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[World Affairs Overview]
Jealous emails led to CIA chief's downfall
US: The FBI uncovered the affair that led to the resignation
of CIA chief David Petraeus while investigating threatening emails sent
by his lover to a second woman, US media reported Sunday.
Petraeus, an American hero credited with turning the tide of the Iraq
war, resigned on Friday after admitting an extramarital affair, sending
shockwaves around Washington just three days after President Barack
Obama's re-election.
It has emerged that his paramour was Paula Broadwell, a 40-year-old
former Army major granted unprecedented access to the general as she
co-authored a best-selling biography: "All In: The Education of General
David Petraeus." Newspaper reports on Sunday revealed that the affair
came to light when the FBI was called in as part of a criminal
investigation launched when a second woman complained that she had
received vicious emails from Broadwell.
"It didn't start with Petraeus, but in the course of the
investigation they stumbled across him," an unnamed congressional
official briefed on the matter told The New York Times.
The threatening and harassing emails from Broadwell, a married mother
of two, indicated that she thought the other woman was a potential rival
for the 60-year-old general's affections, officials told the US media.
AFP
Pastry chefs bake their way into record book
SWITZERLAND: A legion of Swiss pastry chefs on Sunday baked their way
into the Guinness Book of World Records Sunday with a 1,221.6-metre
(4,007.9-foot) chocolate Napoleon, the ATS news agency reported.
Around 100 people, most of them pastry chefs, pulled together the
4.2-tonne mille-feuille pastry, breaking a record set in Belgium 20
years ago by nearly 200 metres, ATS said.
A total of 250 people had helped prepare the feat over the past six
months, according to Gilles Desplanches who initiated the project to
celebrate the 25th anniversary of his pastry shop.
The giant pastry, consisting of 864 litres (228 gallons) of cream,
576 litres of milk, 600 kilos (1,323 pounds) of flour, 432 kilos of
butter and 360 kilos of chocolate fondant, will be sliced into 30,000
pieces and sold. The expected 100,000-Swiss franc (83,000-euro,
$105,000) proceeds will go to an organisation combating breast cancer,
ATS reported. AFP
Tiger cub held in jail
PARAGUAY: A very special kind of prowler sat in a Paraguayan jail
cell Sunday: a small tiger cub found on a rooftop.
People in Itaugua Guazu, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of
Asuncion, called police about the meandering feline Friday. One witness
told a radio station it is not much bigger than an adult house cat. The
cub remained in a jail cell for safety purposes while authorities try to
figure out what to do with it. No one knows where it came from or how it
got on the roof.
AFP
EgyptAir stewardesses wear hijab
EGYPT: EgyptAir stewardesses who campaigned to wear the Muslim
headscarf have begun donning the hijab for the first time since the
national carrier was founded in 1932, a company official said on Sunday.
The first flight attendants dressed in the hijab, which mainstream
clerics say is mandatory, worked on flights to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia on
Saturday.
Under President Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled in an uprising in
early 2011, the hijab was taboo for women in some state institutions
such as state television and the national carrier.
But after the election of the Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in
June, women in television and EgyptAir campaigned for permission to wear
the hijab, like most Muslim women in Egypt. An EgyptAir official said a
foreign company has been contracted to design a cap and headscarf for
the estimated 250 stewardesses who want to wear the hijab, out of 900
women working for EgyptAir.
AFP
US serviceman apologises for assault
JAPAN: A US serviceman who allegedly hit a Japanese schoolboy
in the face after drunkenly breaking into his home in Okinawa has
apologised, an official said Monday.
The 24-year-old, who belongs to the US Air Force’s Kadena base, met
with the boy’s parents on Saturday afternoon in the village of Yomitan,
central Okinawa, the village official said, at a time of heightened
anti-US feeling there.
The man, whose name was withheld, allegedly broke into an apartment
and hit the 13-year-old after drinking in a village pub during curfew
hours.“Accompanied by his seniors, the man told the parents that he did
something inexcusable and said he was very sorry,” the official said.
“The parents told him that they want him to stand trial in a Japanese
court, and the man replied that he is ready to do so,” the official
said, adding that the boy listened to the conversation on a monitor from
a different room.
AFP
Bushfire razes homes in Australia
AUSTRALIA: Seven homes were destroyed by wildfire in
Australia, officials said Monday, warning of a long and and difficult
summer ahead for firefighters.
The large blaze at Tulka, 12 kilometres (seven miles) south of Port
Lincoln in South Australia state, razed the homes as it tore through
2,000 hectares (4,950 acres) of scrubland late Sunday, the Country Fire
Service (CFS) said.
Extra crews had been called in to help fight the fire, which was
burning within containment lines but was yet to be brought under
control. Residents had been evacuated.
AFP
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