World Briefs

A cat named Felix was found alive and well beneath the rubble of a six-storey building in Cologne that collapsed five weeks ago, the fire brigade in German city said on Tuesday. The 12-year-old cat was in surprisingly good health, authorities said. He was found beneath the city archives building that collapsed on March 3.

Rescue workers were clearing away the rubble from the ruins, in which two people were killed, when they spotted a pair of small paws.

"The men lifted some concrete blocks when suddenly a little cat came to light," said Dietmar Paust, fire brigade spokesman. (Reuters)

Kills daughter after boyfriend's call

An Egyptian man beat his 17-year-old daughter to death after she received a phone call from her boyfriend, a police official said yesterday.

The 45-year-old farmer identified as Mursi A. from the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh, caught his daughter Nur talking to her boyfriend on the phone and "beat her with a large stick before electrocuting her," the official said.

Relations between unmarried men and women are deemed improper in Egyptian conservative society, particularly in rural areas.

The police were alerted to the crime after the girl's body was taken to a nearby hospital, the official said, adding that Mursi was later arrested.

Last May, a farmer from the conservative south of Egypt decapitated his daughter after discovering she had a boyfriend. (AFP)

Bankers need a good kick

Bankers, already under fire around the world over the global financial crisis, need a good kick to smarten up, according to Australia's Treasurer Wayne Swan.

The Australian assessment came after local banks failed to pass on to customers an interest rate cut by the central bank designed to stimulate the flagging economy.

The banks have said they are struggling with higher funding costs but Mr Swan, the government's top finance minister, said he could see no evidence of that.

According to Mr Swan, bankers do need a good kick occasionally.

"Certainly it's not helpful when we're trying to get everyone in the community working together to deal with this global financial crisis," Mr Swan added.

Australia's Reserve Bank cut the official cash rate by 25 basis points to a 49-year low of 3.0 per cent Tuesday, while the government has pumped more than (US) $35 billion into the economy in stimulus packages. (AFP)

Fire-fighter finds stepdaughter

A fire-fighter involved in rescue efforts after a devastating earthquake in Italy that killed more than 200 people on Tuesday unearthed the body of his stepdaughter.

The officer, leading a team of fire-fighters from Pescara on the Adriatic coast, fell to the ground in tears as rubble was pulled from the body of the young woman, who was buried beneath a collapsed housing block.

A fire department spokesman said the dead woman had come to study at a university in the mediaeval mountain city of L'Aquila, the worst hit by Monday's quake. He declined to identify either the fire-fighter or his stepdaughter.

A photographer saw the fire-fighter being helped from the scene by two uniformed colleagues. No further details were immediately available. (Reuters)

For chimps, steak is quicker

For human females a diamond may be a girl's best friend but in the case of chimpanzees German researchers have found that females mate more frequently with males who often share meat with them.

"Our results strongly suggest that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex, and do so on a long-term basis," Cristina Gomes of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany said.

"Males who shared meat with females doubled their mating success, whereas females, who had difficulty obtaining meat on their own, increased their caloric intake without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting."

"The meat for-sex hypothesis is a plausible explanation for male-female meat sharing in this species, as chimpanzees are highly promiscuous, they have a certain degree of female choice and hunters can usually control the sharing of their catch," they wrote in their report. (Reuters)