A one-time military brothel is set to welcome guests of a different kind after Taiwanese tourist bosses reopened it as a museum.
The brothel, which has been renamed Special Tea House Museum, originally entertained officers and soldiers stationed on Kinmen, a fortified island just off the Chinese coast.
“The purpose of the museum is to give visitors a rough idea about the background of the so-called ‘Military Paradises’ and what their function was,” Hsu Ying-fan of the Kinmen National Park said.
The museum features photos and posters from the brothel’s busy heyday. At the height of the Cold War in Asia, about 100,000 Taiwanese soldiers were stationed on Kinmen, with 11 officially sanctioned brothels catering for their needs.
The last brothel was shut down in 1990. (AFP)
Car ploughs into cyclists
A speeding car ploughed into a group of cyclists in southern Italy and killed at least seven of them, police said yesterday.
Sgt Umberto Perri of the municipal police in Lamezia Terme said two other people were airlifted by helicopter to hospital in a critical condition.
Another police official, Nicola Ottocalli, told Sky TG24 that one of those later died, bringing the total to eight dead. He said the car was going above the speed limit when the accident happened yesterday.
The Ansa news agency said the driver, who was among the injured, was arrested.
It is common in Italy to see groups of amateur cyclists taking to small state roads on weekends. Lamezia Terme is near Catanzaro in Calabria. (AP)
Snake bites teachers during Santa’s visit
A potentially dangerous snake was a surprise guest when Santa Claus visited children in Australia’s remote outback, biting two of their teachers as the youngsters excitedly received gifts.
One teacher, who had travelled some 300 kilometres with a class of Aboriginal children to meet the train carrying Santa at a South Australian desert stop on Friday, was flown to hospital after being bitten on the foot.
A fellow teacher was then bitten on the finger as he caught the snake, thought to be a poisonous yellow-faced whip snake, for identification purposes. He declined treatment and later released it back into the wild.
Andy Kilcross, a general practitioner with the Flying Doctor Service who was travelling on the Perth-bound train, treated the first teacher at the scene and said she had been taken to hospital as a precautionary measure.
“You can’t tell just from looking at the snake what type it is, so they need to run some tests,” he said. (AFP)
‘Facebook check before lights out’
The last thing that more than 70 per cent of British adults do before they go to bed is check social network sites, figures show.
A study conducted on behalf of Travelodge has found that 72 per cent of adults check status updates on Facebook, while some 18 per cent send a daily night-time tweet to their followers.
Experts said the online activity performed from bed is affecting people’s sleep . Sleep specialist Dr Michael Hastings, a researcher at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridgeshire, said: “Being exposed to bright light from computer and mobile phone screens while in bed completely delays the brain and body’s ability to get to sleep. As a result, people are not able to get to sleep as quickly as they should and aren’t getting the required amount of sleep they need each night.”
The research also found that alarm clocks are set to become obsolete with 84 per cent of adults now using their mobile phone to wake themselves up in the mornings. (PA)
Latvia, Estonia claim Christmas tree title
Latvia and its Baltic neighbour Estonia are exchanging friendly jabs over the claim that each was home to the first-ever town Christmas tree some five centuries ago.
As the Latvian capital Riga marks what it says is the 500th anniversary of its tree, its Estonian counterpart Tallinn states that it is celebrating the 569th anniversary.
According to researchers for Latvia, in 1510 a group of merchants built a pyramid-shaped wooden structure dubbed a “tree”, decorated with dried flowers, fruit and vegetables, and straw toys. They paraded it around their meeting hall before burning it to signify the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.
Estonians insist that the world’s first Christmas tree was erected in front of Tallinn town hall in 1441 as part of a winter ritual where merchants and single women danced around the tree and later set it on fire. (AFP)