One of Rio de Janeiro's most traditional Samba schools broke a 16-year barren streak by winning the annual parade championship on Wednesday as the city cleaned up after four days of non-stop Carnival revelry.
Salgueiro wowed a crowd in the purpose-built Sambadrome with a parade entitled Drum!, telling the history of the instrument through acrobats and dancers dressed as African tribesmen as well as the usual scantily clad drum queen.
"Salgueiro needed this victory, the community needed it," Salgueiro President Regina Duran said after the result. Rio traditionally comes to a halt after the Carnival for live-television coverage of the results, which are painstakingly read out category-by-category and school-by-school at the Sambadrome. The schools, rather than teaching Samba, are community groups geared towards putting on huge Carnival parades.
The top 12 schools, which mostly represent poor communities, are judged on 10 categories ranging from their parade's theme, drumming performance, harmony, costumes and synchronization. (Reuters)
Suspended sentence over daring escape
A Greek court gave a prison guard a three-year suspended sentence for assisting a high-profile prisoner to escape by helicopter for the second time in three years, court officials said yesterday.
The Hollywood-style getaway of Vassilis Palaiokostas, 44, and his Albanian accomplice Alket Rijai, from the Athens jail, has dealt a new blow to the conservative government hurt by riots and a ratings slump. "The guard is sentenced to three years in prison for assisting Palaiokostas to get away, but the sentence is suspended," said a court official.
The guard was convicted for allowing the two men to meet in the prison courtyard from where they escaped. He has been suspended.
Last Sunday, a helicopter approached the roof of Greece's maximum security prison, threw down a rope ladder and whisked the two convicts away as prison guards watched. The helicopter pilot said he had been hijacked.(Reuters)
Spray your tag on West Bank wall
It could turn out to be the world's longest graffiti space - the massive concrete barrier separating Israel from the Palestinians.
Over the internet, a group of Palestinian graffiti artists is offering to spray-paint your personal message on Israel's towering security wall in the occupied West Bank.
It costs €30 per message and they can be as solemn or wacky as you want. Everything goes, except for obscene, offensive or extremist hate speech. Clients get three digital pictures of the finished product.
The eight-metre high barrier of massive concrete slabs is part of a 620-kilometre fence Israel says is intended to keep suicide bombers out, and which can be dismantled at some point in the future when peace reigns. (Reuters)
Israel's youngest divorcee is just 14
A 14-year-old girl has become Israel's youngest divorcee after splitting from her 17-year-old husband, newspaper reports said yesterday.
A rabbinical court recognised the unnamed pair as married because the teens, both from religious Jewish families, performed the three requirements of marriage under religious law - ceremony, consent and sexual relations. Jewish religious law does not require the presence of a rabbi at a wedding ceremony.
The boy gave his girlfriend a ring in front of friends who served as witnesses, and said: "Behold, you are consecrated to me by means of this ring, according to the law of Moses and Israel." The two later consummated their union, newspapers said.
When the boy's parents learned of the marriage, they demanded that he divorce, but the young bride initially refused. She reportedly relented after the boy's parents paid her 10,000 shekels (€1,874). (AFP)
Kidnappings at Myanmar casinos
Chinese should not go to Myanmar to gamble, because of the risks of scams and kidnapping, the foreign ministry has said.
Casinos lining the Mekong River along the border of Myanmar and China's southwestern Yunnan Province are popular with Chinese, since gambling is illegal in mainland China.
But in recent years, Chinese lured by the promise of free trips or cheap jade have run into trouble or been cheated of all their money, the Xinhua news agency said.
"People who don't know what's going on have been trapped in casinos, beaten and their relatives asked to pay ransoms," the foreign ministry said on its website. (Reuters)