A Malaysian woman is trying to beat a world record set by another woman in neighbouring Thailand for the longest stay in a room full of scorpions, news reports said on Sunday. Nur Malena Hassan (27) on Saturday entered a glass box with 6 000 scorpions at a shopping arcade.
Soldiers and armed police patrolled the Bangladeshi capital on Sunday, a day after more than a dozen bombs were thrown at an opposition rally, killing at least 18 people and wounding more than 300, including senior opposition members. The main opposition leader, Sheikh Hasina, escaped injury when the bombs exploded.
A car bomb exploded north of the Iraqi capital on Sunday, killing two people and injuring four others, including a deputy provincial governor, police said. Bassam al-Khadran, one of several deputy governors working in the province, was injured in the blast. Both fatalities and the three other injured were al-Khadran’s bodyguards.
Kenya is to write off about six billion shillings (about R481-million) owed by coffee farmers, whose sector has suffered as a result of the depressed world coffee market, the president’s office said on Sunday. Coffee production has steadily slumped from about 127 000 tons in the mid-1980s to about 49 000 tons last year.
Hawkers will march to Johannesburg council offices on Wednesday in protest against being removed from streets in the inner city, the African Council for Hawkers and Informal Businesses said on Saturday. A council spokesperson denied the hawkers were not invited when the city’s new by-laws were formulated.
An opinion poll published this week indicates that trust in Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has more than doubled since 1999. Researchers say certain Zimbabweans have benefited from ruling-party patronage, but that Mugabe’s higher approval rating can mostly be ascribed to state propaganda.
Ireland’s first-ever nude and glamour model agency has opened for business, marking another milestone in the country’s sexual revolution. Just more than a decade ago glamour adult magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse were banned from sale in the Republic.
Barefoot and without make-up, Melissa Panarello is curled up on the sofa in a cluttered flat in a dark backstreet near the Colosseum. The 18-year-old’s teen porn book One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed is the hottest thing on Italian bookshelves, right up there with Pope John Paul’s latest autobiographical scribblings.
Travellers know they are approaching the Australian town of Wittenoom from the health warnings posted every few kilometres along the roadside. By law, tourist maps must warn you away from the town before you reach it. When you arrive, the signs advise you to keep doors and windows closed.
Last week United States President George Bush threw the lives of the German town of Baumholder’s 4Â 000 German residents into disarray when he announced a major restructuring exercise that will see 70Â 000 US troops sent home from Europe and Asia — 30Â 000 of them from Germany.