World Vignettes

The youngster pushed the screen out and fell. On the way down, he hit an air conditioner protruding from a second-floor window, police said.

After landing on the grass, the boy walked to a curb and sat down, and a neighbour found him crying.

Wrong number
WASHINGTON: Oops. Wrong number. A full-page ad in the New York Times by a group that advocates overcoming homosexuality through prayer had the phones ringing off the hook yesterday at the offices of an Alabama electrical contractor.

Callers were responding to a newspaper ad featuring a woman who says she’s a former lesbian who through faith in God and prayer became a loving wife andmother.

But because of an error by the organisation sponsoring the ad, Exodus International, the wrong phone number was printed in the NYT.

Bob Davies, the head of the Seattle-based Exodus, said he telephoned Griffin and apologised when he learned of the mistake.

The ad, paid for by a coalition of Conservative and Christian-right groups, shows the photo of the woman, Anne Paulk, and tells her story.

Endangered shark
ADELAIDE: A white pointer shark accidentally killed in waters off South Australia — the largest ever caught in the state — could provide vital clues to the sharks’ life cycle.

The white pointer was a female, probably more than 20 years old, measuring 5.5 metres in length and weighing about one-and-a-half tonnes, South Australian chief scientist John Keesing said. It drowned after becoming entangled in a angler’s longline close to Port Pirie in Spencer Gulf.