PHILIPPINES
Fire blamed on bad wiring
Makati authorities are blaming a defective electrical outlet for a massive fire that razed a squatters’ colony in Metro Manila’s financial district and left about 8,000 people homeless. Fire chief Ricardo Perdigon says a tenant plugged in a cellphone charger and ran outside after sparks triggered a fire that spread quickly to other homes on Tuesday. Perdigon said yesterday that nine people suffered light burns and bruises in the inferno, which gutted the neighborhood and left 1,600 families, or about 8,000 people, homeless. The Makati social welfare office says those left homeless have been sheltered in a seminary and a community hall.
SOUTH KOREA
KT offers ‘Kibot’ for kids
Telecommunications operator KT yesterday rolled out a robot playmate for children. Kibot, which has a monkey face and a display panel on its body, can read books, sing songs, play online games and wheel around with its cheeks blinking and head tilting. The robot, about 20cm tall, also allows children to make videophone calls to their parents when an electronic card is placed on its face. Kibot, targeting those aged three to seven, can also tell children “Let’s play” along with a few other expressions — such as “It feels good” in response to a pat. Parents can remotely control it by cellphone and monitor children via a camera embedded in Kibot, KT said. The robot made by local firm iriver, in which KT invested 4 billion won (US$3.68 million), costs 485,000 won in addition to the monthly wireless bill. “Kibot will be like a friend for kids, who constantly need something by their side to touch, see and play with,” said Seo Yu-yeol, head of KT’s home business group.
AUSTRALIA
Teacher suspended
A teacher accused of tying a five-year-old boy to a chair in front of his classmates as punishment for misbehaving has been suspended while the case is investigated, Western Australia State education officials said yesterday. Police received a report that the teacher at Avonvale Primary School in Northam used a jump rope to tie up the child last week. The teacher was suspended after a complaint was filed, officials said. State Education Department Director General Sharyn O’Neill said the teacher’s alleged behavior was unacceptable.
AFGHANISTAN
Koran allegedly recycled
Three people have been arrested as officials probe claims that a paper mill recycled copies of the Koran into toilet paper, the attorney general’s office said on Tuesday. About 1,000 angry demonstrators, some throwing stones, held a protest on Monday at the mill on the outskirts of Kabul, leaving the building partially destroyed. Copies of the Koran were found inside the factory, a police spokesman said. “We have arrested three people including the director of the company so far ... we are taking the issue very seriously,” said Amanullah Iman, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office.
SINGAPORE
Retiree saves buried baby
A retiree saved a newborn baby who had been buried alive in a flower garden, the New Paper reported yesterday. The paper quoted Tay Kim Sia as saying he was smoking a cigarette on the rooftop terrace of his apartment building when he noticed tiny legs sticking up out of a large planter box. Tay dug around and found a baby boy with his umbilical cord still attached and a black plastic bag tied around his neck. The paper said the baby hospitalized, but was in healthy condition.
UNITED KINGDOM
Tycoon breaks record
Ukraine’s richest man has set a new record for property in Britain, spending £136.6 million (US$223 million) on two London apartments, media reports said on Tuesday. The apartments cover 2,323m2 across three floors of a luxury development overlooking Hyde Park, and have been bought by Rinat Akhmetov, 44, the reports said citing Land Registry documents. The oligarch plans to knock them together to make a penthouse and is intending to spend a further £60 million on refurbishing the interior, according to the Evening Standard newspaper in London. Akhmetov’s company System Capital Management, a conglomerate whose interests range from mining and metals to banking and the media, confirmed it had bought a property in the development in Knightsbridge. The US magazine Forbes estimated Akhmetov’s worth at US$16 billion.
GERMANY
Circus families in shootout
A shootout between two circus families competing over tent space has left six people injured, police said on Tuesday. The disagreement came to a head on Monday evening as the families fired guns, used knives and attacked each other with batons, police in the Bavarian city of Regensburg said. Three people from each family were injured, including a 48-year-old man who was shot in the leg.
ZIMBABWE
ATM sparks cash panic
A bank says one of its automated teller machines dished out defunct Zimbabwe dollars when it was being repaired. Technicians tested it with the old currency and left it online in error. Witnesses said yesterday the incident caused “panic” among irate bank customers in downtown Harare on Tuesday and rumors quickly spread that the local currency was back in circulation. Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency in 2009 and adopted the US dollar to halt world record inflation and end the use of huge denomination local bills in millions, billions and trillions.
GERMANY
Eggs-traordinary Easter tree
Volker Kraft’s apple sapling sported just 18 eggs when he first decorated it for Easter. Decades later, the sturdy tree is festooned with 9,800 eggs, decorated with everything from beads to sea shells. Decking trees with painted eggs for Easter is popular in Germany, but the 75-year-old’s creation has become something special. Last year, it drew 13,000 visitors. Kraft needs two weeks to hang the eggs. Kraft began his decorations in 1965. He started with plastic eggs, and later switched to real eggs painted by his children. These days Kraft’s wife designs many of the most exotic decorations — knitting egg wrappings on long winter evenings.
ITALY
Tomb found under dump
Police raiding an illegal dumping ground in southern Italy this week made a startling discovery — a richly decorated and well-preserved ancient Roman tomb dating back to the second century. The underground entrance to the tomb was found beneath a huge pile of truck tires near Pozzuoli — a town just west of Naples. The owner of the site has been charged with violating environmental and historical preservation laws. Police said they alerted archeologists after finding a marble-lined tunnel leading to the tomb. Video footage released by the police showed the stuccoed interior of the mausoleum filled with debris, as well as discarded car batteries at the dump.
AUSTRIA
Italians nab frogs for dinner
The country’s wildlife authorities are hopping mad that efforts to save the local frog population are being hampered by Italian poachers. Officials in the southern province of Carinthia said on Tuesday that poachers are collecting frogs from the roadside buckets they have been guided into to save them from busy highways, and are then smuggling them home to Italian dinner tables. Frogs’ legs are a delicacy in some parts of Italy. Officials told state television on Tuesday that the victims tend to be those with the meatiest thighs. Frogs attempting to cross some highways in the country are channeled by a series of fences into roadside buckets. Once a day, volunteers collect the buckets and carry the amphibians to the other side of the road and set them free. However, “the Italians strike before the frog pickers come,” Carinthian environmental official Bernhard Gutleb said.
GERMANY
Driver feels need for speed
A 23-year-old driver was caught speeding three times in 23 minutes on Tuesday in what police said was certain to be a record. The culprit in the northern town of Luebbecke was stopped at 12:24pm racing at 87kph in a 50kph zone, police said in a statement. After authorities took down his personal details and gave him a warning, he sped off at 12:32pm at 67kph, according to the laser gun. At 12:47pm, the boy racer zoomed past a speed trap at 70kph, as he waved at the officer manning it. “Apparently he is not that attached to his driving license as he already had to give it up in February for a month for speeding,” said the statement entitled “Surely a record: speeding three times in 23 minutes.” Authorities said the driver could expect a fine of 180 euros (US$257) and three points on his license.
UNITED STATES
NASA, wedding cross over
NASA was unaware that the shuttle Endeavour’s final mission to the International Space Station was in conflict with the British royal wedding, a space agency chief said on Tuesday. “The frank answer is no,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for space operations, when asked by a reporter if the nuptials of the UK’s Prince William and Kate Middleton were a factor in the shuttle scheduling. “I didn’t realize when the wedding was when we moved the launch date,” Gerstenmaier said. The shuttle was initially set to launch on Tuesday and was later postponed to April 29. “We kind of set that date independently,” he said. Gerstenmaier said he received a phone call from someone notifying him of the crossover after the fact. “That was a consideration,” he said, but quickly pointed out that NASA considers multiple technical, weather and international space agency constraints whenever it sets a launch time. “I haven’t yet put on our manifest charts ‘wedding constraints’ so we did not factor that in,” he said.
UNITED STATES
Bull semen case solved
Police in north-central Pennsylvania say they’ve solved the case of the missing bull semen. Authorities in Sweden Township, near Coudersport, say a package containing 1,770 units of the valuable agricultural product was reported missing from a residence where it was to be delivered on April 2. Police now tell the Bradford Era newspaper that it was never stolen. Rather, a UPS driver left the package at the home and then returned to retrieve it after realizing it shouldn’t have been delivered without someone signing for it. Township police chief Bryan Phelps says the package was in a UPS warehouse and has since been delivered.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the