BANGKOK: The Thai stock market is booming, and everyone seems to want a slice of the cake. Housewives and pensioners flock to the stock exchange of Thailand’s monthly investment seminars. Brokers are so busy they refuse to return calls from potential new clients and leading brokerages won’t even talk to anyone unwilling to wager at least 20,000 dollars.
NEWDELHI: A West German businessman has become one of very few foreign converts to the dain faith, whose adherents are so dedicated to preserving life that they wear masks to avoid swallowing microscopic airborne creatures. Jain priests, who follow a daunting routine which includes meditating in the baking sun, say they would like to spread their faith abroad, but their vow to travel on foot makes this difficult.
HONGKONG: Two peasant brothers in South China became rich by exporting eight million grasshoppers to Hong Kong last year, a Canton newspaper said.
Zhung Yukuan and Zhung Yuhua earned 240,000 Yuan (65,000 U.S. Dollars) by hiring children to catch grasshoppers which were sold to a bird feed company in the British colony, Nanfeng Ribao said in yesterday’s edition. Pay for a typical Chinese factory worker is 25 dollars a month.
ANCONA, Italy: An Italian who has spent seven months alone in a cave says he learned to speak the “language of silence” in his underground home and feels sorry to leave it today.
Maurizio Montalbini, 33, learned on Sunday that he had set a new world record of 210 days of living in complete isolation but had trouble believing the news since he had lost track of time and thought it was March.
PEKING: Well-educated Chinese women face growing discrimination when they look for a job, the official China Daily said.
The newspaper said Chinese universities found it increasingly difficult to find places for female graduates in the State’s centrally run job allocation system because many employers demand men.
NEW DELHI: A group of 80 Indians demonstrated in front of the British High Commission today to press Britain to help restore the deposed Fijian government dominated by ethnic Indians.
Members of the “Friends of South Pacific Nations” brandished banners and placards but dispersed after handing in a note complaining that Queen Elizabeth, the Fiji head of State, had paid “Mere lip service to the deeply wounded sentiments of the people of Fiji”.
MANILA: The Philippine army today widened its hunt for saving officers and men implicated in a plot to seize passengers from incoming international flights in the latest bid to topped President Gorazon Aquino.
Manila’s international airport, which the plotters had planned to seize, remained on 24hour alert, heavily guarded by shotgun wielding police and special troops.
WELLINGTON: A record inflation figure today subdued boasts by the ruling Labour Party that it had successfully reformed the New Zealand economy, and gave the opposition a solid campaign issue for next month’s elections.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 17, 1987
