World Briefs

The father of one of the child stars of the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire slapped him for refusing to give media interviews, a report said yesterday.

Ten-year-old Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, plucked from a Mumbai slum to play in the film, has been barraged by media attention since returning to his shanty home from the Oscars awards ceremony in Los Angeles.

Jet-lagged after the long flight, Azharuddin wanted to sleep and refused to talk to reporters when his father got angry and slapped him, the Press Trust of India reported.

"I was being naughty. I did not want to give the interview because I was tired so he slapped me but he loves me," said Azharuddin.

Azharuddin - Azhar to his friends - plays the young Salim, elder brother of the film's central character Jamal.

Azharuddin and the other child Slumdog actor who went to Hollywood, Rubina Ali, have shot to fame with the huge success of the film, winner of eight Oscars.

But they both still live in slums that are home to half of Mumbai's population.

Rubina's return has not been smooth either.

The child, who plays the younger version of Jamal's love interest Latika, came back to a warring family with both her biological mother Khushi and her step-mother Munni claiming custody of her, media reports say.

Abbas insists on Gaza rebuilding

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas yesterday insisted his government should spearhead postwar reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip days before a major international donors' conference.

"We expect rapid international aid from all parties to completely rebuild Gaza," Abbas told reporters after meeting the EU's top diplomat Javier Solana in the Israeli-occupied West Bank town of Ramallah.

"We also expect that as in the past there will be one mechanism, the Palestinian Authority," he said, referring to his Western-backed government, which was ousted from Gaza when Hamas seized power there in June 2007.

The Palestinian Authority has said it will request $2.8 billion at tomorrow's meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, which is expected to draw representives from more than 70 countries.

US tourist knifed in Cairo bazaar

An American has been slightly hurt after being knifed in the legendary Cairo bazaar of Khan al-Khalili, just days after a French teen was killed there by a bomb, a security official said yesterday.

The victim, a teacher at the American School in Egypt's Mediterranean port of Alexandria who was visiting the capital with his wife, suffered slight cuts to the face in the Friday incident.

Police arrested the alleged attacker they identified as 46-year-old Egyptian labourer Abdel Rahman Mohammed and were interrogating him, the state-news MENA news agency reported.

The suspect was said to have acted out of "hatred for foreigners because of the Israeli offensive in Gaza" that ended on January 18 after 22 days, leaving more than 1,300 Palestinians dead.

China's Wen makes internet debut

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao joined the Internet craze yesterday as he chatted online with netizens for the first time, broaching issues as diverse as a shoe-throwing protest and corruption among officials.

The online discussion attracted thousands of questions from people in China and abroad, with some querying the amount he earned, how long he slept a day, and how much alcohol he could drink, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

But Wen chose not to answer those, focusing instead on the more serious issues of the economic crisis, China's healthcare reform and the shoe-throwing incident that took place in Cambridge, Britain, last month.

World-famous restaurant shut

British restaurant The Fat Duck, considered one of the very best in the world, has been temporarily closed due to a food poisoning scare, owner Heston Blumenthal said yesterday.

The restaurant in Bray, west of London, which has three Michelin stars, was closed as a precaution after customers reported feeling unwell.

Between 30 and 40 people are understood to have complained of illness over the last two to three weeks.

The Fat Duck was named the best restaurant in the world in 2005 by Restaurant magazine and has been in second place since then in their annual poll of international chefs and critics.

"It's so weird - we haven't found anything. But I can't take the risk of keeping open until we have exhausted every single avenue," Blumenthal told The Times newspaper.