Holiday Inn hotel made of key cards is world’s first

Melbourne, Sep 18 (ANI): A Holiday Inn hotel made entirely of key cards has been unveiled in New York.

The 37-square-metre hotel, built by world record-holding Cardstacker Bryan Berg, is made from more than 200,000 key cards and weighs 1814 kilograms.

It includes a guest bedroom, bathroom and lobby, with life-sized furniture.

The design was created by Holiday Inn, the world’s largest hotel group, to mark the relaunch of 1200 of its hotels around the world.

“The Key Card Hotel is a fun and interactive way to showcase the changes happening at our hotels and is the only structure of its kind to ever be created by a hotel brand,” News.com.au quoted Kevin Kowalski, Senior Vice President, Global Brand Management, Holiday Inn, as saying.

Berg, who will also build a freestanding three-metre replica of New York’s Empire State Building in the lobby of the Key Card Hotel using Holiday Inn playing cards, said constructing the hotel has been a great challenge.

“This is my largest cardstacking challenge to date and the only card creation I have ever made at full human scale,” Berg added about the hotel.

The first 250 guests who attended the Key Card Hotel grand opening received a free night stay at any Holiday Inn.

The company’s 1 billion dollar relaunch is one of the largest in the history of the hospitality industry. (ANI)

Control of Hong Kong boar population urged after man savaged

Hong Kong – A 77-year-old Hong Kong man was savaged by a wild boar that pinned him to the ground and bit his groin, police said Wednesday.

The 70-kilogram animal went on a rampage, knocking the man down and sinking its teeth into him, after it strayed into a village in Hong Kong’s New Territories.

Witnesses said the boar attacked Tuesday after it jumped a fence and charged at the man who was playing cards with friends outside.

The animal then ran off. The man was taken to hospital bleeding and was in stable condition Wednesday.

The attack is the latest in a series involving wild boars, which have lead to calls on the government to control the population, which is believed to have grown in recent years in Hong Kong’s rural areas, which cover more than 70 per cent of the territory’s 1,078 square kilometres.

Wild boars are common in rural parts of Hong Kong near its border with mainland China but are rarely seen in built-up urban parts of the city. But in February, police shot dead a wild boar when it strayed into a high-rise housing estate in the city’s built-up Tuen Mun district.

In September, a 120-kilogram boar was also shot dead by police after it fought with pet dogs and bit two residents in a rural village near the Hong Kong-China border. (dpa)

Man gambles away wife, rape alleged

JAIPUR: A man allegedly staked his wife in gambling after he lost his money and possessions to his friends in Baran district of Rajasthan. The
25-year-old woman told the police on Friday that she was repeatedly raped by her husband’s friends who kept her hostage for a week.

Sallu Ojha, a farmer in Batavdapar village, didn’t hesitate when he was short of Rs 50,000 in a game of cards with his three friends. He did a Draupadi-like act, and lost.

Ojha didn’t stop there. He filed a missing person report with the Bapcha police on March 27. “In the FIR, he said his wife went missing after midnight,” said Baran SP Omprakash.

The woman, a mother of two children, turned up on Friday and approached the police saying her husband “lost” her to his friend Parasram, a fellow villager and two others in gambling.

“She said that on March 25, Ojha was playing cards with his friends. He lost all his money but continued playing and when his friends refused to lend him any money he staked her and lost,” said the in-charge of Bapcha police station, Ramkishan Meena.

On March 26, Parasram and the two others allegedly kidnapped her from the house and took her to a nearby forested area where they gagged her, tied her hands and raped her.

Police have registered a case against the four men for kidnapping and rape.

Musharraf playing cards, enjoying life as Pak reels under tensions

Islamabad, Mar 24 (ANI): Within six months of his resignation and being declared one of the most hated men in Pakistan, former President Pervez Musharraf spent Pakistan Day participating in a bridge tournament at the Islamabad Club, in a setting of almost no special security.

Oblivious of the tensions and insecurity that his 10-year term of power have unleashed on the rest of the nation, the former dictator was relaxed, enjoying the company of his friends, playing cards and exchanging jokes.

The News reports there was no one to stop or check the identity or purpose of entry into the room, which was almost open to anyone.

A bureaucrat present on the occasion remarked: “Hardly within six months of his dramatic resignation, Musharraf is once again a free man as he was before staging the coup on Oct 12, 1999.”

Musharraf had no worry about the repeated warnings of Interior Adviser Rehman Malik that there was a big chance of suicide bombing or terrorist activity in Islamabad, which also turned out to be partly true on Monday, almost at the same time when the retired general walked out of the card room.

One visitor of the club observed that Musharraf was enjoying his life, because his successors had surpassed him in becoming unpopular within six months.

Musharraf inaugurated the card tournament in the Islamabad Club, accompanied by his friend Tariq Aziz, who was the only person worried about his security, as he was seen actively guarding the main gate of the card room.

“Look, Tariq Aziz is the only commando who is guarding his friend in the card room gate without any fear of any threat to the former president,” one onlooker said. (ANI)