A group of pagans held a protest prayer on the Acropolis in Athens yesterday, asking the ancient Goddess of Wisdom, Athena, to protect the 2,500-year-old site as sculptural masterpieces are moved to a new location.
"This is not a site for strolls, this is where our ancestors came to worship," worshipper Yannis Kontopidis said at the gathering at the Parthenon temple. "We prayed to Athena today to protect the site from further deconstruction."
The pagans object to the removal of treasures from a museum on the Acropolis to a large new building under the citadel.
Greece hopes its new glass and concrete museum, designed by architect Bernard Tschumi, will one day display the Elgin Marbles besides the other Parthenon sculptures.
The Elgin Marbles were removed from the Parthenon by Scottish diplomat Lord Elgin in the 19th century. The British Museum in London has repeatedly rejected Greek calls for their return.
Skydive record over Everest
A British woman plans to make a parachute jump over Mount Everest hoping to become the first woman ever to skydive over the world's highest peak, organisers said yesterday.
Holly Budge, 29, plans to throw herself out from 142 metres above Everest, hurtling past it, before landing in a mountain meadow at 3,764 metres. She plans to attempt her dive in October after taking off from an airstrip in northeast Nepal, home to Mount Everest, the world's highest peak at 8,850 metres.
Ms Budge, a Bristol-based interactive designer and film-maker, will wear an oxygen mask and carry a parachute that is much larger than normal to compensate for the faster descent through the thinner air of the world's highest drop zone.
Millions displaced in floods
Authorities struggling to provide aid after devastating floods in eastern India said yesterday they needed more boats and rescuers to help hundreds of thousands of people still marooned in remote villages.
Floods have killed more than 1,000 people in South Asia since the monsoon began in June, mainly in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 785 people died, and deaths were also reported in Nepal and Bangladesh.
In Bihar, the toll rose to 90 yesterday with five more people drowning overnight in separate districts. At least three million people have been displaced and those figures could rise as heavy rain continued.
TV pictures showed villagers holding on to tails of cattle as they crossed flooded roads with belongings on their heads. Some were seen frantically waving at a few boatmen to come and rescue them. More than 350,000 people have been evacuated over the past 11 days, officials said, admitting they did not have enough boats or resources to step up relief operations.
Computers out of cartoons
Revered Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki has no intention of swapping his pencil for computer graphics and will keep hand drawing his films for as long as he can, he said yesterday.
Mr Miyazaki's new animation Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, already a big box office success in his home country, is vying for top prize at the Venice film festival, where the Oscar-winning director received a career award in 2005. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale The Little Mermaid, the film tells the story of a little goldfish who longs to become a human to be with her love, five-year-old boy Sosuke. It uses hand-drawn art throughout.
"I think animation is something that needs the pencil, needs man's drawing hand, and that is why I decided to do this work in this way," the 67-year-old director told reporters.
England triumphs in gay soccer
England's gay soccer team Stonewall Lions FC have shown their underachieving heterosexual counterparts the way forward as they trounced an Argentine team 5-0 to claim the Gay World Football Championship.
The game was played at Leyton Orient's ground in east London as Stonewall overcome Saf Gay FC to win their third successive Gay Football World Championship, a tournament involving 40 teams. Last month Stonewall won the European Gay Football Championship, an unparalleled record of success that leaves the England national team very much in the shade.
England last won the World Cup in 1966 and have consistently failed to deliver on the international stage.
"In the Gay Football Championship, the British teams have yet again shown themselves to be the best in the world," said gay human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.