World Briefs

Britain’s oldest student has graduated from university aged 91 – and is still planning to go on and do a PHD. Bertie Gladwin said that he had “a lot of laughs” with students less than a third of his age.

Mr Gladwin left school aged 14 with no interest in academia, later going on to have an extensive career in MI6. Now the former civil servant is celebrating gaining a distinction in Masters in Intelligence History from the University of Buckingham – despite being more than 60 years older than his course mates.

Art worth 256 burger meals

A South African politician bought a painting with government money by masking it as a McDonald’s purchase equivalent to 256 burger meals, the company said yesterday.

McDonald’s in a statement confirmed a report in The Star newspaper that Humphrey Mmemezi, an executive of the ruling African National Congress, last year ran a 10,000-rand ($1,200) bill on the credit card at one of the company’s restaurants in Pretoria.

But the funds made their way out of the McDonald’s account, into another account and finally to an art gallery in Johannesburg, The Star said.

Banned over Muamba tweets

A British student, jailed for making offensive Twitter comments about English Premier League footballer Fabrice Muamba after he collapsed during a match, was yesterday banned from his university.

Liam Stacey, 21, has been released from jail, having served half his 56-day sentence for admitting racially aggravated public disorder.

The biology student drunkenly posted comments about Bolton Wanderers midfielder Muamba, who collapsed on the pitch with a heart attack on March 17.

Stacey, who was suspended from Swansea University in south Wales, has now been told he may not return and will not be allowed to sit his final exams this term.

Fired for being ‘too hot’

A New Jersey woman said that she was dismissed from a temporary job at a New York lingerie warehouse because her male employers felt she was too busty and dressed too provocatively for the workplace.

Wearing a form-fitting sequined black dress and black leather, sequin-studded boots, Lauren Odes (pictured left with her attorney at a news conference in New York) said her Orthodox Jewish employers at Native Intimates told her that outfit and others like it were “too hot” for the warehouse.

“We should not be judged by the size of our breasts or the shape of our body,” Ms Odes, 29, said.

Ms Odes’s attorney, celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, said she filed a gender and religious discrimination complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in New York.