Love lights
A woman takes a selfie in front of LED lights roses in Hong Kong on February 13. The art installation project featured 25,000 white roses made of LED lights for Valentine's Day. — AP
Natural disaster
More bodies pulled from ruins
Taipei — Rescuers have pulled out 115 dead a week since a powerful earthquake struck Taiwan’s oldest city of Tainan, leaving only two missing in the rubble of a collapsed 17-storey residential complex, authorities said on February 13.
All but two of the dead were found at the ruins of the Weiguan Golden Dragon complex, which toppled when the 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck on February 6. A total of 327 people in the building survived, officials said. — AP
Animal attraction
Elephant damages cars
Beijing — Authorities in southern China said a male elephant wandered out of a reservation area on Friday following a failed courtship and started playing with cars parked along a highway, damaging more than a dozen vehicles.
The government of Xishuangbanna prefecture said the animal recently lost to another male elephant in a battle for the affections of a female, and that his temperament was moody.
The government said the elephant did not hurt any of the tourists who had crowded the area during the Lunar New Year holiday. — AP
War zone
A child navigates rubble and barbed wire in Aleppo, Syria on February 11. The fighting around Syria's largest city of Aleppo is creating a humanitarian disaster as tens of thousands of people flee. — AP
Housing crisis
People protest high rents
London — Londoners are irate over rising rents, with residents taking to the streets and social media over bad living conditions. With house-building lagging well behind the population increase in western Europe’s biggest city, prices are soaring beyond anything affordable.
“The situation is becoming untenable,” 60-year-old retired teacher John Ford said. John joined a 2,000-strong protest against the government’s new housing bill, which would radically change public housing and the rights of its tenants. — AFP
Investigation over
Suspected war criminal dies
Zagreb — A Croatian man suspected of having been a guard in several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, has died at the age of 92.
Jakob Dencinger, who was living in the city of Osijek, died in hospital on February 11, the local Glas Slavonije newspaper reported.
In 2014, Croatian prosecutors said they had placed him under investigation after his name reportedly figured on a list of people compiled by special German prosecutors in charge of investigating Nazi war crimes. — AFP
Freelance fighters
Men caught with weapons
Thessaloniki, Greece — Greek police said no February 14 that they had arrested three heavily armed Britons near the border with Turkey. They were suspected of heading to join Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State jihadists.
One of the three, a 40-year-old said to be of Kurdish Iraqi origin, had four firearms and 200,000 rounds in his possession when he was picked up at the Kipi border post on the Evros River. Police arrested two other men, both in their mid-30s, in the port of Alexandropolis, the main town in the Evros region in northeastern Greece. — AFP
EASY NEWS FOR M1-3
Off the road
Band dies in car crash
Stockholm — Five members of a British rock band died. The band was called Viola Beach. Their manager also died. They were killed in a road crash in Sweden, where they were performing a concert. — AFP
Exercises
1. What was Jakob Dencinger suspected of being?
a. A Nazi war criminal.
b. A prisoner at Auschwitz.
c. A Croatian prosecutor.
2. Which British band died in Sweden?
3. How many illegal fishing vessels were seized in Phuket?
Vocabulary
- rubble (n): broken stones or bricks from a building or wall that has been destroyed or damaged
courtship (n): the special way animals behave in order to attract a mate
moody (adj): bad-tempered or upset
irate (adj): very angry
untenable (adj): that cannot be defended against attack or criticism
concentration camp (n): a type of prison, often consisting of a number of buildings inside a fence, where political prisoners are kept in extremely bad conditions
round (n): a bullet for a gun
