Print

Mail

wiki links

World News Quick Take

■ Hong Kong
TV sets burst into flame
Four Chinese-made television sets have burst into flame inside Hong Kong homes in the last two weeks, a news report said yesterday. In the latest case, a 29-inch television burst into flames on Tuesday morning, shortly after being turned off, according to the South China Morning Post. The occupants of the ninth-floor flat were treated for smoke inhalation when firefighters arrived at the scene, the paper said. Firefighters extinguished another blaze when a Chinese-made television burst into flame while a 65-year-old woman and her family were watching it. There were two other similar incidents in different parts of Hong Kong in the previous week.

■ Australia
Brace yourselves, Sheilas!
One of the strongest cyclones in recorded history was yesterday bearing down on a remote and mostly uninhabited part of Australia's northeast coast. Foreign tourists in far northern Queensland resorts were among those being evacuated as cyclone Ingrid and its 290kph winds moved towards Cape York Peninsula. A spokeswoman for the Queensland state government said Ingrid is likely to come ashore in the next 24 hours between Cooktown and Cape Melville. All emergency services volunteers had been put on standby to arrange further evacuations and cope with damage from winds and flooding.

■ China
N Koreans flee to school
Eight North Koreans believed to be asylum seekers entered the grounds of a Japanese school yesterday morning in Beijing, Japan's Foreign Ministry said. The eight North Koreans -- one man, six women and a baby boy -- entered the Japanese school's property around 4:30am yesterday and were later sent to the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, the Foreign Ministry said. The eight entered the school property by using ladder stairs to climb a 5m fence, according to Japanese media. They carried a note written in English, "We're North Koreans. We want to go to South Korea. If we go back to North, we will be executed. Please help," according to Jiji Press.

■ Malaysia
Watch TV, children urged
Who says television is bad for children? Not the Malaysian government. The Education Ministry is urging schoolchildren to watch more English-language television programs -- even cartoons -- as part of a new strategy to improve their English. The New Straits Times and The Star newspaper said a poor grasp of English has resulted in only average test scores in science and mathematics, which are taught in English. "We cannot dismiss the role of television," ministry Director-General Ahmad Sipon was quoted as saying. "It is important. Students should watch more television, especially educational English programs such as Animal Planet."

■ Australia
Farmer digs up gold nugget
An Australian farmer who dug up a 1.5kg gold nugget might make enough money from its sale to give up his day job and take up prospecting full time. The clot of gold was unearthed just 1m below the surface in a location in Victoria that "Roger" is keeping secret, national broadcaster ABC reported Tuesday. Roger was tooling around with a new pick when he struck lucky. Melted down the nugget would be worth A$40,000 (US$30,400) but to a collector it could be worth A$100,000.

■ Colombia
Police detain donkey suspect
The suspect was a little long in the face after being arrested and is braying for an early release. Police said on Tuesday they detained the suspect, a donkey named Pacho, after a motorcycle crashed into it on a road in a northeastern city, with the motorcyclist suffering serious injuries. "When there are road accidents and serious injuries, the vehicles involved are always impounded," said Diana Rojas, spokeswoman for the Arauca City police department. Pacho's owner, Nelson Gonzalez, said no one should pin the blame on the donkey for Sunday's crash. "Neither the donkey nor I were responsible because I was in front and the motorcyclist saw me," Gonzalez told RCN television.

■ Northern Ireland
IRA's offer to kill backfires
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) announced on Tuesday it had offered to shoot members who killed a Catholic man in a pub brawl, an apparent public relations move which backfired badly as opponents said it showed the Northern Irish paramilitary group was lawless and congenitally violent. The leadership of the IRA said it had told the family of Robert McCartney at a meeting that it was "prepared to shoot the people directly involved in the killing," which they had rejected. The 33-year-old father of two was beaten and stabbed to death outside a busy Belfast bar on Jan. 30 by a group of people later identified by a series of reports as IRA members.

■ Italy
Court tells dying man to wait
A man given six months to live by his doctors has been told by an Italian court to come back in 14 months to hear the outcome of his demand for insurance damages. Carmelo Cisabella, 39, has an inoperable spine disease and is anxious to pick up some US$596,300 in already-agreed damages from his insurers to help ease his final months of life, Il Messaggero newspaper reported on Tuesday. In a bid to speed up the process, Cisabella turned to the Sicilian courts to put pressure on the insurers, but was told to return next year to hear their decision. In his frustration, he chained himself to the gates of the law courts.

■ United States
Hackers rejected by Harvard
Harvard Business School said on Tuesday it is rejecting applications from 119 would-be students who it says hacked into a Web site to learn if they were accepted at the Ivy League university ahead of the official notification. "This behavior is unethical at best -- a serious breach of trust that cannot be countered by rationalization," Kim Clark, dean of Harvard Business School, said in a statement. "We know that 119 applicants hacked into the system -- and we know their names," said Jim Aisner, a spokesman for Harvard Business School.

■ Germany
Icy swastika visible from air
Passengers on planes descending into Berlin's Tegel airport were greeted by the sight of a huge swastika scraped out of snow on a frozen lake a few kilometers from the runway, police said on Tuesday. The Nazi symbol, which is banned in Germany, was visible from planes arriving from all over Europe for most of Monday morning before water police, having tested the ice thickness, could venture out to erase it. Alerted after a pilot told the airport control tower, police in a squad car sent to the lake failed to see anything from the shore. A police helicopter later spotted the 8m by 5m swastika and sent the water police team.

This story has been viewed 1731 times.