Sidelights

Couple free lobsters from restaurant
ROME: A German couple on holiday on the Italian island of Sardinia bought the live lobsters on the menu at a posh seaside restaurant for 500 euros ($629) and put them back in the sea, local media said yesterday. "When the woman came into the restaurant, she saw the lobsters straight away," Giuseppe Demuro, a chef at Mama Latina on Sardinia's luxurious Emerald Coast, was quoted as saying by the L'Unione Sarda newspaper. "She came and asked if they were still alive and if she could buy them." Another customer at the restaurant told the Germans that the crustaceans might not survive back in the sea and risked being fished again. A waiter then negotiated a 500-euro price to free the lucky crustaceans. "We put them in a special box to carry them. I've been here 10 years and I've never seen anything like it," said Mama Latina's owner Roberto Paci.

Cadillac awarded to grain growers
ASHGABAT: Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov yesterday ordered officials to bestow a luxury Cadillac car on a regional government after its farmers delivered a record grain crop. "In the era of might and happiness, Lebap's courageous workers put in a big contribution to our country, which is moving ahead with the swiftness of a racehorse," Berdymukhamedov was quoted as saying by the state newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan. Berdymukhamedov, who has run the secluded Central Asian country since the death of Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006, sets the plan for grain harvest which the Lebap province already exceeded this year by harvesting over 350,000 tons. To reward their efforts, he has ordered the awarding of a Cadillac Escalade, a US-made luxury sport utility vehicle not sold in Turkmenistan and extremely rare for the country where even government officials do not use American cars. The car would be used for "work" by the provincial government, the paper said. The former Soviet republic rich in energy deposits still has the trappings of a Communist planned economy, and is mostly desert, though much of its population is involved in irrigation farming, predominantly of cotton and wheat.

Mini-cars for grocery delivery
TOKYO: The Japanese operator of 7-Eleven stores outlined its new home delivery service using Toyota electric cars, aimed at helping the country's ageing population to do their grocery shopping. "Given the ageing of the Japanese population and the disappearance of smaller, local shops, there are increasing numbers of people who struggle with their daily shopping," the operator said. The number of people in Japan aged 65 or over stood at 29.75 million as of October 1 last year, or 23.3 percent, an all-time high and one of the highest proportions of elderly people in the world. In August and September the stores will begin by using 200 single-seater COMS electric cars, a model manufactured by Toyota Auto Body, a subsidiary of the Japanese giant, whose acronym means "short, smooth rides into town." The mini-car, which costs 668,000 yen ($8,370) and requires a driving license, has a six-hour charge and features a range of around 50 km and a maximum speed of 60 km per hour. Seven & i Holdings operates supermarkets, department stores and 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan and the United States. There are more than 13,500 7-Elevens in Japan, often open 24 hours. The proportion of people aged 65 or over in Japan will reach nearly 40 percent of the country's population in 2060, according to a government report in June.

— Compiled from agencies