World Briefs

Call it product placement. Across the Middle East, rival shoemakers have claimed it was they who created the footwear flung at US President George W. Bush by an angry Iraqi and immortalised by TV cameras.

For many, reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi is a hero for the attack on Mr Bush but some of the glory seems to have rubbed off on the shoes that almost hit the presidential head. Suggestions have been made that they came from cobblers in Turkey or Lebanon - or, like most of the shoes in Iraq, are Chinese-made. But yesterday, the Zaidi's brother dismissed such reports:

"One hundred per cent they are Iraqi-made shoes," Udai al-Zaidi said, adding they came from the Baghdad factory of Iraqi shoemaker Alaa Haddad, viewed as among the country's best.

Mr Zaidi's gesture was a grave insult in the Arab world. He has admitted "aggression against a president" before an investigatory judge but more than 1,000 lawyers have offered to defend him.

Offers daughter to shoe-thrower

An Egyptian man said yesterday he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush in Baghdad on Sunday.

The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. "This is something that would honour me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero," she said.

Her father, Saad Gumaa, said he had called Dergham, Mr Zaidi's brother, to tell him of the offer. "I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him, and I am prepared to provide her with everything needed for marriage," he added.

Amal is a student in the media faculty at Minya University in central Egypt.

... Inspires Bush-bashing web games

The shoe-throwing incident at an Iraqi news conference with George W. Bush has also inspired a spate of internet games where the players hurl footwear at moving targets of the US president.

The games, which have mushroomed online and spread by email, range from animations to cut-up footage of the now-infamous news briefing.

One game, which appears on the site www.sockandawe.com gives players 30 seconds to try to hit Mr Bush with a shoe as many times as possible, with the score appearing in a corner of the screen.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki can be seen peeping over a lectern next to a dipping and diving Bush in the cartoon game.

The White House, meanwhile, has said Mr Bush has no hard feelings about the shoe-throwing incident. "The President just thinks that, it was just a shoe, people express themselves in lots of different ways," White House spokesman Dana Perino said.

Oliver Twist didn't need more

Oliver Twist wouldn't have needed any more gruel in real life, scientists said yesterday.

The picture painted by Charles Dickens of starvation rations in an 1830s workhouse north of London is wide of mark, according to an analysis of menus and other historical evidence.

Dickens' eponymous hero famously asked for more of the "thin gruel" doled out three times daily in the grim institution for the poor where he grew up. In fact, contemporary recipes suggest such workhouse gruel was substantial, with each pint containing 1.25 ounces of best oatmeal, and servings supplemented by wholesome coarse bread.

Historical data also shows large quantities of beef and mutton were delivered to workhouses.

Such a diet, comprising three pints of gruel a day, would sustain growth in a nine-year-old child like Oliver, unless he was exceptionally active.

Minister quits over murderer's escape

Cyprus's justice minister has resigned after a convicted murderer serving two life terms escaped from custody.

Kypros Chrysostomides submitted his resignation yesterday after a Greek Cypriot prisoner jailed for life for killing two foreign women escaped on December 12 from a private clinic where he had spent more than six months awaiting the decision of a medical board for surgery.

Inquiries found the prisoner was thought to regularly leave his hospital room for trips around town by climbing out of an unguarded window. The hospital administrators said their recommendations that he be moved to a safer room were blocked by authorities, who said the prisoner needed a room with a view.

The prisoner had been handed two life terms for the rape and murders of a Swedish housewife and a Ukrainian dancer in 1994.