World Briefs

A charity in the West Bank has offered shelter to a mentally handicapped Palestinian woman whose father made her live for most of the past 20 years in a room under his house.

Police found Nawal al-Masalmeh and her brother Bassam, who suffers similar disabilities, in an unlit and unventilated cellar during a raid aimed at suspected arms and drug dealers in the village of Beit Awa near Hebron.

The mental health charity said both siblings, aged in their late 30s, had been in its care for two months in 2001 but they had been sent home because staff at the centre could not cope with them.

Mohammad Misk, head of the charity centre in Hebron, said he would now let Nawal return because her father appeared to have neglected her. But he said Bassam needed more specialised care, which his institution could not provide. The father, Ibrahim al-Masalmeh, 63, denied any wrongdoing and said he kept his adult children underground to save them from being harassed and abused by people in the village.

The children's mother died years ago and their father remarried.

Museum defies Pope

An Italian museum yesterday defied Pope Benedict and refused to remove a modern art sculpture portraying a crucified green frog holding a beer mug and an egg that the Vatican had condemned as blasphemous.

The board of the Museion museum in Bolzano decided by a majority vote that the frog was a work of art and would stay in place for the remainder of an exhibition.

The wooden sculpture by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger depicts a frog nailed to a brown cross and holding a beer mug in one outstretched hand and an egg in another. Museum officials said the artist, who died in 1997, considered it a self-portrait illustrating human angst. However, Pope Benedict did not agree.

The Vatican wrote a letter of support in the Pope's name to Franz Pahl, president of the regional government who opposed the sculpture. Mr Pahl released parts of the letter, which said the work "wounds the religious sentiments of so many people who see in the cross the symbol of God's love."

Pisa tower challenged

The Tower of Pisa is being challenged by a lesser-known 12th-century building in the Dutch town of Bedum as Europe's most steeply leaning tower.

Retired geometrician Jacob van Dijk said measurements this week on Bedum's 36-metre church tower of Walfridus revealed it is now leaning more than its Italian rival, which lost part of its tilt following restoration works.

At a height of 55.86 metres, Pisa's tower leans about four metres, while Bedum's tower leans 2.61 metres on its height of 35.7 metres. If both towers were the same height, Bedum would have a greater tilt of six centimetres Mr Van Dijk argues.

Jaywalkers to be shamed

Shanghai police will post photos and videos of jaywalkers in newspapers and on TV in a bid to shame them out of breaking traffic rules, local media reported yesterday.

Offending pedestrians, moped riders and cyclists would be snapped at selected intersections and their images put in regular columns and on special TV programmes set up by police, the Shanghai Daily said.

Jaywalking is a way of life in major Chinese cities, where crossing roads legally can be a hair-raising battle of nerves with oncoming cars disinclined to give way to pedestrians.

No holy water on aircraft

The Vatican has warned journalists who will travel with Pope Benedict to Lourdes next month not to put the revered water from the shrine in their hand luggage on the papal plane or it may be confiscated.

The Pope will travel to Paris and to the site in southern France where the Madonna is said to have appeared to a peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, 150 years ago.

The millions of pilgrims who visit the shrine each year drink from its fonts and most take bottles of it away with them.

"In order to avoid their confiscation during security controls at the airport, Air France recommends putting any bottles of Lourdes water in baggage that will go into the hold of the plane," a Vatican advisory to reporters said.

Security measures limiting liquids allowed in carry-on baggage have been in effect since 2006 when a plot to bring down planes with liquid explosives was discovered.