Mary McCarthy blew out the candles on her birthday cake with the help of her grandson Elio Garcia at their home in Havana, Cuba, on Sunday when she celebrated her 108th birthday.
Despite being wheelchair bound, she still dressed up in a satin dress, and with red lipstick colouring her wrinkled face. Her jewellery, though, were plastic as her real jewellery and the small fortune she inherited when she was widowed in 1951 have been frozen in a Boston bank since the United States placed Cuba under sanctions after Fidel Castro's leftist revolution in 1959.
Killed husband and cut him up
An abused wife who killed her husband, cut up his body and dumped the parts on a street and in a park was jailed for 15 years by a Tokyo court yesterday, a court official and Japanese media said.
Kaori Mihashi, 33, killed her husband by hitting him over the head with a wine bottle in the 2006 case, Kyodo news agency reported. Doctors had said Mrs Mihashi was insane at the time of the murder but the court ruled that, while she had been seeing hallucinations, she was mentally capable of making decisions, Japanese media said.
"While her married life was like hell and she was feeling desperate, the responsibility for the brutal and abject crime is serious," Japanese public broadcaster NHK quoted the presiding judge, Masaya Kawamoto, as saying.
The doctors had said that Mrs Mihashi was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after being beaten by her husband, Kyodo said.
Revolutionary May 1968 tea
The times are changing in Paris, where a luxury food store is offering a "May 68" brand of tea to commemorate riots 40 years ago in which anti-capitalist students hurled cobblestones at police.
"Tea with a flavour of revolution", says the chic Fauchon in a statement announcing the launch of the collector item.
The tea, flavoured with lemon zest and rose petals, is packaged in a metal tin emblazoned with the image of a student with a raised fist and slogans from the riots such as "It is forbidden to forbid" and "Poetry is in the street". The cost is €15 for 100g of tea.
There is a certain irony in Fauchon's decision to endorse the spirit of May 1968 with its commemorative tea.
The flagship Fauchon store in central Paris was attacked in May 1970, when the 1968 riots were still reverberating through French society, by a commando of Maoists who looted foie gras and other fine foods to redistribute them to the poor.
Living with lice for art's sake
From pickled cows to elephant dung, the art world is no stranger to offbeat ideas. But a group of lice-infested Germans? Seven young artists from Berlin are trying to stretch the boundaries of art by living in an Israeli museum for three weeks with lice in their hair.
"Art is no longer just a painting on the wall," Milana Gitzin-Adiram, chief curator of the Museum of Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, told Reuters. "Art is life, life is art."
The exhibition has caused controversy - unintended, the artists say - in a country where the mention of lice may revive memories of Nazi propaganda that described Jews as "parasites".
'Destructive' influence
Imports of Barbie dolls and other Western toys will have destructive cultural and social consequences in Iran, the Islamic Republic's top prosecutor was quoted as saying yesterday.
Iran's conservative clerical establishment often rails against the perceived dangers of US-inspired culture and consumerism, branding it "Westoxication".
"The appearance of personalities such as Barbie, Batman, Spiderman and Harry Potter and... computer games and movies are all a danger warning to the officials in the cultural arena," said Prosecutor General Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi in a letter to Vice President Parviz Davoudi published in the Mardom Salari daily.
VP criticised over car use
Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla and his security personnel will be quizzed by environmental officials for using vehicles during a car-free day in part of the capital, the Jakarta Post newspaper reported.
Mr Kalla took part in a fun walk on a main street between the country's national monument and a major roundabout, while his security detail trailed him in cars, the paper said.