August 02, 2008

 Bd Beggars Seek Law On Minimum Donations
 

DHAKA: A group of beggars in northern Bangladesh are lobbying local politicians to set a minimum rate that people can give them because they are struggling with spiralling inflation, an official said.

Kurigram council chairman Abubakr Siddiqui said about 40 beggars held a rally in the town at the weekend to raise awareness about their plight.

“They demanded the local council fix the minimum rate of alms at one taka (1.45 cents). At the moment most people who give them money give between 10 and 50 paisa,” he said.

“They say the soaring cost of food is taking its toll. Their daily collection is not enough to buy adequate food for their families,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of people depend on begging for their income in Bangladesh.

An average beggar in the capital Dhaka, home to some 27,000 beggars, earns about 100 taka a day, enough to buy three kilograms of rice, according to a 2005 survey. Beggars in regional towns earn much less.—AFP
 

Monkey from Mars!
 

DECATUR, Georgia: The mini-museum of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation can boast of possessing such an other-world oddity as the monkey from Mars.

Along with its requisite displays on forensic science, tucked away in a glass cylinder are the preserved remains of a monkey that three pranksters passed off as an alien 55 years ago in a UFO hoax that drew headlines worldwide. At the height of UFO hysteria then sweeping America, two young barbers and a butcher took a dead monkey in 1953, lopped off its tail and applied a liberal dose of hair remover and some green colouring to the carcass.

Then they left the primate on an isolated road north of Atlanta in the pre-dawn hours of July 8, 1953, burning a circle into the pavement with a blowtorch before a police officer came around the curve in his patrol car.

The barbers, Edward Watters and Tom Wilson, and the butcher, Arnold ‘Buddy’ Payne, told the policeman they came upon a red, saucer-shaped object in the road that night. They said several 2-foot-tall creatures scurried the creature that evening.

Watters, Wilson and Payne eventually admitted to the hoax and Watters paid a $40 fine for obstructing a highway. —APP
 

‘There’s Possibility of Life in Space’
 

TOKYO: The US commander of space shuttle Discovery believes life probably exists somewhere in outer space, but there is a simple reason why aliens have not visited earth — the journey is too tough.

“We have seen some evidence that there is a possibility of some life on Mars in the past, so there is probably life all over the universe,” astronaut Mark Kelly told a news conference in Tokyo, where he was joined by other members of the Discovery crew.

The Discovery delivered Japans Kibo orbital laboratory to the International Space Station in June. Kelly described the $1 billion, 32-ton module as a “Lexus of a space station” where everything worked perfectly.

“Certainly like a Japanese car, Kibo was very well-made,” he said. “It is going to be the premier laboratory of the space station for many years to come.”

Japan, the last of the 16-nation partnership to get its hardware in space, is expected to complete the three-part lab next year. —Reuters
 

Lost Letter Makes It Way Back Home 60 Years Later
 

LAWRENCE, Kansas: A letter detailing the mood after Harry S. Truman was elected US president — lost in the postal system for nearly 60 years — recently turned up in the mailbox of a Kansas woman.

Xan Wedel found the letter, postmarked November 11, 1948, in her mailbox last Friday, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. The envelope was stamped with “Return to sender” and “Found in supposedly empty mailbox,” the newspaper said.

The letter was addressed to a Ruth Willisten in Rockfall, Connecticut, but it never reached its destination. It was sent by Gertrude Gilmore, who lived at Wedel’s house in 1948.

Wedel said she thinks the Gilmore family built her home in 1890 and that Gertrude was a daughter.

“It’s impossible to really know what may or may not have happened,” Lawrence Postmaster Judy Raney said of the letter. “No matter what, we always take it and go ahead and send it on.”

Wedel said she is preserving the letter. She said she now has interest in the family who built the home she’s lived in for nearly four years.

“It would be really interesting to see if they are still in town or have any descendants that would know the history behind her and who she was writing,” Wedel said.—AP