Kuwait Times

Published Date: May 24, 2007

KUWAIT: Health authorities have shut down a popular restaurant in Jahra for allegedly mixing cat meat with frozen meat and touting frozen meat as fresh. Officials said several customers had complained against the eatery, charging it was making shawerma with frozen meat mixed with meat from stray cats. Health authorities stormed the restaurant after monitoring its activities, and confiscated meat kept in storage, which was found unfit for human consumption. Even dogs refrained from eating it, officials said, adding they were afraid the restaurant might reopen through wasta.

Gulf fighters throng Iraq

KUWAIT:  Seventy percent of foreign insurgents arrested in Iraq come from Gulf countries via Syria where they were provided with forged passports, an Iraqi intelligence officer alleged in a published report yesterday. "They, according to their own confessions, gather in mosques in the said (Gulf) states to travel to Syria using their passports, taking with them phone numbers of individuals waiting for them there," Brig Gen Rashid Fleih, the assistant undersecretary for intelligence of Iraq's Interior Ministry, told Al-Qabas daily. He said once in Syria, the alleged insurgents are transported to the Al-Qaim border area, where they are provided with new passports. Once in Iraq, the insurgents are provided with forged Iraqi documentation and "lots of money which they use to buy cars and booby trap them". He also accused Baathists of offering the foreign insurgents information about targets.
 
Wall collapse kills 27

CHENNAI:  A boundary wall for a planned factory collapsed on an adjacent bar in southern India yesterday, killing 27 people and injuring five, police said. The wall came down on a crowded state-run bar in the town of Tirupur, some 500 km southwest of Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu state, in the evening during heavy rain. "Most of those killed were labourers," Deputy Inspector General of Police M L Manjunath said.

'Green' Charles waxwork

LONDON: Madame Tussauds unveiled a new environmentally friendly wax figure of Prince Charles yesterday to reflect his efforts to combat climate change. To create its first "green" figure, workers recycled wax from a 1989 figure of the Prince of Wales and updated it with 37 kg of organic beeswax, 25 kg of clay and fibreglass. Artists used organic pigments to color the skin.  Sculptors worked only with their hands and in daylight to cut down on electricity usage. Workers rode bicycles to attend planning meetings during the four-month project. The remaining carbon the process generated was to be offset by the planting of three trees in Cornwall.
 
'Slavery' couple indicted

GARDEN CITY, New York: A millionaire couple accused of keeping two Indonesian women as slaves in their luxurious New York home for years - viciously inflicting abuse for perceived offenses - have been indicted on federal slavery charges. Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 35, and her husband, Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, who operate a worldwide perfume business out of their home in Long Island, New York, with factories in Singapore and Bahrain, were arrested last week after one of their servants was found wandering outside a doughnut shop. The indictment, handed up Tuesday night, charges the couple with two counts of forced labor and two counts of harboring illegal residents.