As The World Turns

As The World Turns

British elections reach critical stage

The government faces the possibility of a quandary it hasn’t seen since 1974.  

What's a 'hung Parliament'? 

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• A risk to the economy
• The UK government
• A final push

From meat to wages, economic woes fuel Egypt anger

For the past six weeks, Khulud Mustafa has walked past the butcher near her apartment in Cairo's run-down Ain Shams district, casting wistful looks at the meat hanging outside his shop as the price has steadily risen.

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Drug smokers in Egypt suffer hashish shortage after crackdown

Millions of Egyptians — some of the world’s most enthusiastic consumers of hashish — are suffering withdrawal pangs after an unprecedented shortage of their favourite narcotic. A sudden fall in supply of the concentrated form of marijuana has sent prices spiralling, and left smokers searching for alternative highs.

“This is very weird for Egypt. I’ve never seen it like this,” said Yasser, a former police officer-turned-hash dealer. “My supplier told me he doesn’t know what’s going on. Everybody is going crazy. My friends are telling me they can’t focus at work.”

The crisis began about three months ago, and prices have rocketed. A 150g block, about the size of a large chocolate bar, normally sells for about 1,500 Egyptian pounds (£180). Now the price has doubled. For a nation where smoking hash is ingrained in the culture, the shortage has come as a shock.

The shortage follows triumphant police announcements of a sweeping crackdown. In late March General Mostafa Amer, director of the Interior Ministry’s anti-narcotics bureau, announced that 7.5 tonnes of hashish and 25kg of heroin had been seized in raids over three months.

More than 300 distributors were detained, he said. Few are convinced that the raids could have caused the shortage, however. Many see a darker explanation. “This proves the Government completely controls the hash trade,” said one smoker. “It’s not the result of a few strategic drug busts. They just turned off the tap.”

That belief has spawned a host of theories as to just why the authorities would tighten supplies. Among them: a desire to shift drug smokers to alcohol, heroin or illicit pharmaceuticals, or some internal struggle between large distributors and their “partners” in the police. Yasser’s favourite theory is to blame politicians jockeying for money, power and influence.

India bans leather shoes in schools as 'vestige of colonial rule'

India is to ban schoolchildren from wearing leather shoes because they are seen as a "vestige of British colonial rule." Instead canvas plimsolls will replace uncomfortable and "environmentally hazardous" leather shoes.

The move by the country's school boards follows a campaign by Maneka Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's widowed daughter-in-law, who is now an member of parliament for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. She is one of India's leading animal rights campaigners and a fierce opponent of slaughtering cows, which are revered among Hindus.

India's Central Board of School Education and the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination has accepted her proposal. Black leather shoes were introduced as mandatory items in Indian school uniforms during British colonial rule and have continued unchallenged ever since. Their widespread use has made schoolchildren the country's largest consumers of leather products, according to the People for Animals (PFA) campaign.

Sixteen schools in Madras have already banned leather footwear in response to their campaign and protesters have since been lobbying schools in Chandigarh, Punjab. Now central government officials have backed the campaign following a series of letters from Mrs Gandhi.

"This decision was forced on Indians by the British. It is a decision that is not just unhealthy for children but environmentally very dangerous," she wrote. Leather shoes do not absorb sweat, force children to change their shoes during the day, and cause schoolchildren to have larger carbon footprint, she said. They are also more expensive for parents.

Gerry Arathoon, Secretary of CISCE, has backed the campaign and said the board believes leather shoes 'stink', gather dust, need regular cleaning with 'toxic' polish, and that the tanneries they come from are a source of disease for their workers. Canvas shoes, by contrast, are easy to clean, comfortable, absorb sweat, kind to cows and without colonial associations.

Boy saved from death fall by his ears

This is the horrifying moment a six-year-old boy was left dangling millimeters from death outside a high rise apartment block - saved only by his ears.

Adventurous Ming Ming managed to get his head stuck in window bars of his home in Yinchang, China.

Crowds gathered after hearing his screams and rescuers moved into save the child from an eight storey drop.

An onlooker said: 'The only thing stopping him from plunging to the ground below was the fact his head was trapped between two window bars.'

Once inside the flat firefighters quickly used a hydraulic pressure expander to force the bars apart and pulled Ming Ming back into the apartment.

Man delivers two severed heads to police in Grenada

A man in Grenada, the island country in the south-eastern Caribbean Sea, has left police in a quandary about how to deal with two severed human heads which he presented to them in a bucket.

Horrified police have detained a 32 year old man who walked into their station to offer himself up for arrest.

The man entered the Grenville station on Tuesday with his haul but was not immediately charged with any offence. After questioning, police later found two hacked-up bodies in a rural area which matched the heads.

Prime Minister Tillman Thomas later said the beheadings were an "indescribable act," and a tragedy for all of Grenada, which has only a small population.

Police find nine-year-old girl's stolen puppy but say she can't have it back

After saving up for months for a pedigree puppy, Leanne Stewart did the sensible thing and had her new pet microchipped.

So when the mother-of-two's Chinese shar pei Millie was stolen from her back garden, she at least had the comfort of hoping she would eventually be returned to them.

It took more than six months but, eventually, the £750 puppy was traced. Miss Stewart - and more importantly her nine-year-old daughter Megan - were expecting an emotional reunion with the pet. But this has been dashed by police.

They have been told that they cannot take Millie off the new owner because the man bought the dog in good faith - despite the microchip proving she is Miss Stewart's.

Now she faces the agonising choice between a lengthy - and potentially expensive - legal battle or accepting she will never see her puppy again.

Yesterday the 31-year-old told how the bitter blow had only added to the heartache caused to Megan and one-year-old Kayden, following the death of their father at Christmas.