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.
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
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
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not