Colombia’s carnival commences with ‘Battle of Flowers’
Bogota: Colombia’s annual carnival in the port city of Barranquilla has started with its traditional “Battle of Flowers”.
Thousands of tourists and Colombians, including President Juan Manuel Santos, attended the opening ceremony Saturday, Xinhua reported.
Santos stressed on the importance of the carnival, the country’s largest cultural event.
“I am very pleased to be here. You know I do not miss this carnival,” the president said. “It is a wonderful cultural expression that we Colombians have”.
The four-day carnival will also host the Great Parade of Tradition, the Comedy Festival and the Orchestras Festival in the Romelio Martinez Stadium Monday.
Around 1.5 million people are expected to attend the event, with over 13 Colombian artistic expressions carried out by 650 ethnical and cultural groups.
The Barranquilla carnival, one of the oldest and most recognised cultural events in Colombia, was listed as an “intangible cultural heritage” by UNESCO in 2003. (IANS)
Australian court to hear death row dog case
Sydney: Australia’s apex court has agreed to hear a case of a dog on death row after a woman appealed a council order to put down Izzy, her Staffordshire terrier, media reported.
The Knox City council in Melbourne ordered that Izzy be put down after the dog bit a stranger on the finger in 2012, and was also involved in two other attacks in June 2013, the Melbourne Age reported Friday.
Tania Isbester, the dog’s owner and a mother of five, pleaded guilty to charges over the original incident in a local court.
The dog was seized by the council in June 2013 and kept in a cage at an animal shelter. It was subsequently decided that Izzy should be killed.
Isbester appealed the execution in the state of Victoria’s court of appeal but lost last year. She subsequently took the case to the country’s highest court.
Justices Kenneth Hayne and Geoffrey Nettle of the Australian High Court have granted her leave to appeal. The case is likely to be heard in April. It is believed to be the first case of a dog execution before the highest court. (IANS)
Woman swimmer killed in shark attack on Indian Ocean island
Letang-Sali (France): A woman died today after suffering serious injuries in a shark attack on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, officials said. The woman, aged around 20, sustained bite wounds to her leg during the incident which took place as she swam in the sea close to the beach in southwestern l’Etang-Sale.
She received first aid at the scene before being taken to hospital but died later of a cardiac arrest, the local prefecture told AFP. The attack comes after a 23-year-old man was attacked at almost the same spot last October. He survived but lost his right leg. Several months earlier in July 2014, a 51-year-old surfer also suffered multiple bites in another attack at Saint-Leu in the southwest of the island, around 200 kilometres east of Madagascar. Before that, 11 attacks were reported in the previous two years, of which five were fatal. (AFP)
Chinese gay couples win contest to marry in California
Beijing: Ten gay couples in China have won a trip to the US to get married this summer as part of a competition organised by Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Taobao that ended on Sunday.
Four hundred couples entered the pre-Valentine’s Day sweepstakes organised by two gay rights charities and the internet giant in what is a highly unusual move for China where same-sex marriage is illegal and homosexuality remains a taboo subject. The hopefuls had to upload a short video explaining their love story. The organisers then whittled down the field to just 20 finalists before opening the competition to a public vote.
The winning couples will be flown to Los Angeles in June to tie the knot on an all expenses paid trip to the United States. The unions will not be recognised under Chinese law but an Alibaba spokeswoman described the move as “more of a symbolic kind of gesture”.
“It will strengthen awareness and encourage respect and tolerance towards homosexuality,” the company said. Beijing only decriminalised homosexuality in 1997 and stopped classifying it as a mental illness in 2011. Gay rights campaigners in China still face harassment from authorities or bureaucratic roadblocks.
LGBT groups in China are barred from registering as official non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and activists often take a low-profile approach to promoting events lest the authorities decide to crack down. Those who come out to friends and family in China often face significant pressure to undergo sexuality “treatment” or marry a partner of the opposite sex. The competition was part of promotion Taobao’s new travel platform aimed at the gay community with deals on trips to “destinations were gay marriage is legal” including the United States, New Zealand and Canada. (AFP)
UK academic plans ‘Mahabharata’ Twitter sequel
London: A UK-based Indian academic, who has retold the ancient Sanskrit epic Mahabharata in a series of tweets, is now preparing for a sequel to the Twitter version, this time from the perspective of its key villain Duryodhana. Chindu Sreedharan, a former war reporter-turned-journalism lecturer at Bournemouth University on the south coast of England, began narrating the Indian epic on the microblogging site as a digital storytelling experiment in 2009.
The story spanned four years and 2,700 tweets and his efforts were released in December as India’s first Twitter fiction novel titled ‘Epic Retold.’ The 41-year-old author says he is now taking a “breather” before embarking on a sequel to the epic. With over 100,000 couplets or shlokas, ‘Mahabharata’ is one of the two epics of Hinduism. It teaches the goal of human life through the tells of a dynastic struggle for power between the Kauravas and the righteous Pandavas. The sequel to ‘Epic Retold’ would present the eldest Kaurava brother as an anti-hero and would be shorter than the first version. “Towards the end of ‘Epic Retold,’ particularly because of the way certain things have been reimagined, I began to see Duryodhana differently. I could see his point of view. ‘Epic Retold’ was Bhima’s ‘truth’. This will be Duryodhana’s,” Sreedharan told PTI. The final format of the sequel is under discussion with the publisher but it will be a short story rather than a novel and this time the full draft will be ready before he starts tweeting it out.
“‘Epic Retold’ was written on Twitter, kind of in real time -– so it was quite challenging. I am hoping to catch my breath before I start it [sequel], so it is all still a few months away,” Sreedharan said. The academic, who has reported on the Kashmir conflict, the Kargil war, and the Maoist People’s War guerrilla movement, was drawn to the ‘Mahabharata’ due to the conflict at the heart of the warring Kauravas and Pandavas. (PTI)
Heroic dog hurt in Ohio house fire out of danger
New York: A 9-year-old heroic dog who tried to save her owner from a fatal house fire in the US state of Ohio is now out of danger even as her fans raised over USD 28,000 for her treatment.
Carmen, a boxer, owned by Ben Ledford of Goshen Township, is doing much better in an animal hospital recovering from smoke inhalation, said Phil Ledford, the victim’s brother, said. Carmen’s story of survival has gone global, and her survival and recovery have given the Ledford family something to hold on to. Fans of Carmen have donated more than USD 28,000 toward the USD 25,000 goal for the care of the dog.
“Our family continues to be amazed at the amount of donations, support, thoughts and prayers being said for our family and Carmen. We are still trying to find the right words to truly express our appreciation,” Ledford said. “Carmen is still doing well,” said Ledford. The canine is now in physical therapy (PT). “She’s working on being able to stand up on her own again, among other things. Because she’s fully awake and alert, our visits are short. We want her to save her energy for PT. “It’s exciting to see her recognize us, try to greet us and give us expressions that show her personality shining through once again,” he said on a crowdfunding site. Carmen dramatically tried to save her owner’s life in the February 5 fire. Deadly flames licked all around her, but the dog refused to leave her owner in a Cincinnati basement. (PTI)