A telecoms company has put Mount Everest on the 3G mobile network.
Ncell, a subsidiary of Swedish telecom company TeliaSonera, set up seven stations in the region including the Everest base camp, allowing thousands of climbers and trekkers in the region to access fast internet and make video calls.
The highest station is at 17,000 feet, near the base camp where mountaineers gather before attempting to scale Everest, the 29,035-foot world’s highest mountain.
Thousands of trekkers from all over the world walk to the base camp every year. Hundreds of mountaineers go further up the slopes of the peak to the summit. (PA)
Cuckooland clock curator
Turning back the clock can be a struggle - but spare a thought for one museum curator who has more than 600 to wind back.
Roman Piekarski, the curator of the Cuckooland Museum in Tabley, Cheshire, has so many clocks that he has to start changing the time before everyone else.
Mr Piekarski, 58, has collected 625 antique cuckoo clocks from around the world since his museum opened 20 years ago. He runs Cuckooland with his brother Maz, and starts winding the clocks back the day before the time changes. (PA)
Match-making day
A Taiwanese lawmaker has proposed “match-making” holidays for government employees in a bid to boost the island’s falling marriage and birth rates.
Lin Hung-chih called for “creative measures” to marry off a high number of single civil servants, such as granting them up to two days off a year to join match-making activities.
A record low of 117,099 Taiwanese couples tied the knot in 2009, down 24.4 per cent from the previous year.
The island’s birth rate is also among the world’s lowest. Only 191,310 babies were born last year, with the average birth rate falling to 1.03 for each woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 births. (AFP)
Healthy limbs for cash
Three Italian surgeons were jailed yesterday for carrying out unnecessary operations, including amputations, to make money from the state health system.
A court in Milan was told they operated more than 80 times just for personal gain.
The chief surgeon, Pier Apollo Berg Mason, received the stiffest sentence of 15 and a half years. He was accused of “causing pain through unnecessary surgery” with the sole aim of “professional and economic gain.”
Two other former surgeons at the Santa Rita clinic were sentenced to six and 10 years in prison. (AP)
Out with a bang
A New Zealand man will go out with a bang today when his ashes are fired from a cannon over Wellington Harbour during a ceremony to mark Captain James Cook’s birthday.
The ashes of Alfonse Kennedy Goss, known as AK, 58, who died last year from cancer, will be fired from an artillery piece by his friends from the Wellington Cannon Society, newswire.co.nz reported.
“Each time you hear a boom there will be a little bit of AK’s ashes in every one,” society founder Bryan Townsend said.
Mr Townsend said the scattering of the ashes was a fitting way to remember Mr Goss, who was an active member of the society. (AFP)
Dust donation
Art lovers are being asked to donate dust to be made into bricks for a new exhibition.
Serena Korda will make 500 bricks as part of a show at the Wellcome Collection in London called Dirt: the filthy reality of everyday life.
She added that she was inspired by Victorian-era Londoners who recycled dust and dirt from the city to make bricks. The bricks will be buried after the exhibition ends next August. (PA)
Facebook mother admits killing baby
A north Florida mother pleaded guilty to shaking her baby to death after the boy’s crying interrupted her game on Facebook.
Alexandra Tobias pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was remanded in custody.
She reportedly told investigators she was angered because the boy was crying while she was playing the game FarmVille.
She told officers she shook the boy, smoked a cigarette to compose herself and then shook him again.
Guidelines call for 25 to 50 years in jail, but a prosecutor said it could be shorter than that. (AP)