World Briefs

A small Japanese town with a falling birth rate plans to auction off four primary schools on the internet.

Niikappu, on the island of Hokkaido, plans to start the auction next month on the Yahoo! Japan online auction site.

The farming and fishing town of 11,000 people last year closed seven of its nine schools. Three were turned into a corporate office, a nursing home and a horse-racing centre but the town was unable to find buyers for the others.

"It became necessary to consolidate the schools due to the falling birthrate," a municipal statement said.

With no immediate buyers for the other four, the town said it "decided to list the schools on Japan's largest auction site".

Three of the four schools up for sale boast spacious teachers' residences and swimming pools. (AFP)

Village overridden on potholes

An English village which decided not to fill in potholes because they helped slow motorists down has been overridden by higher authorities, officials said yesterday.

The parish council in Navestock, southeast England, said holes in the roads acted as a "natural traffic calming" feature, and ignored any repairs that needed doing. But Essex County Council, which is responsible for maintaining roads in the area, rejected the view and said it would be filling in the village's potholes "as soon as possible."

"This is an interesting idea from Navestock Parish Council," said Norman Hume, the Essex council's transport and highways chief.

"However, the vast majority of Essex residents want to travel on safer, smoother roads which is why it is the policy of Essex County Council to fill all potholes as soon as is practical."

The parish council had argued that filling in potholes made it easier for drivers to speed through the village. (AFP)

Elusive fugitive slips away again

A fugitive Greek bank robber who earlier this year staged his second prison breakout in a helicopter has once again eluded police.

Officers who spotted Vassilis Paleokostas late Monday shot out three of the tyres on his car. But the outlaw bolted from the car and vanished into the night in a forest near the village of Apelohori. Despite putting up checkpoints and deploying helicopters, the police found no trace of him.

Mr Paleokostas and an Albanian killer Alket Rizai, famously escaped from the high-security Korydallos prison last February by helicopter - a repeat performance of their airborne escape from the same jail in 2006.

In the car, investigators found a machine-gun, several mobile phones and the fingerprints of both fugitives. The police also discovered Mr Paleokostas's hideout - a villa in Apelohori which he reportedly rented from the same mystery woman, a friend of Rizai, who organised the helicopter escape. Investigators found wigs and identification cards in the villa. (AFP)

Songs to die for

Frank Sinatra's My Way is the most popular song played at funeral services, but other more arresting death-bed choices were revealed in a poll published in Britain yesterday.

Australian rockers AC/DC's Highway to Hell has stormed into the funeral charts along with Queen's Another One Bites The Dust, while more traditionally, hymns including The Lord Is My Shepherd are among music chosen by people for their final journey.

As more people choose non-religious funerals, they incline towards contemporary songs with which they closely identify and pop songs now account for more than half of the music chosen as people's final soundtrack. Some of the top choices, according to the poll commissioned by Co-operative Funeralcare include Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Midler/Celine Dion, Time To Say Goodbye by Sarah Brightman/Andrea Bocelli, Angels by Robbie Williams, Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf and Spirit In The Sky by Doctor and the Medics. (AFP)

53 quarantined after death on train

Russian health authorities have quarantined 53 people after a woman died of an unknown illness on board a train headed to Moscow, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday.

The woman, from China, had been on a train heading from the far eastern city of Blagoveshchensk when she died suddenly, causing alarm.

Earlier yesterday, Radio Television Hong Kong reported that the woman may have died from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, a contagious disease that spread worldwide and killed at least 774 people in 2002 and 2003. WHO spokesman Sari Setiogi said the UN health agency had not received any information to support the report, nor have Russian authorities identified SARS as the cause of the death.

"At the moment there are 53 contacts of the woman in quarantine in hospital," Ms Setiogi told reporters, adding "Samples have been taken from the woman and her contacts and laboratory investigations are ongoing."

WHO authorities are working with Russian authorities to track the case and ensure it did not represent an international public health threat, Ms Setiogi said. (Reuters)