Croatian cooks prepared to fry the longest (530 metres) sausage in the world in eastern Croatia's town of Vinkovci some 250 km east of Zagreb, yesterday. Organisers for the event were trying to make it into the Guinness book of records. The current record is held by Romanians for the longest sausage at a length of 392 metres.
GM considering new company
General Motors Corp., nearing a Tuesday deadline to present a viability plan to the US government, is considering as one option a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that would create a new company, the Wall Street Journal said in yesterday's edition.
"One plan includes a Chapter 11 filing that would assemble all of GM's viable assets, including some US brands and international operations, into a new company," the newspaper said. "The undesirable assets would be liquidated or sold under protection of a bankruptcy court. Contracts with bondholders, unions, dealers and suppliers would also be reworked," it said.
Darling cools Lloyds speculation
British finance minister Alistair Darling said yesterday that banks were best left in the private sector, in an effort to cool speculation that LLoyds Banking Group could be nationalised.
Part-nationalised Lloyds said on Friday its HBOS unit made a pretax loss of £8.5 billion last year due to a bigger-than-expected rise in bad loans, wiping a third off its value and raising fears more state help would be needed.
Asked whether the government was getting ready to step in on the sidelines of a meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers in Rome, Darling said: "I have made it very clear banks are best run in the commercial sector, privately owned."
Investor in Madoff scheme kills himself
A former British soldier killed himself after losing his life savings in an alleged $50 billion fraud run by Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff, the dead man's son said.
William Foxton, 65, who had served in the British Army and more recently worked as a defence contractor in Afghanistan, died from a single bullet wound to the head in the southern English port city of Southampton.
"A pistol was recovered at the scene. Police do not believe the death to be suspicious," a police statement said. His son said his father had returned from Afghanistan and revealed his life savings had been lost.
Gays, lesbians out on Valentine's Day
Chinese gays and lesbians took to the streets yesterday hoping St Valentine's Day would help them attract support for same-sex marriage in the conservative society.
Thirty people gathered on a street in the Chinese capital, close to Tiananmen Square and its stern portrait of Mao Zedong, to hold mock wedding photo sessions. They drew gasps, smiles and an occasional scowl from passers-by. Organisers said similar events took place in three other cities.
Their goal was to win more acceptance in a nation that has long frowned upon open displays of sexuality. Campaigners gave out roses and a slip of pink paper urging support for same-sex marriage.
Four Colombians die in coal mine
Four coal miners were killed and two injured yesterday in an accident at a mine in central Colombia, one of the country's worst such incidents in months, an official said.
"At the moment, they're carrying out a rescue operation to retrieve the bodies but by tomorrow or Tuesday we should have more details about the cause," said Adriana Cuevas, an emergency official.
She said an explosion of gases was the likely cause of the accident at the small mine in the province of Boyaca.
Colombia is among the world's top five coal suppliers.
Words give brain handle on feelings
Brain scientists are starting to understand something poets, songwriters and diarists have long known: putting feelings into words helps ease the mind.
"It is a pretty well-established finding that this occurs, but we don't know why," Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles, said yesterday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.
"When you put feelings into words, you are turning on the same regions in the brain that are involved in emotional self-control," Lieberman said.