World Briefs

An attendant at a Canadian restaurant who was sacked for giving a bite-sized doughnut, worth 16 US cents (10 euro cents), to an agitated toddler has been given her job back after the case received wide media attention.

Nicole Lilliman said she was dismissed from a London, Ontario, outlet of the Tim Hortons coffee and doughnut chain after video cameras captured the 27-year-old giving a Timbit to a toddler.

"It was just out of my heart, the toddler was pointing and going 'ah, ah...' I should have gone to my purse and got the change, but it was busy," Ms Lilliman told the Toronto Star newspaper.

Tim Hortons said that the firing was a mistake.

"It was the unfortunate action of one manager who unfortunately made an overzealous decision, and thankfully we were able to rectify the situation," said company spokesman Rachel Douglas.

English 'self-important and irritating'

England is an irritating and insular country full of overweight, binge-drinking, reality TV addicts, a new guide warned tourists yesterday.

But in the new Rough Guide to England, the English are also hailed as a nation of animal-loving, tea-drinking charity donors who love nothing better than forming an orderly queue. Gone, it seems, is the genteel image of Englishmen politely tipping their bowler hats, staggering through the London fog and being kinder to pets than children.

The writers concluded that of the 200 countries the guide reviews there is none "so fascinating, beautiful and culturally diverse yet as insular, self-important and irritating as England." They said the English were proud of their multi-culturalism and were united by one thing - their sense of humour. But in a country priding itself on patriotism, they have a Scottish Prime Minister, an Italian football coach and a Greek married to the Queen.

Turban row in school

Hindu parents at an Indian school are protesting after the school's Sikh authorities asked all students to wear traditional Sikh headgear to school.

School authorities in the Sikh-dominated state of Punjab say they were merely enforcing a stipulation in the prospectus that students of all faiths have to wear the traditional Sikh headgear called the patka or dastaar. But parents of other faiths say this is an affront to their religion, and have drawn parallels to Sikh protests in France in 2004 after the government banned religious symbols such as Sikh turbans and Muslim headscarves in state schools.

Parents sat in front of the Akal Academy in protest on Thursday, blocking roads, chanting slogans at the school gates and insisting with the local Education Minister that the school be asked to withdraw its diktat. Hindus said the Sikh school authorities had imposed their religious values on followers of other religions.

Britain's most haunted places

From screaming skulls and headless horsemen to murdered brides and phantom farmers, English folklore is full of spine-tingling ghost stories.

Witnesses speak of seeing ghostly armies marching through the fog, spirits searching for hidden treasure and bells ringing from ruined churches.

Authors Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson have sifted through centuries of myths, legends and local tales to compile a county-by-county guide to England's ghosts called the Penguin Book of Ghosts. Book entries include: A headless Civil War soldier galloping down a lane on horseback, ghosts of shepherds roaming with flocks of sheep and a Phantom Strangler in a place where a robber strangled a young bride for her jewellery.

Animals also feature regularly with shrieking birds representing the cries of dead babies, while dogs are seen as an omen of death.

Some of the stories arrived in books from abroad before being spread by word of mouth, while others have their roots in local legend or Norse myth, the book says.

Machine for home-made ethanol

A new company hopes drivers will kick the oil habit by brewing ethanol at home that won't spike food prices.

E-Fuel Corp has unveiled the MicroFueler touting it as the world's first machine that allows homeowners to make their own ethanol and pump the brew directly into their cars.

The portable unit sells for $10,000 (€6,500) but instead of tapping gasoline from an underground tank, the pump's back end plugs into home power and water supplies to make ethanol which costs $1 (€0.65) for 3.8 litres.

The machine ferments fuel from sugar, the price of which is historically cheap as global supplies are glutted. Consequently it avoids today's US ethanol system's reliance on corn - which has been blamed for helping to spike global food prices.

E-Fuels says it will link customers to cheaper sugar surplus supplies, including inedible sugar from Mexico that sells at a fraction of the price.

For a two-car family that drives about 55,520 kilometres a year, the MicroFueler will pay for itself in less than two years, assuming average gasoline prices of $3.60 (€2.34) per gallon, the company said. The unit makes up to 132 litres of 100 per cent ethanol per week.