World -- News In Brief
JAPANESE LIVE LONGER THAN IN '85, CENSUS REPORTS
TOKYO - Japanese are living longer, with women outlasting men, Ministry of Health and Welfare officials said today.
The 1990 census showed the average Japanese man lived 75.92 years compared with 81.90 years for women, one official said.
That is 1.14 years longer for men and 1.42 years longer for women since the previous national census in 1985, he said. Japanese, on average, live longer than anyone else in the world.
The increase was probably due to improvements in medical technology and diet, the spokesman said.
Latest figures show more than 301 people over 100 live in Tokyo, the largest number of centenarians in any city or prefecture in Japan.
MANITOBA RIGHTS GROUP FIGHTS SCHOOL-PRAYER LAW
WINNIPEG, Manitoba - Civil-rights lawyers and attorneys for the provincial Department of Justice squared off in court yesterday with the former arguing that a section of the Public Schools Act requiring Christian prayer in schools should be repealed.
The Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties says compulsory school prayer contravenes constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and religion - including the rights of non-believers.
The case took four years to come to court. Critics of the law have accused Manitoba's Progressive Conservative government of stalling on the issue because it receives much of its electoral support from voters in Manitoba's Bible belt.
Manitoba remains the only province in which daily religious exercises are mandatory. The Public Schools Act says the exercises "shall be held in every school" unless the local school board deems otherwise each year.
SOUTH AFRICAN FAKE DOCTOR SENTENCED TO 18 YEARS
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - A high-school dropout who posed as a pediatrician and treated several babies who died has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.
"This must surely be the mother of all frauds," Judge Eugene van Rensburg said yesterday in announcing the sentence against Andre Esterhuizen, 41.
Esterhuizen was convicted in September of three counts of culpable homicide, impersonating a doctor and defrauding patients.
At his trial, he admitted posing as a pediatrician from 1982 to 1990 in a Johannesburg suburb, treating thousands of patients.
Esterhuizen had an extremely high IQ and said he studied medical books for years. He told a pediatrician he was a doctor and began working with the man. Later, Esterhuizen established his own practice.
NEW ZEALANDER KILLS SIX IN SHOOTING RAMPAGE
PUKEKOHE, New Zealand - A 66-year-old New Zealand grandfather went on a shooting rampage today, killing six of his family, including his wife and a child, after an argument on their South Auckland farm, police said.
They said Brian Schlaepfer, whose family has farmed the area near Pukekohe for three generations, then shot himself dead.
Police were called to the scene by a 9-year-old granddaughter who had barricaded herself in an upstairs room and gave a running commentary on events for three hours. She told police her mother and brother had been killed by her grandfather following a heated domestic dispute.
The victims have not all been identified although the dead include Schlaepfer's wife, a daughter and her husband, and an 11-year old grandson, police said. The other two family members were adults.