of Interstate 74 and I-475 near this Toledo suburb. The city, county and state paid for the seedlings, and volunteers put in more than 700 hours planting them. Rutherford said the seedlings - little more than half a metre tall at most - were cut down earlier this week. He said that many of the seedlings were dead and that someone got the idea it would be OK to mow them down. "I'm sure at some point someone was directed to mow," he said. "I'm not sure at what level that was given. We've reviewing the matter." -AP

World's largest flower stinks up Sydney

SYDNEY, Australia- With the aroma of "overripe Camembert cheese on a bed of roadkill" a rare example of the world's largest flower burst into bloom Thursday in a Sydney hothouse. Visitors to Sydney's Botanical Gardens have described the scent of the Titan Arum, also known as Amorphophallus titanum, as like a room full of smelly socks, fish rotting, wet carpet, or a rotten banana. Alistair Hay, director of the Botanical Gardens Trust, had another opinion. "It smelled exactly like overripe Camembert cheese on a bed of roadkill," he said. The flowers have been known to grow to nearly three metres high in their native rainforests of western Sumatra in Indonesia and come into bloom every two or three years in the wild, said Stevie King from the Royal Botanic Gardens Trust. But this is the first time the plant has flowered in the garden on the banks of Sydney Harbor since it was planted as a seed in 1993. "We had to learn how to propagate it," King said. "We have a joint conservation project going between the Trust and the Indonesian Botanic Gardens, and what we've got now is the first flowering." Its name means "huge deformed penis," but its common Indonesian name is "bung bangkai," which roughly translates into "corpse flower," said Tim Entwistle, executive director of the Botanical Gardens Trust, who described it as a "big banana-shaped thing with this frilly skirt that opens up upside down." The yellow flower, standing 1.32 metres tall, has attracted visitors all week long as it prepared to bloom, but not for its striking yellow central column - or spadix - or its crimson-and-green dishbowl-shaped petal - or spathe - but rather its stinking perfume. King said the smell is most potent at night, when the plant sends out its scent in wafting waves to attract insects. "It needs to attract the night insects to pollinate," she said. The flower was expected to fully flower in the next two days before the stalk collapses and dehydrates and the plant dies.