UbuneBlog

To her nine U.S. and five world championships, Michelle Kwan can now add the title of Hall of Famer. The most decorated figure skater in American history, Kwan was elected to the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame on Thursday, the only selection for the class of 2012. That seems fitting considering how Kwan soared […]

Bulldozers razed Li Liguang’s farmhouse four years ago after officials in the Chinese city of Loudi told him the land was needed for a 30,000-seat stadium. What Li, 28, says they didn’t tell him is that he would be paid a fraction of what his plot was worth and get stuck living in a cinder-block […]

A Kemas kindergarten in Alor Setar, Kedah, was found to have stored dry food in a toilet, an audit of the Community Development Department’s Additional Food Plan showed. The auditor-general, in his 2010 report, notes that this as one of several examples of poor sanitation. “Dry food was also found to have been stored for […]

India’s wealthiest man is courting controversy by not living in his extravagant home that is often called the most expensive private residence in the world. When the richest man in India completed his extravagant 27-storey house in Mumbai last year, it incited a public debate along the lines of ”What’s he trying to prove?” Now, […]

Muammar Gaddafi has been killed by Libyans he once scorned as “rats”, succumbing to wounds, some seemingly inflicted after his capture, in his hometown of Sirte on the Mediterranean. Two months after Western-backed rebels ended 42 years of eccentric, often bloody, one-man rule by capturing the capital, Tripoli, his death and the fall of the […]

A toddler who was twice run over by vans and then ignored by 18 passers-by as she lay critically injured in the street has died, the hospital treating her said today. Surveillance camera footage of people walking past the two-year-old girl, nicknamed Yue Yue, as she lay bleeding and unconscious, sparked a wave of condemnation […]

A new biography portrays Steve Jobs as a sceptic all his life – giving up religion because he was troubled by starving children, calling executives who took over Apple “corrupt” and delaying cancer surgery in favour of cleansings and herbal medicine. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, to be published in the US on Monday, also […]

A YOUNG man captured by militants while protecting a country he loves, and two ordinary, devoted parents who never gave up fighting for his release – for five long years, the Gilad Shalit story has been etched deeply into the Israeli consciousness. As word came through yesterday that Sergeant Shalit had been returned to Israeli […]

“Occupy” protests, inspired by demonstrations on Wall Street, have started in Australia and begun to spread around the world. In Sydney, hundreds of people occupied a site in front of the nation’s central bank headquarters in the heart of the financial district, declaring it as “only the start” of their protest. Elsewhere in Australia, about […]

At the end of the month, the doors of the old gym will be locked and the 50,000 items stored there, including wedding and graduation photos, trophies, satchels, gym vests and other school clothing, taken to a nearby incinerator. For now, however, the belongings remain neatly arranged on tables to allow the handful of visitors […]