World Briefs

Trouble, the beloved dog of late billionaire Leona Helmsley, lost $10 million in an inheritance settlement but it still should be able to live a life of luxury.

Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge Renée Roth accepted a settlement between Ms Helmsley's heirs and the New York State Attorney General's office that cuts Trouble's inheritance from $12 million to $2 million on grounds that Ms Helmsley was mentally unfit when she made her will.

The settlement also awarded Ms Helmsley's two grandchildren, Craig Panzirer and Meegan Panzirer Wesolko, $6 million. They had been cut out of her will "for reasons which are known to them", the document said.

Ms Helmsley was known as "the Queen of Mean" because of the way she dealt with her employees but she had a soft spot for Trouble. A clause in her will called for the nine-year-old white Maltese to eventually be buried next to her in the Helmsley mausoleum.

Ms Helmsley died last August aged 87. She had amassed a fortune in real estate and hotels with her husband, Harry Helmsley, who died in 1997.

Famously quoted as having said "only the little people pay taxes", Ms Helmsley spent 18 months in federal prison for evading $1.7 million in taxes in 1989.

Sometimes it rains cement

Russian air force planes dropped a 25-kg sack of cement on a suburban Moscow home last week while seeding clouds to prevent rain from spoiling a holiday, Russian media said yesterday.

"A pack of cement used in creating... good weather in the capital region... failed to pulverise completely at high altitude and fell on the roof of a house, making a hole about 80-100 centimetres," police in Naro-Fominsk told agency RIA-Novosti.

Before major public holidays the Russian Air Force often dispatches up to 12 cargo planes carrying loads of silver iodide, liquid nitrogen and cement powder to seed clouds above Moscow and empty the skies of moisture.

The homeowner was not injured, but refused an offer of 50,000 roubles (€1,350) from the air force, saying she would sue for damages and compensation for moral suffering, Interfax said.

Military police can't have lovers

Italy's highest court has ruled that the nation's paramilitary police, the Carabinieri, must not have extra-marital affairs, to avoid sullying the force's name.

The ruling stemmed from one Carabiniere's appeal against a lower court ruling sentencing him to four months in jail for insulting and threatening to throw a desk at his boss, who had asked the policeman to break off an affair with a married woman.

Italy's Court of Cassation agreed that any affair is a private matter, but noted that the military police were called to "exemplary conduct and could not bring discredit to the armed forces with extra-marital relationships".

Dead mayor re-elected

The residents of a Romanian village knowingly voted in a dead man as their mayor in Sunday's municipal election, preferring him to his living opponent.

Neculai Ivascu, 57, who ran the village for almost two decades, died from liver disease just after voting began - but still won the election by a margin of 23 votes.

A local official said the authorities decided to keep the poll open in case Mr Ivascu's opponent, Gheorghe Dobrescu, won, avoiding the need for a re-run.

In the end, election authorities gave the post to the runner-up, but some villagers and Mr Ivascu's party, the powerful opposition Social Democrat Party (PSD), have called for a new vote.

Japan hangs serial killer

Japan hanged three convicted murderers yesterday, including the killer of four young girls, the Justice Ministry said, in a further sign the country is speeding up the pace of executions.

Among those executed was 45-year-old Tsutomu Miyazaki, who kidnapped and murdered four young girls aged four to seven years in the late 1980s, then cut up and burned their bodies, the ministry said in a statement.

Also executed were 73-year-old Yoshio Yamasaki, who murdered two people for insurance money, and 37-year-old Shinji Mutsuda, who killed two people and threw their bodies into the ocean in a box packed with concrete.

Royal cows left in limbo

After the king, it is now the turn of his cows to face removal from Nepal's royal palace, two days after it was turned into a museum, a government official said yesterday.

King Gyanendra, the last king of Nepal, left the main palace last week after a special assembly voted in May to abolish the 239-year-old monarchy and turn the Himalayan nation into a republic. But his 60 cows still graze in the sprawling grounds of the Narayanhiti palace in the heart of Kathmandu. He used the cows for fresh milk but authorities say the animals, considered holy by Hindus, must also leave.