World Briefs

Vladimir Putin was sent to Russia by God to help it deal with its troubles in the early post-Soviet era, the Kremlin’s top political adviser was quoted as saying.

“To be honest, I think of Putin as a person who was sent to Russia by fate and the Almighty at a difficult hour,” Interfax quoted first deputy administration chief Vladislav Surkov as telling Chechen television.

Mr Surkov serves in the administration of President Dmitry Medvedev. But he has worked there since just before Mr Putin first entered the Kremlin for a two-year term as president in 2000 and is widely seen as one of his closest allies. Mr Putin now serves as Prime Minister. The Russian media in May reported that a small female sect believes Putin is the reincarnation of Paul the Apostle. (AFP)

Singer shot

Gunmen with rifles have shot and killed one of Latin America’s most famous folk singers, Facundo Cabral, causing outrage and grief across the region.

The Argentine singer and novelist was on his way to Guatemala’s main airport when gunmen attacked his vehicle, hitting him with at least eight bullets.

Cabral’s concert promoter Henry Farina was also wounded. The motive was not clear.

Cabral rose to fame in the early 1970s, one of a generation of singers who mixed political protest with literary lyrics and created deep bonds with an audience struggling through an era of revolution and repression across Latin America. Some evidence suggested that the killing was not a simple robbery. Cabral was riding in a truck that tried to flee the attackers by driving into a fire station. He was accompanied by a second vehicle carrying bodyguards. (AFP)

Stadium marriage

Barcelona fans Iban Anglada and Sigrid Sans have become the first couple to hold their wedding at the European Champions’ Camp Nou stadium.

Mr Anglada, a former ice hockey player with the club, and Ms Sans tied the knot before 260 guests on Saturday at the 98,787-seat stadium.

“We wanted something special and we thought of this place,” Ms Sans, an economist, told the Ideal newspaper. The total cost of the wedding set the couple, who are both in their early 30s, back around €60,000.

Holding a civil wedding ceremony at the stadium costs between €1,800 and €2,400 depending on the number of guests.The price for the banquet begins at €110 euros per person and the club can accommodate up to 750 guests.

Extras, such as displaying the trophies which Barcelona won last season, including the Champions League, at the banquet cost €1,500. (AFP)

Cash dash

Drivers caused a huge traffic jam on a 10-lane Moscow highway as they left their cars to pick up what looked like scattered money.

But their efforts were all in vain because the money was actually wads of bookmarks resembling 1,000-rouble (£20) notes.

A similar jam happened last year, but with real money, when two men caught with millions in bribes threw the cash on the road. (PA)

Rhino horn robbers

Robbers nabbed a stuffed rhino-ceros head from the Brussels Natural History Museum this week in the second such robbery in Belgium in less than a month, the museum said yesterday.

“At closing time, the head of a black Diceros bicornis rhinoceros exhibited in the mammals gallery was stolen by three people,” the museum said in a statement issued after the Tuesday heist.

The rhino robbers fled to a waiting car with a driver, with museum guards in hot pursuit. “They got away before we could catch then,” the museum added.

Located a stone’s throw from the European parliament in central Brussels, the museum is popular for its celebrated dinosaur skeletons and yesterday stepped up security while taking rare prized pieces away from the public eye. (AFP)

Book donations

Charity givers donated more Dan Brown books to Oxfam than any other author for the third year in a row, the charity’s annual survey revealed.

The writer of The Da Vinci Code also moved up the Oxfam shop best-seller list from last year’s number 10 to this year’s number three, the charity said.

Next most donated after Brown were crime writer Ian Rankin, prolific author of the Detective Inspector Rebus series, and Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who last year became the first non-fiction author to enter the top 10, and has moved up from number eight to number three. (PA)