A Muslim Conservative was subjected to a string of verbal insults before being hit by an egg which broke on her face, a court heard yesterday.
Baroness Warsi, now chairman of the Conservative Party, was confronted by a group who shouted abuse including “Cameron’s bitch” before being targeted with eggs, one of which smashed, soiling her hair and jacket (picture), City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court was told,
The then shadow minister for community cohesion and social action was visiting Luton on November 30 last year when the attack happened.
Baroness Warsi, who became minister without portfolio in May and is the first female Muslim Cabinet minister, was accompanying Nigel Huddleston, the Conservative prospective Parliamentary candidate for Luton South and other business representatives on a tour of the Bury Park area. (PA)
Clapped-out tour bus
Berlin police said yesterday they impounded a clapped-out Latvian tour bus with 1.8 million kilometres behind it – enough to go to the moon and back twice, and then back to Latvia.
Police pulled over the white double-decker yesterday afternoon and found, apart from the massive mileage, an un-roadworthy rust bucket with dangerously worn tyres, faulty brakes and a cracked windscreen.
The odometer, which runs to 999,999 kilometres, had already gone around once, a police spokesman said. The bus driver and the 67 Latvian tourists on board, who were on their way to Switzerland via the German capital, were told to find alternative means of transport. (AFP)
Prisoners knit for the poor in Afghanistan
Lithuanian female prisoners have started knitting socks, gloves and scarves to help poor families in Afghanistan’s central Ghor province keep warm in winter, a prison official said yesterday.
“About 100 or one-third of all prisoners – all those who know how to knit – are knitting socks, gloves and scarves. They happily joined this goodwill action,” Edvardas Norvaisas, director of Panevezys prison, said.
Mr Norvaisas said the campaign at the prison in northern Lithuania would last for a few months. Lithuanian troops will then take the hand-made clothing to Afghanistan in autumn, when they begin their rotation as part of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force.
Lithuania is leading a reconstruction team in Afghanistan’s Ghor province. (AFP)
No grounds for divorce
An Indian court has slapped a hefty fine on a woman who cited her husband’s sexual impotence as grounds for divorce, a report said.
A judge in central Madhya Pradesh state ordered Vandana Gurjar to pay 200,000 rupees ($4,440) to her estranged husband Hemant Chhalotre, the Press Trust of India said.
Mr Chhalotre had complained the impotence accusation “rendered him unmarriageable and sullied his prestige,” the news agency said.
The amount of the fine far exceeds the annual income of millions of Indians. (AFP)
Five-year-old wins pay-out
A five-year-old Irish boy who was wrongly accused of stealing a bag of crisps has won a €7,500 pay-out from a supermarket chain, his lawyer said yesterday.
Tadhg Mooney, of Balbriggan, north of Dublin, had just finished shopping with his mother Rachel at their local Lidl store in June last year when a cashier came after him, taking him by the hand and accusing him of stealing. Finding him crying inside the store, his mother presented a receipt showing she had paid for the bag, their lawyer Dermot McNamara saod.
But the shop manager failed to take her concerns seriously, causing her to take legal proceedings against the firm for slander, for false imprisonment, assault and negligence. (AFP)
Online casino glitch
Swedish online casino Mr Green, which is registered in Malta, yesterday said it had corrected a technical problem that made it impossible to lose money when gambling on the site.
“What happened is that people could spend money without it being withdrawn from their account. It was just like being at an automatic teller machine,” the web-casino’s managing director Mikael Pawlo said.
The computer bug affected a newly launched game and lasted from Monday afternoon to Tuesday morning.
Some 200 gamblers benefited from the fault, but won’t be able to keep the money as their accounts were later corrected. (AFP)
Dog communion?
An Anglican priest is facing the wrath of some in Canada’s Christian community after she offered holy communion to a man... and his dog.
“Communion to a dog is not something that will ever happen to our or any Bible-believing Christian church anywhere in the world,” said Cheryl Chang, chancellor of the Anglican Network in Canada.
The controversy occurred last month, when Donald Keith, 56, walked into St Peter’s Church in downtown Toronto for the first time, accompanied by his four-year-old German Shepherd, Trapper. Margerita Rea, an interim priest at the church, welcomed the pair inside, and when it came time to offer Keith holy communion, Trapper followed and was allowed to participate in the ceremony. (AFP)