| VIDEO: Modern Toilet Diner in Taipei
On the outside it may resemble a shop that caters for all your bathroom needs. Even the name seems to indicate that you could pick out a new feature for your wash room. But whatever you do, do not judge this book by its cover. Taipei's Modern Toilet diner is one in a chain of themed eateries targeting the capital city's younger clientele. The restaurant's Duty Manager, Wei Duo-Yi, explains how the idea developed: - It was an ice shop decorated with toilets before. Most of the customers like the decorations so we tried to expand it into a restaurant -. Enthusiastic customers get the opportunity to eat from mini plastic toilet bowls and wipe their hands and mouths using toilet rolls hung above their tables. Find out more in the NEWS FOOTAGE.
Our view: Curtain drawn on tree by Frost's window
Robert Frost, the bard of New England, understood the rhythms of life. So while the poet would have lamented the loss of a 200-year-old tree on his farm in Derry, N.H., he likely would not have hesitated to apply ax to trunk when needed.
The tree, the last of six great maples that once stood on the farm, was cut down Saturday after the Frost Farm trustees determined it was a threat to the home where the poet, his wife, Elinor, and their four children lived from 1900 to 1911 while Frost taught English at nearby Pinkerton Academy. A forestry expert certified that the base of the tree was so rotted there was a chance the tree could fall on the farmhouse.
About 100 writers, historians and Frost family friends were on hand to witness the cutting of the tree.
Why the fuss over a tree? The maple is likely to have been the one that inspired Frost's poem, "Tree at My Window."
Frost drew a connection in the poem between the stormy weather that battered the tree and the emotional storms that swept through his own life.
The big fish
When he pulled it off at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in August 2002, he was the first man ever to do so; likewise at the Pan Pacs in Yokohama a few weeks later. That's a good indication of how tough it is, and yet those feats never received anything like the recognition they deserved. It seems the treble won't really count in the public's estimation unless it's achieved for the first time at the highest possible level - and even then, people are going to need some basic understanding of human physiology to grasp why it is such a difficult thing to do. Before we get to that, imagine for just a moment a similar level of performance in athletics. In terms of its demands on the body, the track equivalent of the swimming treble would be (roughly speaking) the 200-400-800 metres - and if any man or woman were to win gold in those three events in the modern Olympic arena, he or she would no doubt be hailed the greatest athlete of all time, and no argument about it.
Melville mayhem: Firefighters drill in former Navy housing
PORTSMOUTH Smoke fills the building as firefighters systematically search each room for unconscious people and to locate the fire source. Suddenly their well practiced plan is is put to further test when a fellow firefighter sends out a distress call he's running out of air. The Portsmouth Fire Department is running training drills like this in some Navy houses in the Melville complex that are scheduled for demolition. When GMH Military Housing decided to tear down 50 vacant units, which its has begun to do, Portsmouth Fire Chief Jeffrey Lynch recognized this jewel of a training opportunity, and GMH approved. Portsmouth Deputy Fire Chief Robert Church, who organized the drills, tried to recreate the zero-visibility conditions firefighters are faced with when they enter a burning building.
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