World Briefs

Roger Garaudy, a communist and darling of French intellectual society until he denied that the Nazis used gas chambers to kill Jews during World War II, has died at the age of 98, officials said yesterday.

Mr Garaudy was fined by a Paris court in 1998 for his anti-Zionist work The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics.

The court found his account had distorted the wartime deaths of an estimated six million Jews.

He converted to Protestantism, Catholicism and finally Islam, joined the French Communist Party after the war and was elected to the French Parliament.

“He ended up pitifully on an intellectual level, with the lowest kind of revisionism... Historians will one day look at his ideological drifting that turned him one of the best-known revisionists,” said the head of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, Richard Prasquier.

‘When you love someone...’

An Argentine widow is spending days at a time in the tomb of her husband who died two years ago, having set up a bed, internet access and even a small cooker next to his coffin.

“Police found Adriana Villareal had carried out some work in the tomb where her husband’s coffin was.

“She had a radio, a computer, Internet, a chair and a small cooker,” said local police commissioner Gustavo Braganza.

She even greeted policemen in her pyjamas when they went to check what was going on at the San Lazaro cemetery Dos de Mayo.

The 43-year-old widow explained on the website www.misionesonline.net: “When you love someone, you do all sorts of things... My husband deserved it and still does.”

Teachers missing sleep

Four-fifths of teachers have sacrificed a night’s sleep in the past six months to get through school work, according to a UK survey.

It reveals that many teachers are spending time at the weekend and during holidays trying to catch up with marking, lesson planning and administration. The poll, by tesconnect.com, suggests the idea that teachers finish work at 3 p.m. and take long holidays isa myth, with the majority working more than 56 hours a week on average.

Around four-fifths (81 per cent) of teachers said these hidden hours affected their personal life. The poll found that more than half (54.5%) said they work more than 56 hours a week on average.

H-appy days for Androids

A mobile phone app that can help prevent users from having a bad day by predicting the mood of incoming messages has been developed by computer scientists.

Lorraine Chambers, a Master’s student at the University of Portsmouth, has created the app that automatically colour-codes messages so people know before reading them if they are likely to make them feel good or bad.

The development, for Android phones, aims to prevent people being surprised by an angry or hostile message from Twitter, Facebook or text message and would also allow smartphone users to prepare for bad news.