Around 100,000 bats have fallen from the sky and died during a blistering heatwave in Australia.

Temperatures up to 43C are to blame for the mass deaths in at least 25 colonies in southern Queensland, the RSPCA said yesterday.

The bats have caused havoc in townships with teams of rubbish collectors run off their feet clearing them from trees and bushes.

Some residents say they have had to put up with the stench of rotting carcasses for four days.

At least 16 people have needed anti-viral treatment after being scratched by dying bats.

A Bat Rescue spokesman warned: “Don’t touch them, they’re stressed. If they do break your skin you can get a vaccination.” He said people should not try to clear them up themselves.

Canadian health officials confirmed Wednesday that a resident from Alberta has died from H5N1 avian flu, the first case of the virus in North America.

Canada’s Health Minister, Rona Ambrose, said the infected individual had recently traveled to Beijing.

Ambrose stressed that Canadians should not be worried about contracting the virus.

According to the World Health Organization, most avian flu viruses do not cause disease in humans. However, some like H5N1 are zoonotic, which means they can infect humans and cause disease, even death.

At least nine people were killed in a shootout between gunmen and inmates at a jail about 120 miles southwest of Mexico City, officials said.

The gunbattle occurred inside the Tuxpan jail in the city of Iguala on Friday in the early morning hours, the Guerrero state attorney general’s office said in a news release.

Six gunmen managed to enter the jail by pretending to be public officials bringing a new inmate inside.

Once inside, the gunmen initiated a firefight with inmates and also with jail guards in the security towers, the office said.

Five of the attackers and four prisoners were killed.

The surviving attacker was hospitalized and was under police custody, the attorney general’s office said. A guard wounded in the gunfight also was in the hospital, the office said.

State and local officials are investigating the incident and offered no further details.

A rumbling volcano in western Indonesia that has been spewing lava and clouds of gas high into the sky let out a new, powerful burst Tuesday, prompting warnings for airplanes and triggering panic among villagers, officials said.

Nine eruptions Tuesday sent lava and searing gas tumbling out of Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra province, said Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho. The volcano started spitting clouds of gas and lava as high as 7,000 meters (23,000 feet) in the air late Monday, but no casualties were reported.

He said more than 19,000 people have been evacuated from villages in a danger zone 5 kilometers (3 miles) around the crater to temporary shelters since authorities raised the alert status for Sinabung to the highest level in November.

Gray ash covered villages, farms and trees as far as 70 kilometers (43 miles) southeast of the mountain.

The 2,600-meter (8,530-foot) Mount Sinabung has sporadically erupted since September. An eruption in 2010 killed two people and caught scientists off guard because the volcano had been quiet for four centuries.

Transportation Ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan said airlines had been notified to avoid routes near the mountain.

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Formula 1’s Michael Schumacher in critical condition after skiing accident

Michael Schumacher, the most successful driver in Formula 1 history and one of the world’s highest-profile athletes, remains in critical condition after suffering severe head trauma in a skiing accident in the French Alps, hospital officials said Monday.

Doctors who have been treating Schumacher at the University Hospital Center of Grenoble said at a news conference that it was too early to say what the driver’s prognosis might be.

The 44-year-old German, who retired from the elite motorsport for the second time in 2012, fell and hit his head on a rock Sunday, said the director of the Meribel resort where Schumacher was skiing.

Schumacher was in a coma when he arrived at the hospital and required immediate brain surgery, officials said. So far, he has undergone one operation and is being kept in a coma, they said Monday.

The cause of the accident, which is being investigated by police, remains unclear, Gernignon-Lecomte said.

The accident took place just days ahead of his 45th birthday Friday.

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A Chinese man has undergone surgery to remove a 3.3lb (1.5kg) tumour from his face.

Huang Chuncai, 37, from Hunan province, has been dubbed ‘China’s Elephant Man’. He suffers from an extreme case of neurofibromatosis, which has caused large tumours on his face that have completely distorted his features.

He is said to have the world’s worst recorded case of the condition.

On Wednesday he underwent another round of surgery at a hospital in Guangzhou to remove the tumour from his left cheek.

The operation was successful and he will now have two more to try and get his condition under control.

Although many people who have the condition inherit it from one of their parents, up to 50 per cent develop it randomly from a gene mutation before they are born.

Huang’s tumours, which five years ago were said to weigh 33lb (15kg), have put such pressure on his body that it has deformed his backbone, stunted his growth and left him in continual pain.

The tumour first became noticable when he turned four and as he grew up, it became bigger and bigger.

He is said to have quit school when he was 10 years old because his classmates laughed and alienated him because of his condition.

All of his teeth fell off at the age of 25 and thereafter, he found it difficult to speak and eat.

It has also been reported that several years ago, a circus approached his father to buy his son for holding ‘monster performances’, but his parents refused.

Huang had surgery in 2007 and 2008 – the first to remove the 33lb tumour. The surgery was extremely risky due to the high chance of heavy bleeding.

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