Now, a Miss Handicapped beauty contest in Myanmar
Yangon: In a first of its kind, Myanmar will soon hold a Miss Handicapped beauty contest in the former capital city of Yangon.
The Myanmar Physically Handicapped Association (MPHA) will hold the contest at the Thuwunna Indoor stadium Aug 20. The contest is aimed at showcasing the ability and confidence of physically handicapped people and raising their moral power, a statement quoted by Xinhua said.
Single female contestants – aged between 18 and 30 – are eligible to take part.
The association has earlier held fun fairs for handicapped children and men as part of its efforts to nurture the spirit of unity and team work and to acknowledge that handicapped people can also carry out the tasks at par with ordinary people.
The association has over 3,000 handicapped volunteers. It was established in 2004. (IANS)
Ukrainian man to live with lions for five weeks!
London: A Ukrainian man has decided to spend five weeks in lions’ enclosure to watch the cubs being born.
Alexander Pylyshenko, 40, decided to move into the cage and live as the lions do after spending years working alongside the beasts.
His moving into the lions’ enclosure means that when the lions are fed, he will also be fed through the cage, and will sleep on the floorboards and playing with the big cats for five weeks, Daily Express reported.
The Ukrainian zoo owner told the Austrian Times : “One of the lions is pregnant – I plan to see the cubs being born, and spend some time with them but then I will move out.”
“The living conditions will be absolutely the same for the lions and me. We will sleep on wooden floorboards and have food given to us through bars.
“There will be four webcams planted in the cage. They will provide both experimental integrity and broadcast the ‘reality show’ on the internet”, he stated.
Pylyshenko is also a keen artist and will continue his artwork during the experiment, and any paintings created will be sold to raise money for the zoo. (IANS)
British schoolboy kills ex-girlfriend over free-breakfast bet
London: A schoolboy in Britain is facing life sentence for murdering his former girlfriend over a bet for a free breakfast.
Sixteen-year-old Joshua Davies was promised a full-cooked breakfast by a friend for carrying out his threat to murder his lover Rebecca Aylward, 15.
Davies and Rebecca had already split up but she visited him, hoping they would reconcile.
The schoolboy, however, had plotted to give her deadly foxgloves (flowers), drown her in a river or throw her off a cliff.
Rebecca even bought new clothes for the ‘date’, being unaware that Davies had been boasting to his friends how easy it would be to kill her, Daily Mail reported.
The murder trial heard how their teenage love affair turned into a love-hate relationship and finally culminating in a horrific murder. Davies openly plotted to murder Rebecca by sending chilling text messages to his friends about his plans to do it.
In one such text messages to a friend, Davies wrote: “What would you do if I actually did kill her?”
The friend replied: “Oh, I would buy you breakfast.’
Two days ahead of carrying out the murder Davies messaged to the friend: “Don’t say anything but you may just owe me a breakfast.
Davies lured a cheerful and fun-loving Rebecca into woods where he battered her to death with a rock, the court heard. (IANS)
Germans, Danes rack up most vacation in EU
BERLIN: Germans may accuse spendthrift euro zone southerners of too much play and not enough work, but they enjoy the most generous annual holiday time in the European Union, a study released showed.
Workers in Germany enjoy 30 days of paid holiday a year on average, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) said on Wednesday. Only Danes are afforded as much time off in the EU.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised hackles across southern Europe in May when she suggested people in heavily indebted euro zone nations were taking too much holiday and retiring too early.
”We cannot have a currency (the euro) with one person getting lots of holiday and another person very little,” she said at a Christian Democrat party event in Germany.
Politicians and media from Mediterranean countries slammed Merkel for playing up Europe’s north-south divide to appease German voters angry at having to bail out euro zone countries like Greece and Portugal. (Reuters)
The Eurofound study showed that coupled with public holidays, the average German has 40 days of holiday a year — still tied with the Danes for the most in Europe.
Greeks and Portuguese by comparison each average 33 days vacation a year, including public holidays.
Romanians get the least vacation in the 27-nation EU, with annual paid leave and public holidays totalling 27 days.(Reuters)