CHINA
Dodgy mines shut down
Beijing has shut down more than 1,600 small, illegal coal mines nationwide this year as part of an effort to improve safety standards in a mining industry that is the most dangerous in the world. The state-backed People’s Daily newspaper reported on Thursday that 1,611 small mines with outdated facilities were closed this year, citing the National Energy Bureau. More than 2,600 people died in mining accidents in China last year, though deaths have decreased in recent years as the government increased safety inspections and shut down illegal mines.
UNITED STATES
Dalai Lama laughs off praise
What if the Dalai Lama were president? The 75-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner laughed at the notion and told middle and high school students in Palo Alto, California, on Wednesday that things would be even more grim if he were the country’s leader. He said simply: “Within a few weeks, the economy would face bankruptcy.” The San Francisco Chronicle said the spiritual leader of Tibet was making several Bay Area appearances this week. Sitting in an overstuffed green chair in the Costano School auditorium, the Dalai Lama confided to more than 400 students that he was a lazy teenager who hated to study and considered his unsmiling teacher a bore.
MYANMAR
Flooding postpones freeway
Heavy rain and flooding have indefinitely postponed the scheduled opening on Thursday of a highway linking the country’s three biggest cities, a news report said. The opening of a section of the 566km highway linking the capital, Naypyitaw, with Mandalay has been put off because several parts were damaged by flooding from heavy rain and water released from dams, the biweekly Eleven news magazine reported, quoting an official from the highway transport department. The Yangon to Naypyitaw section of the highway is already open.
RUSSIA
Dinner worm sparks row
An official was branded an “imbecile” by the Kremlin after spotting an earthworm in his plate of salad at a reception for the German president in Moscow and posting a photograph on Twitter. Tver region Governor Dmitry Zelenin posted a photograph of the small red worm on the edge of a plate of salad on Twitter late on Tuesday at a Kremlin reception for German President Christian Wulff and his wife. “The beef came with live worms,” Zelenin wrote, cited by Russian media, adding that: “That’s an original way to show that the lettuce leaf is fresh.” But the Kremlin did not relish the joke. The Kremlin’s top foreign policy advisor, Sergei Prikhodko, said he regretted that there was no rule on “firing governors for imbecility” in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency on Wednesday evening.
CHINA
Tigers maul, kill gardener
A gardener at a zoo in Shenzhen was mauled to death by five tigers after falling into their pen, media reported yesterday. Zookeepers drove a vehicle into the tigers’ enclosure in Shenzhen Safari Park after spotting the attack on Sheng Jinhua, 54, on Thursday afternoon, but were too late to save him, the Xinhua news agency reported. Sheng died of severe bite wounds. Zoo officials said they believed Sheng, who started working at the zoo in July, violated safety rules and climbed over the fence, Xinhua said, adding that police were investigating.
GERMANY
Self-driving car unveiled
Scientists have unveiled the latest in self-driving car technology — an autonomous vehicle named “MadeInGermany” (MIG), which passengers can even call for a lift. Computer scientist Raul Rojas and his team at Berlin’s Free University have developed the experimental car, which they hope will revolutionize the future of driving. Passengers can phone their MIG using an iPad or smartphone and the GPS integrated into these devices reveals the caller’s location to the car, which then works out the best route and tells the passenger how long it will take it to get there. Optimal use of the technology could see the number of cars in Berlin reduced to one-fifth of their current number, the designers said. Drivers who suddenly decide they want to steer the vehicle via an iPad can turn the automatic technology off and take control themselves. The MIG uses sensor technology to create a three-dimensional image of the street on the car’s computer so that the car is able to detect bikes, pedestrians, road markings and signs.
MOZAMBIQUE
Body-part sellers jailed
Two men were sentenced to 20 years in prison each for mutilating a 12-year-old boy and trying to sell his body parts to a witchdoctor. Radio Mozambique reported on Thursday that the boy’s uncle and another man attacked the boy in May. They lured him with cookies to accompany them on a rabbit hunting trip, the court said during a hearing on Wednesday. The two men then held the boy down, cut out his eyes and removed his genitals, intending to sell them to a Malawian witch doctor. The boy survived and is undergoing medical treatment in the Zambezia Provincial Hospital. Mozambican and Malawian forces detained the two men in Malawi.
SPAIN
Siesta contest held
Spaniards are snuggling up with pillows and stuffed animals amid the din of a suburban shopping center in what is being billed as the country’s first siesta contest. Contestants in groups of five are given 20 minutes lying on garish blue coaches and timed as to how much of that stretch they spend actually snoozing. The contest began on Thursday and is to last nine days. The top prize is 1,000 euros (US$1,410).
SPAIN
Singer faces fraud charges
A judge has told popular singer Isabel Pantoja she faces more than three years in jail on money laundering and tax fraud charges. Authorities allege Pantoja colluded in a scheme run by her boyfriend, former Marbella mayor Julian Munoz, to provide building permits in the southern resort town in return for bribes. Investigators claim Pantoja was involved in laundering at least 1.8 million euros from the scheme in 2002 and 2003. The 54-year-old folk singer, who is popular in Spain and Latin America, has denied the allegations. Her trial is due to start next week.
SPAIN
Fake marriage ring busted
Police have busted a gang suspected of arranging marriages of convenience to help illegal immigrants, mostly Nigerians, gain residency permits, they said on Thursday. They arrested 20 people in Madrid, Valencia and Alicante in the operation, which followed an investigation launched in May last year, police said. For 12,000 euros, the gang of Spaniards and Nigerians “handled everything necessary to set up fake marriages” that would give the foreigners legal residential status in Spain and in the EU, police said.
UNITED STATES
Lincoln Center has bedbugs
The Lincoln Center has some unwelcome patrons: bedbugs. New York City’s pre-eminent performing arts center made the discovery in a dressing room of its David H. Koch Theater. It’s the home of the New York City Ballet and the New York City Opera. The theater is currently dark. The opera’s fall season opens Oct. 27. The ballet company last occupied the building on Sunday. Spokeswoman Maggie McKeon confirmed the outbreak. It was first reported online on Wednesday by the New York Observer. It cited an Oct. 8 e-mail from the theater’s managing director Mark Heiser. He said treatment to rid the theater of the tiny pests was under way. The bugs have been discovered in theaters, clothing stores, office buildings, housing projects and posh apartments throughout the city.
UNITED STATES
Grandma’s ashes sold
Grandma Marge’s ashes weren’t for sale, but a bargain hunter in Florida walked away with them anyway. A touch of Grandma Marge was put in a potted violet, her favorite plant, after her death. The plant was accidentally sold at a weekend yard sale in the town of Fort Walton Beach. Northwest Florida Daily News reports that Piper Gaffrey had stepped away from the yard sale when her husband sold the violet for an undisclosed amount, not realizing some of Marjorie Potts Gaffrey was in the soil. Piper Gaffrey scattered some of her 99-year-old grandmother in the violet when she died in February. When she discovered it had been sold, she pleaded on Facebook for the buyer to take care of it. Fortunately, the plant was bought by someone she knew. It was returned and is thriving in Gaffrey’s new home.
UNITED STATES
Pilot papers school
Authorities say a man hurled wet toilet paper on a high school from a single-engine plane. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters says the pilot flew over Westwood High School in Westwood, New Jersey, and its athletic fields around 6pm on. Wednesday night. Peters told the Record newspaper that children were on the field as the pilot dropped his soggy cargo, littering the area. There were no reports of injuries. Peters says the Cessna 172S made three passes before landing at an airport in nearby Caldwell. The pilot, whose name was not released, was briefly taken into custody. Peters says the man may face federal charges of reckless operation of an aircraft and dropping objects from a plane without authorization.
UNITED STATES
Burger keeps six months
A New York woman who purchased a McDonalds Happy Meal six months ago says the uneaten burger and fries are in as good shape as they were the day she bought them. The claim, backed up by a seemingly indestructible Happy Meal sitting in artist-photographer Sally Davies’ Manhattan apartment, has amazed people around the world. The burger has featured on television shows and become the subject of intense speculation as people wonder how fast food can apparently show barely a trace of age after six months on a plate — and whether Davies is telling the truth. “It all began with a bet with a friend of mine,” she said. “So on April 10 I bought one hamburger and I began photographing and nothing really happened. It smelled for one day, and it stopped.” The burger has shrunken a little, but is mold-free and visually the same as one freshly delivered, she said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia