UbuneBlog

A RANGE of movies from comedy Airplane! to George Lucas’ The Empire Strikes Back and 1906 short film A Trip Down Market Street were named to the US National Film Registry on Tuesday, ensuring their preservation for future generations. Among others are horror film The Exorcist, political drama All the President’s Men, 1959 African-American cultural […]

LEANN Rimes and Eddie Cibrian are getting married. Rimes’ publicist, Rhett Usry, confirmed on Tuesday that the country singer and the actor ‘were engaged over the holidays and are very happy.’ Both were married to other people when they fell in love with each other. Rimes, 28, and Cibrian, 37, co-starred in the 2009 Lifetime […]

JIMMY Carter has helped release a rehabilitated loggerhead sea turtle during a family vacation in the Florida Keys. The former president participated in the release of Danger, a 46kg loggerhead turtle, into the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday. The turtle had spent three months at The Turtle Hospital. Mr Carter also toured the facility, which is […]

JAILED Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo marked his 55th birthday on Tuesday in a prison in north-east China, prompting renewed calls from rights groups for his immediate release. Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Christmas Day last year on subversion charges after co-authoring Charter 08, a bold petition calling for political reform […]

SIX people have been detained, several wineries shut down and bottles pulled from shelves in China after authorities found wine containing several chemical additives, state media said on Monday. The incident in Changli county in the central province of Hebei – an area dubbed ‘China’s Bordeaux’ – is the latest food safety scare to rattle […]

SOME North Korean troops stationed along the border have donned a camouflage uniform similar to that worn by South Koreans, apparently to practise intrusion drills, a defence ministry official said Tuesday. The move prompted the South to advance the supply of new uniforms for its own troops to avoid confusion, the official told journalists in […]

ALMOST 30 robots have started teaching English to youngsters in a South Korean city, education officials said on Tuesday, in a pilot project designed to nurture the nascent robot industry. Engkey, a white, egg-shaped robot developed by the Korea Institute of Science of Technology (Kist), began taking classes on Monday at 21 elementary schools in […]

BEIJING is working on making all public spaces – including work sites and transportation options – tobacco-free by the end of 2015, the Health Bureau revealed. The bureau is also aiming to reduce the smoking rate among women in the capital from 4.6 to 4 per cent during the next five years. Specifics from the […]

Ten school knapsacks from an anonymous donor were found in front of the entrance of a children’s welfare facility on Christmas Day Saturday in Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture, the prefectural government said Monday. The facility, after consultations with the police, has decided to accept the knapsacks, apparently worth about 300,000 yen, as a donation, according to […]

NEPAL has amended its legislation to allow disabled children to be adopted abroad, a government official said on Tuesday, two years after a scandal over ‘fake’ orphans. The country introduced new adoption laws in 2008 following reports of unscrupulous agents trafficking children who had been taken from their living parents. But many countries say the […]