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One of the world’s most venomous snakes found hiding in boy’s underwear drawer

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A family in Australia received an unwelcome home visitor last week: an eastern brown snake, which is one of the most dangerous serpents in the world. The highly venomous snake was found curled up in the underwear drawer of a 3-year-old boy, as shown in a rattling social media video shared by a unique pest control specialist known to his clients as “The Snake Hunter.”

The snake hunter’s real name is Mark Pelley, according to the website advertising his wrangling and consulting services. Based in Melbourne along the southeastern Australian coast, Pelley’s business mainly focuses on removing venomous snakes from people’s private properties, in addition to training dogs on how to avoid such creatures.

Pelley said he was called to collect that eastern brown snake from the toddler’s clothing drawer on Jan. 8. He filmed part of the encounter and posted the footage in a Facebook reel that sees him opening the drawer to discover the reptile lurking in its back corner, while a woman’s voice asked from offscreen, “How could he have got in?”

After removing the drawer, Pelley turns his camera to the empty dresser cube where it once was, and where by then the snake could be seen pressed against its perimeter.

“Oh, there he is!,” Pelley said. “A brown snake in an underwear drawer. That’s not something you see every day. That’s impressive, isn’t it?”

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A highly-venomous eastern brown snake was discovered last week inside the underwear drawer of a 3-year-old boy in Australia.

The Snake Hunter / Facebook


In a caption shared alongside the reel, the snake hunter said the snake likely crawled into a pile of laundry and entered the home when the boy’s mother took the clothing in from a line outside. The creature probably hid among the laundry as she put it away in her son’s drawers.

“If you see a brown snake in the top drawer, call the Snake Hunter,” the caption read.

Eastern brown snakes are found throughout eastern Australia and in isolated populations in central and western parts of the country, as well as in southern and eastern New Guinea. They are “fast-moving, aggressive and known for their bad temper,” according to Australian Geographic, which ranks it as the most dangerous snake in the country.

They are medium-sized, slender snakes that are notably resilient, extremely toxic and comfortable living among humans in both rural and dense urban areas.

“The venom contains powerful presynaptic neurotoxins, procoagulants, cardiotoxins and nephrotoxins, and successful envenomation can result in progressive paralysis and uncontrollable bleeding. Occasional fatalities have occurred as a result of bleeding into the brain due to coagulation disturbances,” the Australian Museum writes, noting that the eastern brown snake “has the unfortunate distinction of causing more deaths from snake bite than any other species of snake in Australia.”

This isn’t the first time the highly venomous snake has been discovered inside furniture in Australia. In 2022, a woman found a venomous brown snake hiding in her antique radiogram cabinet, where she also kept her fish food.





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Hurricane Beryl makes landfall in Mexico as Category 2 storm

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Hurricane Beryl makes landfall in Mexico as Category 2 storm – CBS News


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Hurricane Beryl has come ashore in Mexico as a Category 2 storm, pelting the Yucatan Peninsula with winds over 110 miles per hour. CBS News correspondent Janet Shamlian has more from South Padre Island on the Texas Gulf Coast where locals are also reckoning with shark attacks as they prepare for Beryl’s potential impact.

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“Dangerous heat” expected to spread up West Coast, break records, according to forecasters

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Temperatures are expected to soar along the U.S. West Coast on Friday and Saturday, the National Weather Service said, warning that “dangerous heat” will likely spread up the West Coast as it intensifies.

Forecasters said temperatures will be 15-30 degrees above average for much of the West Coast Friday, and “numerous record-breaking temperatures can be expected through the next few days,” the weather service said.

Heat watches and warnings are in place across multiple states, including large swaths of California, as well as parts of Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and Washington.

In parts of California and southern Oregon, temperatures could blast into the triple digits, the weather service said. California is expected to experience some of the worst effects of the heat wave on Saturday, forecasters said, with temperatures likely to reach into the 110s.

“Locally higher temperatures into the 120s are possible in the typical hot spots of the Desert Southwest,” it said.

The Los Angeles National Weather Service said on Thursday night that a “Red Flag Warning” was in effect until late Friday night due to “hot, dry and windy conditions.” The warning signifies increased risk of fire danger. The weather service warned residents to use caution with open flames as the dry conditions could fuel the spread of fire.

The heat wave coincides with the Thompson wildfire, which engulfed Butte Country in Northern California this week and forced thousands to flee their homes. Evacuation orders were downgraded to warnings on Thursday.

Over the weekend, the heat wave is expected to shift east to the mid-Atlantic and the Southeast.



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Antisemitism in Europe drives some Jews to seek safety in Israel despite ongoing war in Gaza

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Ashdod, southern Israel — There will be a decisive second round of voting in France Sunday after the far-right National Rally Party, led by Marine Le Pen, won big against centrist President Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the national election exactly one week earlier.

Le Pen’s party has a history of racism, antisemitism and islamophobia dating back decades. Some prominent Jewish figures in France — which is largely considered to have the biggest Jewish population in Europe — say there’s been more antisemitism lately not only from the far-right, but also from the left.

Tension has mounted across Europe since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, with massive rallies, most of them pro-Palestinian, held in major cities across the continent.

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Protesters hold placards and wave Palestinian flags as they take part in a “National March for Gaza” in central London, June 8, 2024.

BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP/Getty


Harrowing images from Gaza have fueled outrage and, in some alarming cases, antisemitism has been seen and heard. In one of the most worrying examples, some people even celebrated on the streets of London on the day that Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people in their unprecedented terrorist attack on Israel.

Nearly 40% of antisemitic incidents in the world last year took place in Europe, and there was a spike after that Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. In Germany, they nearly doubled. In the U.K., they more than doubled. And in France, they nearly quadrupled.

Those incidents and the underlying hatred behind them have prompted some Jewish families to move not further away from the war, but toward it — to Israel.

Requests from French Jews to relocate to Israel have soared by 430% since October.

Among those who have already made that move are Sarah Zohar and her family, who lived a comfortable life in France — until her children were attacked while walking to sports practice.

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Sarah Zohar pushes her children on a merry-go-round in a playground in Ashdod, southern Israel, where they moved after facing antisemitism in France amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

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They packed their bags and moved to the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, remarkably only about 15 miles from the Gaza Strip, which Hamas ruled for almost 20 years and from which it launched its attack in October.

“I feel safer here,” Zohar told CBS News, but she doesn’t pretend it’s been an easy transition for her family.

“I have a child, 12 years old, and he’s told me, ‘I don’t want to go to Israel, because I don’t want people to come to my house and kill me with a knife and take my head off,” she said. “I told him: ‘You have nothing to be afraid. We have an army to defend us.'”

About 2,000 miles away, back in Paris, Rabbi Tom Cohen said Jews were remembering the antisemitism of World War II, and for some, it felt like “we didn’t get past it, and it is still here — it just has changed form, like many viruses change and mutate.”

CBS News met Guila and Eitan Elbazis as they moved into their new home in Ashdod after leaving their lives in London.

They showed off their new bomb shelter room. 

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Guila and Eitan Elbazis show CBS News’ Chris Livesay (left) the safe room in their new home in Ashdod, southern Israel, after the couple moved from London to raise a family and escape rising antisemitism.

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“Hopefully, please, God, there won’t be any rockets, but as you can see, this door is bulletproof, and it locks up,” Giulia said.

As the Elbazis start a family, they decided they’d rather contend with the threat of Hamas and Hezbollah on their doorstep than with hatred on the streets of London.

“I think there’s a general sense of fear and anxiety and lack of comfort in London,” Eitan said.

“Like I have to hide who I am to be safe,” agreed Giulia.

They said they felt safer in Israel, “hands down. Without even thinking about it.”

“We have institutions here to defend us,” said Eitan.

Giulia added that while Israel is a country at war, “this is home,” and for them, it’s a home where they don’t have to hide who they are.



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