End of the World

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England is deserted, Australia and New Zealand have merged, and the man who bought Ireland has killed himself.

They were designed to make Dubai the envy of the world: a series of paradise islands inhabited by celebrities and the super-rich reclaimed from the azure waters of the Arabian Gulf and shaped like a map of the Earth. It was called The World.

It has become the world’s most expensive shipping hazard, guarded by private security in fast boats and ringed by warning buoys to keep the curious away. A development that was meant to send Dubai’s star into the firmament of First World cities has been left to the mercy of the waves and the baking winds.

Mile after mile of breakwater built from boulders brought hundreds of miles by ship has been laid, but inside its man-made lagoon, work has completely stopped. The expected map of the world of 300 islands is instead a disjointed and desolate collection of sandy blots — a monumental folly just out of sight of Dubai’s shore.

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College student kills intruder with a samurai sword

BALTIMORE — A Johns Hopkins University student armed with a samurai sword killed an intruder in his garage, Baltimore police said Tuesday.

Two laptops and a Sony PlayStation had been stolen by burglars Monday from the home, on University Parkway just blocks from the school, said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. Early Tuesday, one of the four Hopkins students who live in the home noticed the garage door was open and took a sword with him to investigate, Guglielmi said.

In the garage, the student told police he discovered a man and when the student told the man to get out, the man accosted him, Guglielmi said. The student defended himself with the sword, cutting off the man’s hand and causing a severe laceration to his upper body, he said.

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Seriously, don’t . . . mess . . . with . . . a . . . man’s . . . electronics.

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Yemeni girl, 12, dies in painful childbirth

AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) — A 12-year-old Yemeni girl, who was forced into marriage, died during a painful childbirth that also killed her baby, a children’s rights group said Monday.

Fawziya Ammodi struggled for three days in labor, before dying of severe bleeding at a hospital on Friday, said the Seyaj Organization for the Protection of Children.

“Although the cause of her death was lack of medical care, the real case was the lack of education in Yemen and the fact that child marriages keep happening,” said Seyaj President Ahmed al-Qureshi.

Born into an impoverished family in Hodeidah, Fawziya was forced to drop out of school and married off to a 24-year-old man last year, al-Qureshi said.

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