■INDIA
Talk about hygiene ‘not cool’
Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, has a theory about why governments and people are so reluctant to talk about hygiene: it isn’t cool. “People demand a TV, not a toilet, because it is not aspirational or charismatic,” said Sim, who does not hesitate to talk in graphic detail about the dangers of poor sanitation. “Governments and people are not very receptive to being told they’re dirty, that they need more toilets,” Sim said on a visit to Mumbai, where more than half its 18 million residents live in slums and where the average ratio of people to toilets is 81:1.
■INDIA
Landmine kills one soldier
A senior security force officer was killed and two others wounded yesterday in Kashmir when their jeep ran over a landmine along the border with Pakistan, police said. The deputy inspector general from the Border Security Force (BSF) was killed in southern Samba sector near the border, said a police officer, who requested anonymity. “We are collecting more details,” he said, adding senior BSF, police and army officers had rushed to the scene to “take stock of the situation.” “We suspect the militants had planted the landmine,” he said.
■NEW ZEALAND
Drilling for scotch whisky
A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica’s ice for a lost cache of some vintage scotch whisky that has been on the rocks since a century ago. The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co whisky that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition. Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co, has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct scotch. Workers from the Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.
■APEC
Obama expects skirts
US President Barack Obama invited fellow leaders in the APEC to a summit in Hawaii in 2011, but may have alarmed them with the dress code. The APEC summit, which concluded on Sunday in Singapore, is an annual meeting best known for a tradition whereby presidents and prime ministers don outfits that are typical of the host country. “I look forward to seeing you all decked out in flowered shirts and grass skirts, because today I’m announcing that we are bringing this forum to my home state of Hawaii in 2011,” Obama told his assembled counterparts on Sunday. At APEC’s first summit, held in Seattle in 1993, heads of state sported leather bomber jackets. Other outfits have included traditional Korean and Vietnamese tops, batik shirts and an Australian outback coat.
■CAMBODIA
Swedish man murdered
A Swedish businessman visiting the country has been murdered and his body dumped outside Phnom Penh, reportedly after he met a woman with whom he had corresponded online, national media reported yesterday. The Swedish embassy in Phnom Penh confirmed the victim was Jan Ola Jordansson, 45. Embassy counselor Karl-Anders Larsson said he believed Jordansson was visiting the country when he was killed, but had previously lived in Cambodia. “He had been managing a hotel in Sihanoukville but I understand he was living in Sweden and was on a short visit to Cambodia,” he said.
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