Negotiations are under way with another health provider to take on the lease.

Nearly seven months after a crocodile attack almost took her life, Munirpa walked to the estuary outside her home with her husband and her children, ready to brave a reenactment.

Munirpa, who like many Indonesians only uses one name, recounted how one early morning in August, she threw her household garbage into a creek about 50 metres away from her house, as she normally would.

She didn't see what was coming next.

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By the time she realised a crocodile had attacked her, the four-metre-long beast had already sunk its teeth into most of her body, sparing only her head.

She fought hard, trying to jab its eyes. Her husband, hearing her screams, ran over and tried to pull her by the thigh out of the crocodile's jaws.

A tug-of-war ensued; the reptile whipped him with its tail. Fortunately, he saved Munirpa in time, eventually dragging her out of the crocodile's grip.

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People have long feared the ancient predators in the Central Mamuju district of Indonesia’s West Sulawesi, where the Budong-Budong River meets the sea.

For Munirpa, 48, that fear turned into a brutal reality when she became one of nearly 180 recorded crocodile attack victims in Indonesia last year.

Residents like her are learning to coexist with the crocodiles, a legally protected species in Indonesia, as they balance conservation with looking out for their safety.

But as attacks rise, several residents and experts have called for better government interventions to stop the problem from getting even worse.

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Communities near the crocodiles are on edge

Following the attack, Munirpa was hospitalized for a month and has had two surgeries. By February this year, her fear was still clearly visible, as were the scars on her legs and thighs.

“I am so scared. I don’t want to go to the beach. Even to the back of the house, I don’t dare to go," said Munirpa. “I am traumatized. I asked my children not to go to the river, or to the backyard, or go fishing."

In the villages surrounding the Budong-Budong River, like Munirpa's, crocodiles have become a daily topic of conversation.

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Their presence has become so common that warning signs now mark the areas where they lurk, from the river mouth to the waterways which were once a popular swimming spot for children.

In 2024, there were 179 crocodile attacks in Indonesia, the highest number of crocodile attacks in the world, with 92 fatalities, according to CrocAttack, an independent database. Social media videos showing crocodile appearances and attacks in Sulawesi and other regions in Indonesia are also on the rise.

The increase in attacks began about 12 years ago with the rise of palm oil plantations around the river mouth, said 39-year-old crocodile handler Rusli Paraili.

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Some companies carved artificial waterways, linking them to the larger part of the Budong-Budong River. That was when the crocodiles started straying, leaving the river and creeping to nearby residential areas, such as fish and shrimp ponds, he explained.

Palm oil plantations now dominate the landscape in West Sulawesi, from the mountains to the coast, and patrolling for crocodiles has become part of people's daily routine.

When residents check the water pumps in their ponds, they have no choice but to keep out an eye for the beasts — flashlights in hand, scouring up, down and across canals and waterways — resigned to the uneasy reality of sharing their home with a predator.

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Balancing conservation and safety

The saltwater crocodile has been a legally protected species in Indonesia since 1999, making it an animal that cannot be hunted freely. As a top predator, there is also no population control in nature.

Paraili, the crocodile handler, said that while the law protects crocodiles from being killed, the rise in attacks is a major concern. In response, he's taken care of some of the crocs in a specially-designed farm away from human populations.

He's received some financial support from the government and community donations, as well as support from palm oil companies for the last five years.

The farm has four ponds and around 50 reptiles. Some have names: Tanker, the largest, shaped like a ship, or Karossa, named after the sub-district the animal was caught after fatally attacking someone.

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When funds run low, he uses his own money to ensure they’re fed, at least once every four days.

Amir Hamidy, who studies reptiles at the National Research and Innovation Agency, worries the rise in attacks indicates that crocodile numbers are becoming far too dangerous. Hamidy supports better population control.

Being a protected species “does not necessarily mean that the population cannot be reduced when it is at a level that is indeed unsafe," he said.

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Improving protection for residents

Around a year ago in Tumbu village, Suardi, who goes by one name, was harvesting coconuts when they fell into the river. When he went to retrieve them, he was attacked by a crocodile he initially didn't notice. He's since made a full recovery.

Still, the experience has made him more cautious. “Yes, I am worried. But what else can we do," Suardi said. “The important thing is that we are careful enough.”

Along with Munirpa, Suardi is one of 10 people in the region who was attacked by a crocodile last year. Three of those attacked were killed.

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Suyuti Marzuki, who's head of West Sulawesi Marine and Fisheries Agency, said the crocodile habitat shift is making people's everyday activities — like harvesting coconuts, fishing or even disposing of garbage like Munirpa — very risky.

Marzuki said the government is looking at possible options that can provide both safety and economic alternatives for residents.

While he acknowledged that crocodile population numbers and ecosystems need to be protected, Marzuki also raised the possibility of bolstering the local economy through the crocodile skin trade. That industry is controversial because of conservation and animal welfare issues.

Paraili, the crocodile handler, also urged serious government interventions.

"This is a matter of human lives. So when the government is not serious, then our brothers and sisters in the future — in five or 15 years — there will be even more who will die from being attacked by crocodiles,” he said.

Residents like Munirpa and Suardi are waiting for more immediate and realistic steps from the authorities to ensure their community's and families' safety.

“It is enough that I've been bitten by a crocodile," Munirpa said. “I won’t let it happen to my children.”

Residents across Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma are now in recovery mode as they assess the wreckages left behind.

The five new Lenco "Bearcats" cost $3.5 million and will be used to respond to the highest-level threats.

A Peruvian fisherman has been found alive in the Pacific Ocean after spending 95 days lost at sea, Peru's state news agency Andina reported Saturday.

Máximo Napa Castro, 61, set off on his fishing boat on December 7 from Marcona, a coastal town in the south of the country, but bad weather caused him to stray from his course and lose direction, according to Andina.

He was found on March 11 by an Ecuadorian fishing boat in waters off the coast of northern Peru, heavily dehydrated and in critical condition, the agency said.

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After his rescue, Napa Castro told local media in a tearful interview that he managed to survive by drinking rainwater he collected on the boat and eating insects, birds and a turtle.

He spent the last 15 days without eating, Reuters reported.

Napa Castro told local media he kept thinking about his family to "hold on" to life.

"I said I didn't want to die for my mother. I had a granddaughter who is a few months old, I held on to her. Every day I thought of my mother," he said.

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The fisherman's daughter Inés Napa Torres thanked the Ecuadorian fishermen for saving her dad's life.

"Thank you, Ecuadorian brothers, for rescuing my dad Gatón, God bless you," she said in a Facebook post.

Napa Castro's family and groups of fishermen had been searching for him for three months.

"Every day is anguish for the whole family and I understand my grandmother's pain because as a mother I understand her (…) We never thought we would go through this situation, I wouldn't wish it on anyone, we will not lose hope, Dad, of finding you," his daughter wrote on March 3 on Facebook.

Napa Castro received medical checks at the Hospital Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes in Paita, near Peru's border with Ecuador, and was discharged on Saturday, Ecuavisa, a CNN affiliate, reported.

CNN is trying to contact the fisherman's family.

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order blocking the deportations, but lawyers told him there were already two planes with immigrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.

In a court filing the Department of Justice, which has appealed Boasberg's decision, said the immigrants "had already been removed from U.S. territory" when the written order was issued at 7:26 pm.

Trump's allies were gleeful over the results.

"Oopsie…Too late," Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house about 300 immigrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country's prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg's ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house immigrants, posted on the site: "We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars."

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Boasberg's verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final order but that the Trump administration clearly violated the "spirit" of it.

"This just incentivises future courts to be hyper specific in their orders and not give the government any wiggle room," Vladeck said.

The immigrants were deported after Trump's declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law, invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.

A Justice Department spokesperson on Sunday referred to an earlier statement from Attorney General Pam Bondi blasting Boasberg's ruling and didn't immediately answer questions about whether the administration ignored the court's order.

Venezuela's government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump's declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of "the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps."

Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation's economy came undone during the past decade. Trump seized on the gang during his campaign to paint misleading pictures of communities that he contended were "taken over" by what were actually a handful of lawbreakers.

The Trump administration has not identified the immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. It also sent two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to El Salvador who had been arrested in the United States.

Video released by El Salvador's government showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend down at the waist.

The video also showed the men being transported to prison in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison's all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.

The immigrants were taken to the notorious CECOT facility, the centerpiece of Bukele's push to pacify his once violence-wracked country through tough police measures and limits on basic rights

The Trump administration said the president actually signed the proclamation contending Tren de Aragua was invading the United States on Friday night but didn't announce it until Saturday afternoon. Immigration lawyers said that, late Friday, they noticed Venezuelans who otherwise couldn't be deported under immigration law being moved to Texas for deportation flights. They began to file lawsuits to halt the transfers.

"Basically any Venezuelan citizen in the US may be removed on pretext of belonging to Tren de Aragua, with no chance at defence," Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights group, warned on X.

The litigation that led to the hold on deportations was filed on behalf of five Venezuelans held in Texas who lawyers said were concerned they'd be falsely accused of being members of the gang. Once the act is invoked, they warned, Trump could simply declare anyone a Tren de Aragua member and remove them from the country.

Boasberg barred those Venezuelans' deportations Saturday morning when the suit was filed, but only broadened it to all people in federal custody who could be targeted by the act after his afternoon hearing. He noted that the law has never before been used outside of a congressionally declared war and that plaintiffs may successfully argue Trump exceeded his legal authority in invoking it.

The bar on deportations stands for up to 14 days and the immigrants will remain in federal custody during that time. Boasberg has scheduled a hearing Friday to hear additional arguments in the case.

He said he had to act because the immigrants whose deportations may actually violate the U.S. Constitution deserved a chance to have their pleas heard in court.

"Once they're out of the country," Boasberg said, "there's little I could do."

When asked if their latest landmark breakthrough in the quest to restore the woolly mammoth to the world has seen humanity seize control of evolution for the first time, Colossal CEO Ben Lamm has to laugh.

"That's – wow, that's a bold suggestion. I mean we're a bold company, but even for us that might be a bit much," he told 9news.com.au over Zoom.

His colleague, Dr Beth Shapiro, agreed. "Humans have been controlling evolution for thousands of years – turning grey wolves into chihuahuas. We've just taken it a little further."

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Indeed – just a little. The woolly mammoth team at Colossal recently debuted the Colossal woolly mouse – a mouse that has been genetically engineered to suit colder climates with mammoth-like traits such as colouring and coat length.

Trying to put it in terms the layman on the other end of the call can interpret, Lamm and Shapiro outline the scope of the achievement.

They were able to modify seven genes simultaneously in a "pipeline" approach, drawn from the computational analysis of 59 woolly, Columbian, and steppe mammoth genomes ranging from 3500 to over 1.2 million years old.

The importation of eight modifications across seven genes – an unprecedented achievement – into a regular mouse embryo has, apparently come off without a hitch.

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Lamm said the seven modified genes had all "100 per cent" manifested in the live mouse, with no detrimental effects.

"It's a breakthrough in that it validates what we've been doing, but it doesn't accelerate anything. It means we don't have to go back," he said.

But that doesn't mean we will necessarily be waiting decades to welcome woolly mammoths back to the world.

Lamm said they were on target to reach their goal of a viable "woolly mammoth" embryo by the end of 2026. That means a live mammoth calf could be born a couple months before 2029 – after the 22-month elephant pregnancy.

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Meanwhile, what happens to the mice?

They have their own habitat and, Shapiro says, there are no plans to sell them.

"Our mice live very, very well, compared to a typical mouse," Lamm said.

Shapiro said the next six to 12 months would also involve behavioural studies and ethical experiments on the furry little specimens, which would all contribute toward the ultimate goal.

What does the future hold?

Colossal's woolly mammoth project, as both Lamm and Shapiro acknowledged, tends to get most of the press.

But they have two other teams working on the resurrection of two other animals – the dodo, and the thylacine. We'll come back to the latter.

"There's bit of competition between the three teams," Shapiro said.

The avian team in particular is thriving, having developed a workaround for the impossibility of cloning a bird.

"Standard" cloning – the way it's been done since the days of Dolly the sheep – can't be replicated with birds due to the differences in egg development.

Instead, what the team is aiming to do is edit the primordial germ cell, which controls the production of eggs or sperm.

Putting it as plainly as possible, they can theoretically make everyday chickens lay dodo eggs.

As for the thylacine, the extinct predator is coming back to us through the tiny fat-tailed dunnart.

Like the thylacine, the dunnart is a marsupial with sharp teeth, providing a good genetic base to work with.

Additionally, as Shapiro pointed out, marsupial babies – whether they grow up to be a 1.8-metre tall red kangaroo, or a mouse-sized dunnart – all start out more or less the same size.

"That means we can move the infant to larger and larger pouches as it grows," she said.

What's it all for?

Mountaineer George Leigh Mallory, when asked why he proposed to climb Mount Everest, supposedly replied "Because it's there".

Colossal, confronting the awesome power of nature on another scale, thankfully have more thoughtful answers.

All the techniques outlined above can be used to pump up the numbers of still-extant but dwindling species as well.

And bringing back the woolly mammoth, Shapiro said, could help "stabilise" the now-warming habitats the animal once roamed.

"It's not the goal to bring back a 100 per cent woolly mammoth clone," she said.

But the species the team does bring back will be able to help the environment, by aerating the soil, spreading seeds, and performing in greater symbiosis with the habitat.

"We want to make extinction a thing of the past," Shapiro said.

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It's part of a six-decade tradition celebrating one of the world's most fun days.

A body has been found in the search for a six-year-old girl missing from southern NSW.

She disappeared from the North Nowra area, near Shoalhaven, this afternoon, sparking inquiries from police and a wide-scale search.

A body was found in bushland in the area about 6pm.

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"While it is yet to be formally identified, it is believed to be that of the missing girl," police said.

Police inquiries have begun and a report will be prepared for the coroner.

Police said there were no suspicious circumstances.

More to come.

A massive fire in a nightclub in North Macedonia's southern town of Kocani has killed 51 people and injured more than 100, interior minister Panche Toshkovski has told a press conference.

The blaze began about 2.35am (6.30pm AEDT) on Sunday during a concert by a local pop group, according to Toshkovski.

He said the young clubgoers used pyrotechnics that caused the roof to catch fire.

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Videos showed chaos inside the night club, with young people running through the smoke as the musicians urged people to escape as quickly as possible.

Officials said the injured have been taken to hospitals around the country, including the capital, Skopje, many with severe burns. The effort was being assisted by multiple volunteer organizations.

Health Minister Arben Taravari said 118 people have been hospitalized, adding that he had received offers of assistance from neighboring countries.

"All our capabilities have been put to use, in a maximum effort to save as many lives as possible of the young people involved in this tragedy," Taravari told reporters, at times looking visibly shaken.

This is the worst tragedy in recent memory to befall the landlocked nation, whose population is less than 2 million.

"This is a difficult and very sad day for Macedonia. The loss of so many young lives is irreparable, and the pain of the families, loved ones and friends is immeasurable," Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

"The people and the government will do everything in their power to at least slightly alleviate their pain and help them in these most difficult moments."

Family members gathered in front of hospitals and Kocani's city offices begging authorities for more information.

The club was in an old building that was previously a carpet warehouse and has been running for several years, according to local media MKD.

The club was in an old building that was previously a carpet warehouse and has been running for several years, according to local media MKD.

Toshkovski said that authorities would investigate the venue's licensing and safety provisions, adding that the government had a "moral responsibility" to help prosecute anyone responsible.

Police have arrested one man already, but he didn't provide details on the person's involvement.

Condolences poured in from politicians across the region, including Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"I wish those who were injured a speedy recovery. Ukraine mourns alongside our (North) Macedonian friends on this sad day," Zelenskyy wrote on X.