AUSTRALIA
Biggest brothel coming
Sydney is poised to get the nation’s biggest brothel, including a wing with two king-sized beds and a pool table in each room for group bookings, the Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday. A development application has been lodged for a A$12 million (US$12.7 million) extension to the Stiletto brothel, which proposes doubling its size to 40 working rooms and 21 waiting rooms. “Yes, we think it will be the biggest brothel in the country once the extensions are completed,” Michael O’Brien, of Artazan, the company managing the project, told the newspaper. A former consultant to the legal brothel industry, Chris Seage, said he had been in a lot of brothels, but was unaware of a multi-bed trend. “I’ve never seen two double beds,” he was quoted as saying. “It sounds like it’s a facility for friends to go along in groups and book the room for a couple of hours, have a few drinks, play pool and do the deed.”
SINGAPORE
Corpse taints water
People living in a block of apartments unknowingly consumed water tainted by the decomposing body of an Indonesian maid before police made the gruesome discovery, the Straits Times newspaper reported yesterday. Some residents complained to authorities after they discovered the tap water on Monday was slightly yellowish and unnaturally foamy, the report said. A police spokesman said a 27-year-old Bangladeshi man had been arrested in connection with the death of the Indonesian maid, whose body was discovered in one of eight water tanks on top of the 15-store block. An investigation into the case, which has been classified as murder, is ongoing, a police statement said. “This is so disgusting. My whole family finished a big pot of green bean soup I cooked this morning,” Choi Ah Moi, 69, was quoted as saying in the Straits Times.
NEW ZEALAND
Naked escapee captured
A man who tried to escape from police by clambering naked into the ceiling of an Auckland hospital sparked a seven-hour manhunt before he was recaptured, police said on Monday. The 25-year-old was arrested early on Monday for driving offenses and taken to hospital to receive treatment for an ankle injury, but fled into the building’s labyrinthine ceiling space while taking a shower, police said. The hospital’s emergency ward was evacuated as a search for the man found only his discarded gown, with police eventually forced to call the fire brigade and specialist search teams with thermal imaging equipment. However, he continued to elude his pursuers and local media reported that patrol cars around the hospital made public appeals via a loudspeaker to report any sightings of a naked man. He was eventually found in a ceiling space not far from where he originally disappeared and was charged with escaping police custody.
CHINA
Farms beset by fruit blast
The overuse of a chemical that helps fruit grow faster is causing a rash of exploding watermelons in Jiangsu Province. An investigative report by China Central Television that was to air yesterday found that farms in the area were losing acres of fruit to the problem. It said farmers sprayed too much growth promoter, hoping they could get fruit to market ahead of season and make more money. China is battling rampant misuse of pesticides, fertilizers and food additives, like dyes and sweeteners, meant to make food more attractive and boost sales.
UNITED STATES
Lack of sleep harms teens
Teens who play a lot of video games are likely to sleep less than the eight to nine hours a night recommended for the age group, researchers said on Monday. Speaking via teleconference from the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, researchers said that an analysis of data on 16,000 teens also found that youths who reported sleeping less than seven hours a night did not get enough exercise, which could also impact their health. And not getting enough sleep is detrimental for all — and has a particularly negative effect on teens, added Caris Fitzgerald, a psychiatry resident at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences who led the study. A poor night’s sleep can bring on a slew of ill effects, including low energy, poor concentration, moodiness, a greater tendency to act on impulse and more suicidal thoughts. Yet only 10 percent of US teens get the recommended hours of shut-eye, according to the study, for which Fitzgerald and her fellow researchers analyzed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Because teens have “accelerated demands for growth and memory retention, very vital things with regard to the teen in their overall success,” getting sufficient sleep is even more important for them, Fitzgerald said. However, they also struggle to do so more than adults. “When it comes to teens, they have a lot of factors that affect them, from an ever greater quest for independence reflected by later bedtime; to expectations from parents and peers — like texting in the middle of the night,” Fitzgerald said.
UNITED STATES
Torture hearing denied
The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal on Monday by five former detainees claiming a flight-planning firm had helped arrange for the CIA to send them to countries where they were tortured. The men — an Egyptian, an Italian, a Yemeni, an Iraqi and an Ethiopian — first filed suit in May 2007 against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan. They said they had been tortured at secret prisons abroad, especially in Morocco and Egypt, as terror suspects under the CIA’s rendition program. In September last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed the case, agreeing with President Barack Obama’s administration that trying it could threaten “state secrets” and compromise national security. “With today’s decision, the Supreme Court has refused once again to give justice to torture victims and to restore our nation’s reputation as a guardian of human rights and the rule of law,” American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project litigation director Ben Wizner said.
UNITED STATES
Tweeters gaga for Gaga
Pop diva Lady Gaga has become the first person with more than 10 million followers on Twitter. “@ladygaga just reached 10 million. Wow!” the San Francisco-based micro-blogging service said in a “tweet” on Monday. Lady Gaga had 10.06 million followers as of Monday afternoon. “10 Million Monsters! I’m speechless, we did it! Its an illness how I love you,” Lady Gaga said in a message on her Twitter feed. Pop star Justin Bieber was the next most-followed person on Twitter. Bieber’s @justinbieber account has about 9.7 million followers. President Barack Obama was next with more than 8.02 million followers of his @barackobama account. Rounding out the top five were singer Britney Spears with 7.8 million followers for @britneyspears and television personality Kim Kardashian with 7.5 million followers for @kimkardashian.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese