A round-up of today's other world news in brief ...
Advance booking for place in sun
BERLIN – German tourists can now reserve their poolside recliners – before they even leave home. The German arm of Thomas Cook travel has been deluged with inquiries since announcing that holidaymakers at hotels in Turkey, Egypt and the Canary Islands can book recliners in advance for a fee.
Germans are famous for rising early to reserve recliners near the pool with their towels, and then going back to bed or eating a lengthy breakfast.
– (Reuters)
Obama regrets "stupid" remark
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said yesterday he should have chosen his words more carefully when he said police “acted stupidly” in arresting a prominent black Harvard scholar, touching off a debate over race.
Mr Obama made his comments after talking on the telephone to Sgt James Crowley, the officer from Cambridge, Massachusetts, who made the arrest. He discussed inviting Sgt Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates to the White House for a beer.
“Because this has been ratcheting up and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge police department or Sgt Crowley specifically,” Mr Obama said. “And I could have calibrated those words differently.” –(Reuters)
PM's woes
ROME – Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s private conversations with an escort may wind up getting him into trouble with Italy’s archaeological authorities.
In one transcript of his purported conversations with escort Patrizia D’Addario posted on a website, Mr Berlusconi boasts about his villa in Sardinia with “30 Phoenician tombs from [around] 300 BC”. The clip immediately raised concerns. Under Italian law archaeological discoveries made on private property must be reported to the authorities. –(Reuters)
17 killed in Iran aircraft blaze
TEHRAN – Seventeen people were killed when a passenger aircraft caught fire while landing at the airport of Mashhad in northeastern
Iran yesterday, state news agency IRNA reported.
An airport official said there were 153 people on board the aircraft, which had flown to Mashhad from Tehran, and that 23 of them had been injured, according to the state broadcaster’s website IRIB.
“Seventeen people were killed . . . after a passenger plane caught fire at an airport in Mashhad,” IRNA said, adding that the remaining passengers had been evacuated.
Earlier this month an Iranian plane flying to Armenia crashed in northwestern Iran, killing all 168 people on board.
Iranian airlines, including those run by the state, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered.
– (Reuters/PA)
UK cartoonist John Ryan dies at 88
JOHN RYAN, the animator and cartoonist best known for his popular character Captain Pugwash, has died at the age of 88, his agents said today.
Ryan, who died on Wednesday at the Rye, Winchelsea and District Memorial Hospital in Rye, East Sussex, created Captain Pugwash as a comic strip for The Eagle in 1950 while teaching art at Harrow.
His life-long fascination with pirates began when his family moved to Morocco where, from his bedroom window, he caught glimpses of real pirate ships in the port of Rabat.
The BBC commissioned a series of animated shorts featuring the bumbling character Pugwash in 1957 and used a system of cut-out characters and boats which were moved by concealed cardboard levers.
Other characters created by Ryan that appeared on the BBC included Mary, Mungo and Midge and the Adventures of Sir Prancelot.
Audio tapes of the Pugwash books and videos of the television episodes were launched in the 1980s. – (PA)