Wales: All I want for Christmas is a job: Pair become internet sensations after employment appeal
Ken Jones, 44, and Ron Rogers, 40, advertised their skills to passers-by on posters in central Cardiff.
A pair of homeless friends who live in a city centre park are appealing directly to the people of Cardiff for work.
Ken Jones, 44, and Ron Rogers, 40, have become internet sensations after advertising their skills to passers-by on posters in the heart of the city centre on Queen Street.
The duo, who say they don’t claim benefits and live in a tent in parkland in the shadow of the Hilton hotel, hope to find casual work in time for Christmas. ...
Wales Online
Japan: Samurai armor enthusiast takes a thrifty approach to history
“Step in, step in. You may come closer,” beckoned a bearded burly warlord, as he magnanimously waved me in.
Dressed in full armor, Yoichi Katayama sat well-ensconced in a raised chair in a Japanese-style room with a floor of eight tatami mats.
While this scene could have taken place in feudal Japan, it actually unfolded inside a bicycle shop-cum-home in Osaka’s Chuo Ward, which also serves as headquarters of the “Koen-tai,” a group of samurai armor enthusiasts. The “clubhouse” is built in the style of an old samurai residence and houses a panoply of handcrafted samurai helmets and armor. ...
The Asahi Shimbun
Nigeria: Females top table of recruits into Nigerian military
Statistics of employment generation by the Federal Government in the public sector indicates that more females have continued to break gender barriers in the Nigerian Armed Forces with a total of 537 females clinching commissioned Army officers’ slot in the 4th Quarter of 2012, over and above their male counterpart, fresh data by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows.
According to a breakdown of figures, 526 male officers were commissioned into various ranks within the same period under review, indicating a softening of the prejudice against female gender in the military circle.
The figures, released by the NBS, showed a marked improvement in the number of females who have been able to scale the ladder to become commissioned officers of the male-dominated military. ...
The Guardian Nigeria
India: Lemon farmers enjoys profit
I visited Raghunathpur back in 2004 and was introduced to a Lemon farmer named Ibrahim Sarkar. An ambitious elderly man, he pioneered profitable lemon farming in this region and thus opened the door for a lot of local farmers to be self-sufficient.He passed away a few years back but his endeavors didn’t stop. We visited Raghumathpur again recently to find out the consequences of the quest that Ibrahim Sarkar had once started.
I met Mainuddin, a thriving lemon farmer and spoke to him. He has a fourteen katha (measurement of land) worth lemon orchard that contains about 1,500 trees. I visited his orchard. The lemon are healthy and luscious and it is Mainuddin’s key profitable crop. He added that he is highly regarded as a people of the area because of his success as a lemon farmer. He purchased new lands, got his four daughters married and runs his household smoothly. ...
The Daily Star
France: French ponies ride on trams
Last week we had llamas on trams, and now it’s the turn of some other four-legged friends, it would seem, after commuters in Dijon snapped ponies taking a ride on the public transport system. But what were they doing there in the first place?
Last Monday The Local brought you the story (and the pictures) of Serge, a llama kidnapped by five drunken friends and taken on a late-night joyride on a tram in the south-western city of Bordeaux.
Well now it’s the turn of the ponies of Dijon to have their big day out, it would seem. ...
The Local
Croatia: Flying fireman in Rijeka
A fireman in Croatia became a hero on Monday trying to help pick up a metal roof that the storm has taken off a building in the western city of Rijeka.
As he tried to get it strong wind lifted him and the huge piece of metal roof and left flying around.
The video became a smashing hit on YouTube on Tuesday morning, but the fireman Mario Tomasic has said he was not that afraid. ...
Croatian Times
Canada: Vancouver launches world’s first cigarette butt recycling program (video)
The City of Vancouver is butting in when it comes to smokers butting out by helping to launch the world’s first cigarette butt recycling program.
The Cigarette Waste Brigade pilot project began Tuesday with the installation of 110 recycling receptacles in four downtown areas where discarded butts are a messy problem.
Mayor Gregor Robertson says the butts are a source of litter in a city that’s aiming to become the greenest on the globe by 2020. ...
The Star
