Python's revenge

BANGKOK: A Thai snakecharmers luck ran out today when a python he had captured from a neighbour's home coiled itself around his neck and strangled him to death.

Hie Kerdchoochuay. 55. who was known for his snake catching and charming skills, rushed into a neighbour's house in the northern province of Uttaradit on Monday to catch the python which hact intruded the home, police told Reuters on Tuewfay.

He put the snake in a sack and was talking home with it when villagers ran into him and asked to see the python.

Hie then took the snake out and put it around nis neck.

Hie started screaming for help when the reptile wrapped itself tightly around his neck and did not let go until he fell down dead, police said.

Pythons kill their prey by squeezing them, constricting their ability to breathe in.

Villagers and policemen in the area then forcibly unwrapped the snake from his neck and took it into captivity.

Burning object from space

NEW DELHI: An airplane commander saw a burning object in space that eyewitnesses say split into two and hit the ground in northern India, a domestic news agency reported Tuesday, says AP.

The object that fell in the central Madhya Pradesh state was "believed to be space debris." Press Trust of India reported. The news agency said no damage or injury was immediately reported on the ground.

Officials in Bhopal, the provincial capital, said they were aware of the reports but police investigators scouring an area 60 miles north of the city had so far found nothing.

"Everybody says they saw it, but so far there’s nothing on the ground," Satish Chandra Tripathi, director general of the state police, told The Associated Press by telephone.

The commander of a domestic passenger flight of the government-owned Alliance Air reported sighting the object at 46.000 feet late Monday. Press Trust quoted VK Kalra. senior official of the Airports Authority of India, as saying. The airplane was at an altitude of 27,000 feet, the news agency said.