China official dies after excessive drinks on first day of job
Beijing: A Chinese official died of alcohol poisoning after dining with colleagues to celebrate his first day at work. Zhong Xiefei, who had just been named deputy chief of Qianjiang township in Laibin city in the central Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region died of excessive drinking.
Seven other officials who drank with him have been fired, the state-run China News Service reported. Zhong showed up for work on April 9 and began to drink rice wine during lunch with other provincial and county-level officials.
That night Zhong’s family found him asleep and snoring loudly, but saw nothing to suggest he was excessively drunk. He was found dead next morning. District officials met yesterday to discuss the incident and figure out ways to discipline other officials involved.
Since President Xi Jinping took power in 2013, the leadership has been trying to rein in cadres’ excessive behaviour and curtail wasteful spending. Sales of expensive liquor such as the popular Maotai have dropped. Despite the campaign, drinking remains customary at many official lunches and dinners.
A recent study found the number of official banquets had fallen sharply. Xi’s year-long campaign has cut down expenditures and also improved efficiency by “setting officials free” from attending such events, Zhang Zhongliang, director of the statistical education centre with the National Bureau of Statistics, was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.
He said county-level officials, who typically spent the most time at banquets among all ranks of government, on average attended 12.2 banquets per week last year, down from about 18 in 2012. (PTI)
Pakistani brothers return to cannibalism after release
ISLAMABAD: In a shocking case, two brothers in Pakistan’s Punjab province, who were found guilty of cannibalism in 2011, have been caught with the head of a young boy, a media report here said on Monday.
Arif and Farman, who are from the small town of Darya Khan in Bhakkar district, were first arrested in April 2011 after they were found eating corpses that they stole from a local graveyard.
They had reportedly dug up and devoured from up to 150 bodies before they were finally caught.
On Monday, the police conducted a raid at their house and recovered the head of a young boy.
According to DPO Bhakkar Ameer Abdullah, Arif has been arrested and he admitted to eating human flesh while his brother Farman is still on the loose, Express News reported.
Search operations are being conducted to arrest Farman. Since Pakistan has no specific laws against cannibalism, they were first arrested under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) section of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) in 2011, and were later charged under section 295-A of the PPC.
They were sentenced to two years imprisonment and fined Rs 50,000 each.
After the completion of their sentence, they were released from Mianwali’s district jail and returned to their hometown, to the shock and outrage of residents.
The duo had spent most of their two-year prison term in King Edwards medical college Lahore, where they were being examined by the neurophysiology department, the report said. (PTI)
Netherlands develops first glow-in-the-dark road
London: A first glow-in-the-dark ‘smart highway’ spanning 500 metres has been developed to replace street lights in the Netherlands.
It is the first time “glowing lines” technology has been piloted on the road and can be seen on the N329 in Oss, approximately 100km south east of Amsterdam. Designer and innovator Daan Roosegaarde teamed up with Dutch civil engineering firm Heijmans to developed the technology. The glow-in-the-dark markings are made of paint that contains “photo-luminising” powder which charges up in the daytime and slowly releases a green glow at night, ‘BBC News’ reported.
Once the paint has absorbed daylight it can glow for up to eight hours in the dark, doing away with the need for streetlights.
The innovative technology will be officially launched later this month and if successful could trigger a mass switch-off of lighting across the country’s road network, potentially saving the nation millions of Euros.
Heijmans said that the glow in the dark technology is “a sustainable alternative to places where no conventional lighting is present”.
Roosegaarde’s past projects have included a dance floor with built-in disco lights powered by dancers’ foot movements, and a dress that becomes see-through when the wearer is aroused.
In the UK, engineers have also developed water-resistant, spray-on coating that makes roads glow in the dark by absorbing UV light during the day and releasing it at night. The coating can adapt to the lighting conditions in its surroundings to glow accordingly.
The technology is being given a test run at the Christ’s Pieces park in Cambridge, UK. (PTI)