■AUSTRALIA
Xmas gifts set for bin
Generosity doesn’t always pay during the festive season, with a survey showing more than 825,000 gifts will go straight into the garbage bin this Christmas because their recipients hate them. The survey, commissioned by an online self-publishing Web site, revealed a third of all respondents either refund gifts or give them away, especially off-the-shelf offerings. “An estimated 6.4 million presents will be given away, refunded, re-gifted or binned in 2009,” Jo Sabin from Web site Blurb Australia said. “That’s a lot of wasted effort and money. The top tip for making sure that your gift is kept and valued this Christmas is to personalize it.” The survey also highlighted that more than 55 percent of women re-gift unwanted presents and one in five will return the gift directly to the store.
■UNITED KINGDOM
‘Manger chic’ on the rise
Gone are the days of shepherds in tea towels and tinsel-clad angels. Competitive parents are forking out on luxury pashmina shawls and velour dressing gowns to make their child the star of the annual nativity play. The rise in so-called “manger chic” has seen parents spend up to £150 (US$250) on arctic fur throws for children cast as sheep and ivory bridesmaid dresses for angels, department stores group Debenhams said. “The amount of money that some parents want to spend on their child’s nativity play appearance would enable Baby Jesus to leave the stable and check into a five star hotel,” spokesman Ed Watson said.
■AUSTRIA
Furry photographer wins fans
A furry photographer is winning fans on social networking Web site Facebook for pictures of her daily life in a Vienna zoo. Orangutan Nonja’s photos, taken with a camera that dispenses raisins as she snaps, have won more than 500 fans on Facebook since the zoo launched an online photo album on Tuesday. Although the slightly blurry images of Nonja’s climbing rope, food and companion’s shaggy red-brown fur have won lots of admiring comments from fans, the photographer herself is not so interested. “Of course the apes don’t care about the pictures, they are just an accidental side product,” zoo spokesman Gerhard Kasbauer said. “They just know that when they press the button, a raisin pops out.” The Vienna Tiergarten set up the project to help keep Nonja and her three ape friends entertained. The album is online at: http://bit.ly/51O6pF.
■VATICAN
Pope meets Medvedev
Pope Benedict XVI and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed on Thursday to upgrade Vatican-Kremlin relations to full diplomatic ties, the Vatican said. The meeting followed improvements in relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican. A Vatican statement said the two men agreed that Russia will upgrade its representation at the Vatican from a special mission to embassy level and that the Vatican will reciprocate in Moscow. Medvedev met with the pope for 30 minutes at the Vatican.
■UNITED STATES
Cowboy rescues cows
Two cows escaped from a trailer onto a busy Massachusetts highway, but a cowboy stuck in the traffic jam came to the rescue. State police say a man wearing a Western hat and boots lassoed the 225kg heifers on Tuesday morning as they wandered on Interstate 91 South in Springfield. Troopers shut down the highway for about 30 minutes as the man helped load the animals back into a trailer that was carrying them. The cows had escaped after a latch on the trailer opened.
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
RSS