World Briefs

He avoided Italian police for a decade on the run, but couldn’t resist his wife’s lasagne. Giancarlo Sabatini went into hiding in 2000, shortly after being given a near four-year prison sentence in a cocaine trafficking case.

Acting on a tip, police staked out the homes of Mr Sabatini’s wife and daughter in Rocca Priora, a town near Rome. When they saw the daughter leaving her mother’s house and furtively dashing toward her home carrying a tray of lasagne, police, suspecting a secret guest, burst in and arrested Mr Sabatini.

Many Italians prepare lasagne with meat sauce for lunch on the last Tuesday of Carnival. Police say Mr Sabatini came from his hideout in Belgium to celebrate the last day before Lent with his family. (PA)

Torture ‘joke’

A male Pakistani politician has been jeered for proposing a committee to stop the “mental torture” of men by women. Jam Tamachi Unar made the suggestion after the assembly in Sindh province decided to create a panel to investigate the torture of women in rural areas.

The proposal drew shouts of “Shame!” from female assembly members. Most of the women stormed out of the session.

Mr Unar said later he was only joking but that it was a “bitter truth that the same way women are tortured in rural areas, men are the victims of mental torture in urban neighbourhoods”. (PA)

Old bird

She’s the grand old lady of albatrosses, is still raising chicks and doesn’t look a day older than she did in 1956.

Researchers call her Wisdom, and at 60 years of age she was recently found sitting on an egg on Midway Atoll, an island in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. Researchers didn’t recognise her as the old gray dame of the isle at first, because she just didn’t look the part. Not a trace of gray in the feathers, and no tiredness around the eyes.

Bruce Peterjohn, chief of the US Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Centre said, “Here is a bird that is a minimum 60 years old and basically hasn’t changed and can go very readily and raise and produce young”.

Most albatrosses on islands in the northwest Hawaiian chain seem to live 30-40 years. (AFP)

Off target

Comedian Frank Skinner faced a breath-test after being pulled over by police – despite being teetotal for 25 years.

Mr Skinner, who was given the tube into which he blew as a keepsake, said he was pulled over after police suspected him of speeding.

He was stopped while driving over Tower Bridge in London. When asked by the police officer if he had been drinking that evening, he replied: “I can tell you now, I haven’t had a drink since September 24 1986.” The comic added: “He just looked at me in disbelief.” (PA)

Nudists’ rights

A candidate running in an Australian state poll stripped off at an electoral commission office yesterday in a bid to highlight the rights of nudists.

Stuart Baanstra disrobed at the central Sydney building before being ushered away by security, carrying a sign saying “nude is not rude”, according to the AAP news agency.

Speaking outside the commission room, where he arrived wearing a robe and a bow-tie bearing the Australian flag, Mr Baanstra said he was a nudist and a gay man who “believes in the rights of people to live without clothes”.

Mr Baanstra, who is standing as an independent for a upper house seat in the New South Wales state election later this month, made the bold move during a draw to determine the position of candidates on the ballot paper. (AFP)

Woof justice

A US mother is facing charges for making her son sleep in a locked dog cage because he misbehaved and soiled his bed.

Kathlyn Anthony of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, was arrested after the boy’s sister told school officials she was tired because she kept getting up at night to let her brother out of his “sleep locker”.

Police say the cage was 36 inches by 22 inches, and 30 inches high. (PA)

Barbie ‘trade war’

Argentina has cracked down hard against problem imports, including a well-known leggy blonde: the Barbie doll.

President Cristina Kirchner announced there would be customs barriers slapped on Chinese-made imports from textiles to home appliances, luxury cars and cellular phones, as well as iconic plastic plaything Barbie, made by American toymaker Mattel.

Industry analysts said Ms Kirchner likely was doing her part to try to protect local toymakers. Mattel is the world’s biggest toymaker, with 2010 sales of some $5.8 billion.

At least it was not ideological trouble for Barbie. Leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez once called the doll dangerous to young girls’ minds. (AFP)

Stress relief

Christchurch sex workers are enjoying a boom in trade after last month’s earthquake as stressed emergency workers turn to the world’s oldest profession.

Prostitutes in the New Zealand city said an influx of foreigners helping relief efforts after the devastating 6.3-magnitude quake had left them run off their feet, the Christchurch Press reported. It said one sex worker, Candice, reported earning up to $1,030 a night soliciting just outside the city’s cordoned-off downtown area.

“In three years, I’ve never made this much before,” she said, “The foreign ones are the best, they pay the most. They are saying they are stressed out and they need to get some stress relief.”(AFP)