World News

Some recent news from around the world that made an impression on me.

JAPAN

• On Saturday, January 10, 2009, three 17-year old high school students in Tokyo risked their lives to rescue a blind man who fell off of a train station platform.
  Without hesitation, they rushed over and pulled him back onto the platform to safety moments before a train pulled into the station.
  They were awarded letter of commendation from both the train station and the local fire department.
• Wednesday, January 14, 2009, a forty-five year old professor at 「中央大学」 (Chuo University) in Tokyo was stabbed to death in the school’s restroom.
  The motive is unknown and the killer is still at large (as of this writing).
• A 54-year old man who owns a medicine distribution company got a perm hair style so that he could more closely resemble his twenty-year-old son and attempted to take a test in his son’s place so that his son could get his OTC drug handling license to work at his company.
  He was caught when the test administrator notice he looked unusually old for being twenty.
• America’s Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. currently owns 41% of Universal Studios Japan‘s shares. They are making a take-over bid to gain the remaining 59 shares and own the amusement park outright.
• U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Thomas Schieffer left Japan today to return to America as his post ends with the change of the U.S. president this month. Schieffer was the Ambassador to Japan since April 2005.

CHINA

• A group of thirteen people in China were arrested for riding up on motorcycles and snatching toddlers to sell to people in other parts of the country for prices ranging between US$125 to US$3,800.
• China recently surpassed Germany to become the world’s third largest economy. The U.S. and Japan are still far ahead as the number one and two world economies, respectively.

AUSTRALIA

• Chemical pollution is the assumed cause of a recent spate of two-headed fish being spawned in Australia.

NEW ZEALAND

• Two Australian brothers in their early twenties were vacationing with their parents in New Zealand were killed when tons of falling ice fell on them at Fox Glacier, a tourist spot in New Zealand.
  The youngest brother’s body was never recovered, and he had the keys to their rental car in his pocket.
  Without the keys, the car rental company told the parents, they would have to pay NZ$1,950 (US$1,085) to have the car towed back to the rental office and have new keys made.
  After being relentlessly criticized for being heartless by both Australia and New Zealand, the rental car company finally decided to waive the charges.

AMERICA

• A man in California was arrested for trying to sell his fourteen-year-old daughter for US$16,000, one hundred crates of beer, and some cases of meat!

Have you heard this news stories? What do you think?