World briefs

The family of an Indian baby born with two faces has refused special medical treatment for the infant, saying she is the incarnation of a Hindu goddess.

The month-old girl suffers from what appears to be craniofacial duplication, an extremely rare congenital disorder in which part of the face is duplicated on the head.

Lali, born to a family of poor farm labourers in a village about 55 kilometres east of New Delhi, has an extra pair of eyes, nose, and lips.

Media reports said she ate with both mouths and blinked all four eyes.

The anomaly gave the newborn god-like status in the village, with hundreds of people flocking to the family's dilapidated brick house to worship her and seek blessings.

The family sees little to differentiate her from other babies and refused to take her to a specialist doctor.

"She is fine. She sleeps, eats and cries like other normal babies ... A local doctor said there is nothing wrong with the child," Bhram Singh, Lali's grandfather, told Reuters in this village of brick houses and wheat fields.

Fight over energy drink

A new energy drink - "Thaksin, Fight" - has led to fisticuffs even before it goes on sale across Thailand next month, the beverage maker said yesterday. The drink has been a hit in taste tests with northern Thais who delivered thumping election victories for former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2001 and 2005 before he was ousted in a bloodless 2006 coup.

But southerners who back the opposition Democrat Party have shunned the sweet-and-sour drink bearing Thaksin's name, which is a literal word for south.

"A customer at a grocery store in the south punched our salesman in the face when he offered a sample to a shopkeeper," drink maker Natchapol Supatta told Bangkok's Business Radio.

"The shopowner decided not to store the drink in his fridge."

Car wash yields €300,000 diamond

Car cleaners at a Russian firm got a surprise when they cleaned out a vacuum cleaner this week: a diamond pendant worth up to €300,000. "I didn't know how much it was worth at first so I got a jeweller to come around and he said it was worth as much as €300,000," Vladimir Shapiro, owner of the car cleaning firm in Russia's northern city of St Petersburg, told Reuters.

"When I heard the value my jaw dropped to the floor," he said. "You would have to notice losing something like this."

He said he was not going to disclose much about the pendant so that he could return the jewel to its true owner.

Ordered to padlock pants

A bid by a local government in Indonesia's East Java province to curb prostitution by asking masseuses to wear a padlock on their pants was an insult, a newspaper quoted the minister for women's empowerment as saying. The recently implemented policy in the tourist area of Batu was misguided, State Minister for Women's Empowerment Meuthia Hatta told the Jakarta Post yesterday.

"It is not the right way to prevent promiscuity. It insults women as if they are the ones in the wrong," Ms Hatta said.

Presidential plane fails in flight

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and her entourage were forced to turn back over the Atlantic early yesterday due to engine failure aboard her 40-year-old presidential plane, the government and pilot said.

Ms Bachelet left the Chilean capital Santiago late on Wednesday and made a stop off in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo. Half an hour after taking off again en route to South Africa, the crew announced a problem with one of the engines of the 1968 Boeing 707 and decided to return to Chile.

"A vibration started on the plane and they checked the parameters and confirmed there was a problem in an engine," the captain of the plane, Rafael Carreri, told Radio Cooperativa.

"We applied the emergency procedure in place for the plane and had to switch off engine number two," he said.

After returning to Chile, MsBachelet boarded a smaller jet and resumed her official trip to China, taking her closest aides with her.

Stressed-out cops

Police facing emotional strains due to financial or romantic problems could be stripped of their department-issued handguns in China's Jiangxi province, a newspaper reported yesterday.

The public security bureau in the province will begin inspections this month to make sure officers who have received administrative punishments, or are under investigation, will not be able to carry firearms, the Southern Metropolis Daily said.

Guns would also be retrieved from "officers who are suffering from serious illnesses or face psychological and emotional instability resulting from love or marriage frustrations and heavy debt," the newspaper reported, citing an announcement from the Jiangxi public security bureau.