Quirky: World’s leaders come to town — so put your feet up
The arrival of an international summit in Beijing — the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum — has led to some unusual restrictions on the city’s 21m inhabitants — and one decent bonus.
Apec is deemed the capital’s biggest event since the 2008 Olympics, with delegates set to include Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, and dozens of news stands and food kiosks have been removed from the streets in the tidy-up, while people who fly pigeons and kites near Beijing Capital International Airport face being detained as part of rules to ensure flight safety.
However, many workers will be able to put their feet up — factories have been ordered to cut back or suspend production, and government employees have been given a six-day holiday, with authorities so eager to ease congestion they are taking the unusual measure of deploying cargo trains to carry the cars of holidaymakers out of the capital.
GRENADE DISCOVERY
Volunteers cleaning up a canal were shocked to find an unexploded grenade from the Second World War.
The event was the first of five planned over the next month to clear a huge amount of rubbish from the bed of the Regent’s Canal in east London, where a 1km stretch has been drained. The grenade was discovered at Salmon Lock in Mile End, the Canal & River Trust said.
NEW HOME
A pair of bears have arrived in the UK having been rescued from a cruel breeding centre in Bulgaria.
The Wildwood Trust centre in Kent has raised over £50,000 (€64,000) to free the two poorly bears, Milcho and Gosho, from prison-like conditions in Kormisosh.
A specialist team was sent out to Bulgaria to collect them before the onset of the bitter Eastern European winter.
DELAYED HONEYMOON
A young couple are to finally have a honeymoon after winning £1m and a dream holiday to Australia in the new EuroMillions Mega Friday monthly draw.
David and Sam Mackie, who have two young sons, married two-and-a-half years ago but have not been able to take a holiday abroad or have a honeymoon. Their last holiday was a week in Cornwall.
DATE DISASTER
Police have revealed the details of a bad first date after a 23-year-old man met a woman for the first time in person after they had chatted online.
The woman got into his car at a drive-thru in Wilsonville, south of Portland, Oregon, and suggested he buy her a milkshake. The man got two $1 notes in change and put them into his wallet, which he left on the centre console. The woman grabbed the wallet, got out of the car, and ran off.
The man called 911 and provided the woman’s mobile phone number. Officers called her to arrange a meeting at the same restaurant the next day, where they arrested her and recovered the wallet — with the two one-dollar notes still inside.
WATER FEATURE
Excavations at a 2,000-year-old ruin site suggest it might have had a surprising history — with a series of water features.
The water connection would be an odd twist for the Teotihuacan complex, which is in an arid valley north of Mexico City. Archaeologists said they had largely excavated a 340ft tunnel under the Temple of the Plumed Serpent, and water marks on the wall indicate the chambers and offerings at the end of the tunnel were under water.
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