World Vignettes

Fatal New Year cakesTOKYO: Six Japanese choked to death and nine others were hospitalised on New Year's Day in Tokyo after they ate traditio...

Fatal New Year cakes

TOKYO: Six Japanese choked to death and nine others were hospitalised on New Year’s Day in Tokyo after they ate traditional glutinous mochi rice cakes, officials said on Friday. The Tokyo fire department said the victims aged between 45 and 95 and living in the Tokyo metropolitan area, died of suffocation after consuming ozouni soup which contains the rice cakes. Every year, around ten Japanese, mostly older people or infants, die after eating the traditional food.

Costly Secret

JERUSALEM: Israel’s 1998 state budget provides 770 million dollars for the Mossad and Shin Beth intelligence services, the same level of funding last year, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday. The exact budget for each of the agencies is not spelled out in the $ 59-billion-budget which was still being debated in Parliament. But Haaretz calculated the global money to be allocated to the intelligence services by deducting known spending for other purposes from the cash reserve fund which covers the agencies’ budgets.

Farming on PCs

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KUNMING: An illiterate ethnic Chinese farmer cannot tell what a computer is, yet he believes in the `stuff’ since he has tasted it sweet. Jiasan Daha, a veteran farmer of the Yi nationality in Ninglang county, of southwest China’s Yunnan province, turned to computers for advice this summer when he found his apple trees suffering from insect diseases. In a matter of a few seconds, the computer did tell him what to do. He is only one of the numerous Chinese farmers who have benefitted from a project called Computerised Agronomist System.

Namesake fuss

BASILA: When US President Bill Clinton named his dog Buddy last month, little did he know he would face protests and a possible lawsuit half way across the globe. Jordanian village mayor Sheikh Badi Rsheid Al-Yahya Banisakhr said he is filing a lawsuit to force Clinton to change the name of the first dog, which is pronounced Badi in Arabic. “Ever since he named that dirty dog, my tribes people have started pointing at me in the market calling me “Clinton’s dog”, said Badi. “I keep getting nuisance calls day and night. It’s causing me psychological distress.”