Hong Kong's so called "cage men" may be among the city's poorest, but rents per square foot for their dingy wire-mesh cubicles are now on a par with luxury flats in the city's famed Peak district.
With Hong Kong property prices soaring and urban redevelopment shrinking the supply of older, cheaper tenement blocks, thousands of cage men living in 15-square-foot cubicles, usually crammed eight to a room, are being squeezed even more.
Sze Lai-shan of the Society for Community Organisation said rents for the city's cage homes had risen around 20 per cent over the past year. On a square-foot basis, such rents exceed those of some mansions in Hong Kong's exclusive Peak district where many local tycoons reside.
"People choose to live in bedspace apartments and cubicles probably because these apartments are mostly conveniently located in the urban areas," said a government spokesman. (Reuters)
Monkey meatballs
Indonesian police have arrested a couple who made meatballs from the flesh of protected monkeys, an animal conservation group said yesterday.
The pair poached dozens of rare Javan langurs, also known as silver-leaf monkeys, from Baluran National Park in the east of Java island.
"Police found 30 kilograms of meat estimated to come from 20 - 25 individuals, two rifles and a live langur," the statement said.
"The couple admitted that they had known what they did was against the law and they hunted the monkeys for their meat because beef and chicken were more expensive than the protected monkeys." (Reuters)
Cleaners don't give a rat for Banksy
An Australian council is rueing a decision to send street cleaners into a Melbourne lane after they painted over a priceless stencil of a rat by the celebrated British graffiti artist Banksy.
Melbourne Deputy Lord Mayor Susan Riley last week sent a clean-up team into Hosier Lane, reknowned internationally for its colourful street art, to clean up garbage in the graffiti-lined passage after local residents complained. But the request went awry when the cleaners painted over a Banksy stencil of a rat hanging underneath a parachute and adorning the wall of an old council building.
The reclusive Banksy, who is regarded as one of the world's top street artists, painted several stencils in Melbourne during a 2003 visit. (Reuters)
Booming growth
A 17-year-old boy mowing the lawn at his home ran into a canister of TNT on the back lawn.
Taylor Wood, from Hooper, Utah, heard a thud then saw a canister that said "TNT shell" on the side.
Explosives experts said it may date back to the Second World War but had no idea how it got into the garden. (PA)
Hapless sailor takes wrong turn
A man who thought he was sailing along the coast of southern England had to be rescued by emergency services after his motor boat ran out of fuel while repeatedly circling a small island in the Thames estuary.
The man, who had no nautical guides and only had a roadmap to navigate by, had been trying to sail from Gillingham, about 35 miles east of London, to Southampton on April 19 by following the southern coast of England. But he ended simply doing laps of the 36-square mile Isle of Sheppey a short distance away in the mouth of the Thames.
Eventually, a lifeboat and coastguard were sent to rescue him after he used up all his fuel and ran aground, officials said yesterday. He told them he had been trying to navigate by keeping the coastline to his right. (Reuters)
Iceland's menu goes wild
Vikings would probably approve of the menu at Icelandic Bar restaurant in Iceland, which opened a year ago in the centre of the capital Reykjavik.
One thing you won't hear in the restaurant are complaints about the shark being rotten. It's meant to be. Months-old, decomposed shark flesh is a delicacy in Iceland, where the traditional menu is as wild as the country of volcanoes and icy waters.
The chef at the Icelandic Bar restaurant, serves the dish in a sealed jar - "to stop the aroma escaping". That aroma, the diner soon discovers, is between ammonia and blue cheese. So is the taste, accompanied by fishy texture and a burning fizz on the tongue.
The potato vodka called Brennevin that follows is part palate cleanser, part anaesthetic while whale, puffin, reindeer, horse, ram's testicles and entire sheep's heads are all in the repertoire - not food for the squeamish, but ancient dishes. (AFP)
Winds delay epic voyage
Sailors hoping to recreate Captain William Bligh's epic 4,000-mile open boat voyage had their hopes dashed yesterday as their launch was halted by adverse weather conditions.
The crew planned to start the epic voyage but were hampered because of high wind warnings. A spokesman said the sailors were delayed by 24 hours but hope to board the Talisker Bounty Boat today.
The seven-week expedition aboard the 25ft long, 7ft wide, open wooden vessel, was due to start yesterday, 221 years after the original journey. The crew, will sail across the Pacific from Tonga to Timor and will face the same deprivations as the original crew, cast adrift from HMS Bounty on April 28 1789, in the middle of the Pacific without navigation charts or everyday items such as a torch and toilet paper. They had just two weeks' water supply and limited food. (PA)