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.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of