India highlighted at Australian cultural extravaganza
Melbourne: For the first time, an Indian theme highlighting the country’s rich cultural heritage was part of the biggest cultural festival here, drawing a massive crowd of nearly half a million people.
The 12-hour-long ‘White Night 2015’ had a centrepiece on Indian culture named ‘Sita’s Garden’ and treated the crowd to 80 free eye-popping events which illuminated nine precincts last night and this morning. Sita’s Garden, which tapped into several aspects of Indian culture, was curated by festival director Andrew Walsh and Melbourne-raised Bollywood star Pallavi Sharda. Melbourne’s growing Indian community prompted the idea of doing an Indian theme, Walsh said. (PTI)
UK to unveil Gandhi statue on March 14
London: The much-awaited Mahatma Gandhi’s bronze statue at Britain’s historic Parliament Square here will be unveiled on March 14, Prime Minister David Cameron announced on Sunday.
The announcement came as the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust surpassed the 1-million pound mark in donations, with steel tycoon Lakshmi N Mittal adding 100,000 pounds and the Infosys Board chaired by K V Kamath 250,000 pounds in the last few weeks.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is expected to be the special guest at the ceremony to install the statue which will be the last one to up in the square alongside South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela and Britain’s war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
“The statue in Parliament Square not only marks his huge importance in the history of both our countries, but will enrich the firm bond of friendship between the world’s oldest democracy and its largest,” Cameron said in a statement. (PTI)
115-year-old woman credits raw eggs, singlehood for long life
New York: A 115-year-old woman, the oldest living person in Europe, believes the secret to her longevity is eating raw eggs and staying single for most of her life. At 115 years and nearly three months, Emma Morano in Italy is the oldest person in Europe and the fifth oldest in the world.
Morano’s elixir for longevity consists of raw eggs, which she has been eating – three per day – since her teens when a doctor recommended them to counter anemia. Morano is also convinced that being single for most of her life, after an unhappy marriage that ended in 1938 following the death of an infant son, has kept her kicking, ‘The New York Times’ reported.
Morano never chose another partner because she “didn’t want to be dominated by anyone.” Morano lives alone in a two-room apartment in Verbania and the few times that she has been ill, she has refused to set foot in a hospital. She even had blood transfusions or stitches done at home, said Carlo Bava, the doctor who has cared for her since she turned 90. Her general health is good, he added. (PTI)
Egyptian bronze cat fetches 52,000 pounds at UK auction
London: An ancient Egyptian bronze cat that was nearly thrown in the trash has sold for a whopping 52,000 pounds at an auction in the UK. Auctioneer David Lay found the cat sculpture, thought to be 2,500 years old, during a house clearance in west Cornwall. The bronze sculpture bought by a “prominent London dealer” was expected to sell for as much as 10,000 pounds, but went for five times that estimate. The original owners had no idea of the artefact’s value and were going to throw it in a skip, BBC news reported. The “perfectly proportioned” cat was owned by Douglas Liddell who died in 2003. He was a one-time managing director of Spink and Son, a London firm that handled sales of Egyptian antiquities. The cat, complete with gold earrings, has been dated to approximately 700 to 500 BC – and the auctioneer said it would have been commissioned by an Egyptian of considerable means and high status. “We were delighted and surprised to find this 26th Dynasty bronze bust of a cat, complete with it’s original gold earrings in a local cottage,” the auction house said. “However, once we discovered that it had originally been owned by a one-time managing director of Spink & Son, one of London’s oldest and greatest art dealing institutions, who had retired to Cornwall, it’s presence here made much more sense,” it said. (PTI)