11-year-old US boy in custody after gun goes off at school
Las Vegas: An 11-year-old boy is in custody after accidentally firing a stolen handgun at a Las Vegas school. No one was hurt. Authorities tell the Las Vegas Sun newspaper that the student fired the gun on Wednesday as he reached into a backpack, shooting a hole in a desk.
Clark County School District police say the boy was getting ready to leave school when the .45-caliber gun went off in a classroom. Cpt. Ken Young says staff members immediately separated the boy from other students. Young says it’s not clear where the boy got the gun, but he and the firearm’s owner don’t appear to be related. The boy is being held at a juvenile detention center and faces several charges, including felony possession of stolen property. (AP)
Chinese president takes first selfie?
London: Taking his ‘man of the people’ image forward, a selfie of Chinese president Xi Jinping is doing the rounds on the internet and drawing crazy responses from his fans.
However, the picture doing the rounds does not actually appear to be a selfie in the true sense of the word as Xi Jinping did not possibly take the photo himself.
The photo was posted recently by Fadli Zon of the Great Indonesia Movement Party — it was one of a series with world leaders including Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and King Abdullah II of Jordan, all of whom were attending the Asian-African Summit in Jakarta, BBC reported.
In the picture, Fadli Zon is smiling, while Xi looks like he is in the frame more out of courtesy than a zest for a self-portrait. As the pic was initially posted on Fadli Zon’s own Twitter account, it seems pretty clear that it wasn’t technically a “selfie”.
But that little fact didn’t stop Chinese media from reporting on it — and Chinese internet users going gaga over it. Once the picture made its way onto weibo (a Twitter-like microblogging services popular in China), it was shared more than 30,000 times.
“Xi Dada, I love you!” one user wrote, using an affectionate term for the president.
“So handsome. Xi Dada has such a kind smile,” said another. (IANS)
Swiss ski resort bans selfies with iconic Saint Bernards
Geneva: If there is one photo to take home from Switzerland, it is probably a selfie featuring iconic Saint Bernard dogs against the snow-covered backdrop of the Matterhorn peak. But such photo-ops are now over.
The popular ski resort of Zermatt has banned tourists from posing for photos with the famed search and rescue dog, following complaints that some of the Saint Bernards were kept in miserable conditions. Swiss animal protection group PSA had called for the ban, saying that some dogs used in Zermatt were not taken for walks and were left “for long periods without food or water”.
“They are made to wait long hours in the cold outdoors for photographs,” said PSA in a report.
Five of the Saint Bernards were also kept in a decrepit house “in miserable conditions and against animal protection laws,” added PSA, which filed a formal complaint against the owners of one such business offering photo-ops with the emblematic animals. (IANS)
The head of Zermatt commune Christoph Burgin, told AFP that the ban took immediate effect, although some contracts with Japanese visitors “may involve one or more photo shoots this summer”. PSA has volunteered to take in any ill-treated dogs and a foundation which breeds Saint Bernards in a nearby monastery too has made a similar offer. Saint Bernards, which are often depicted with a barrel of rum under the neck, were bred for mountain rescue. Even though lighter and nimbler dogs like Alsatians are now used more often in search and rescue missions, Saint Bernards, which can weigh up to 85 kilograms (nearly 190 pounds), are still regularly given avalanche rescue training. Switzerland has one of the world’s toughest animal protection laws. Social animals such as budgies have to be kept in pairs and those wanting to get rid of a goldfish cannot simply flush it down the toilet — it must be knocked out, killed and then properly disposed of. (AFP) UZM 04250049
