■ China
Lonely mom gets 200 suitors
A lonely single mother in southeast China has been swamped with 200 suitors after putting up a 60m2 advert seeking a boyfriend, a news report said yesterday. The 34-year-old mother from Hefei, Anhui province, placed what is believed to be China's biggest lonely heart advert on a billboard in downtown Hefei. The advert caused such a stir that she even got a response from a Chinese-American man living in the US who read about her search for love on the Internet. The billboard shows a huge photograph of the woman along with love poems she has written, according to the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily newspaper.
■ Bangladesh
Storm kills hundreds
Bangladeshi authorities sent food and emergency supplies to the north on yesterday as the toll from a violent storm rose to 66 with bodies recovered from ponds, rice fields and ruined homes. Survivors buried the dead and tended injured, many lying in the open. In several villages, mass prayers were held for the victims. "Village after village is lying in ruins. People are still in trauma. Only the brave are trying to rebuild their lives," said Prasanta Kumar Das, a local official in Netrokona, a town in the north near areas that bore the brunt of the storm on Wednesday night.
■ Fiji
Flood forces evacuation
Fijian army troops evacuated thousands of people to high ground yesterday as the South Pacific island nation, its rivers already swollen by floods, braced for more torrential rains. Up to 10cm of rain an hour hit parts of the country during much of Thursday, triggering floods that inundated thousands of homes, wiped out crops, cut electricity and submerged roads linking many communities. Floodwaters forced at least 2,000 people to flee their homes Thursday and take shelter in more than 60 evacuation centers, the National Disaster Management Office said.
■ Indonesia
Jakarta wants tall tower
An Indonesian consortium has restarted construction of what it claims will be the world's tallest tower, despite worries that the site is sinking into the sea, media reports said yesterday. The tower is being built on an old airfield in the center of Jakarta and will reach 558m, The Jakarta Post said. The world's highest freestanding tower is the 550m CN Tower in Toronto, Canada.
■ United States
New baby survives crash
A woman gave birth in the back of a car on the way to
a hospital, but the vehicle
then left the road and struck
a utility pole, killing her husband. Both the newborn boy and the mother, 22-
year-old Atara Sasoon, were hospitalized late Thursday
in fair condition. The car crashed on Wednesday about 1.6km from the hospital in the New Jersey town of Brick. Binyhmin Sasoon, 22, was found slumped over
the steering wheel and
was pronounced dead at
the scene. His wife was apparently ejected from the car and was able to stop a passing motorist, who found the baby in the car under
a coat. The infant wasn't breathing, so the motorist, taking instructions from a 911 dispatcher, cleared the boy's mouth and nose.
■ United States
AIDS alert halts porn films
Adult movie producers agreed to shut down sets for weeks after two performers tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS. At least 45 men and women were under voluntary quarantine after having sex with the HIV-positive performers or their sex partners, said Sharon Mitchell, spokeswoman
for the nonprofit Adult
Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, on Thursday.
A list of quarantined performers was placed
on the Web site of the foundation, which screens about 1,200 adult-movie performers a month for
HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
■ Russia
Heavy ballerina loses suit
A top Russian ballerina, sacked for being too heavy, lost a damages claim for US$1 million against the chief of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater on Thursday.
Prima ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, fired last September for being too bulky for her partners to
lift, sought the damages
from Anatoly Iksanov for
harming her personal and professional reputation.
The case at a Moscow court centered on a newspaper interview with Iksanov headlined "No one wants to dance with Volochkova."
■ Italy
Artist ropable over media
British performance artist Mark McGowan dragged a TV roped to his ear through Milan on Wednesday to protest against what he called excessive political control over the media in Italy and other countries. His head bandaged to hold the rope, he said he was heading for the headquarters of Fininvest, the holding company of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. McGowan said he had covered 1km and had another 3km to go. McGowan's other exploits have included pushing a
nut with his nose through London to 10 Downing Street in protest at education costs.
■ Italy
Chef unveils handy pizza
In the innermost recesses of an exclusive school for top chefs, Italians have been plotting a devastating counterstrike against the hot dog and the hamburger. US supremacy on a battlefield stretching from stadium terraces to railway platforms has been assured by the unique portability of its fare. Unique, that is, until the arrival of the hand-held pizza. Thanks to Rossano Boscolo, whose cone-shaped creation was unveiled on Thursday at an exhibition in Milan, slobs the world over can walk, talk and eat pizza at the same time without having to worry about dribbling mozzarella or slithery slices of tomato all over themselves. The pizza takes three minutes to cook in a special oven, which was also designed at Boscolo's school.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
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