Chinese residents may be evicted for spitting
BEIJING: Chinese people who live in government-sponsored housing in a prosperous southern province may be evicted if caught repeatedly spitting in public, according to a draft plan. The plan, carried on the Guangzhou Land and House Management Bureau’s website (www.laho.gov.cn), also includes littering, making too much noise and gambling among more than 20 other “misdeeds” that would lead to eviction, based on a point system. Spitting once in the community carries a three point penalty, littering five, dropping things from upper stories seven and not paying the rent for three consecutive months carries the maximum of 20 points, the plan said. People in such housing will be forced to move out if they rack up a total of 20 points. Spitting in public is common in China, despite repeated government campaigns to wipe it out as a health menace. The bureau’s website said it had “borrowed ideas from the advanced experience of Hong Kong on public housing management.”
Indian railways ‘fires’ rebel leader after 30 years
GUWAHATI: One of India’s most wanted militants has finally been sacked from his government job after officials realized he was still on the payroll 30 years after he last turned up for work. Paresh Baruah, commander-in-chief of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), joined the state-run Northeast Frontier Railways as a porter in 1978. One year later, he went underground as a founder member of the ULFA fighting for an independent homeland for ethnic Assamese in the northeastern state of Assam. The group went on to become a powerful rebel army which has been blamed for more than 500 bomb blasts over the last three decades, including attacks on the railways network. Despite being absent from his porter’s job from January 1980, Baruah’s name was never removed from the list of state railway employees, although his salary was frozen, local officials said. The New Delhi authorities recently admitted paying salaries to 23,000 non-existent employees at a cost of more than $40 million annually.
S. Korean bureaucrats try
ministry of matchmaking
SEOUL: A South Korean government ministry will help bureaucrats date, mate and procreate in order to boost the country’s falling birthrate. The Health Ministry plans a matchmaking program where it will bring single public servants together for social gatherings and community service work in the hopes of fostering love among available bureaucrats looking to wed. The ministry has been doing its homework on the unmarried. “We found that single people fall into certain categories, much like the unemployed,” said Choi Jin-sun of the ministry’s human resources development division. It will split the unmarried between those that way by choice and those by circumstance, and has devised plans to help any segment of the unwed population find a partner and settle down. The government in late 2009 unveiled a plan to boost South Korea’s birthrate, the lowest in the developed world. The country is graying quickly and needs to boost the population to expand the economy and provide payments to government coffers for the increased welfare spending that comes with an ageing society.
German MPs lose sauna, get toilet instead
BERLIN: Stressed-out German MPs fancying a steamy session with their fellow legislators will soon be out of luck as the parliament’s sauna is being closed and turned into a toilet, a spokesman said Thursday. Despite offering enough space for 20 naked lawmakers at a time, since opening in 2003 the sauna has only been in service 195 times and has been patronized by just 185 people, said Bundestag spokeswoman Anna Rubinowicz. The spokeswoman was unable to say if Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was famously in an East Berlin sauna when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, was one of those who indulged at eight euros ($11.50) a go.
— Compiled from agencies
