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Holy water fails airport security test

By Times Wires
Published August 30, 2007

PARIS

Even holy water from the Roman Catholic shrine at Lourdes can't get by airport security screening passengers for suspicious liquids. Italian television personality Paola Saluzzi, flying on a new Vatican-backed charter airline, had to hand over a container of water collected at Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral to security officials at the airport in southern France on Monday before boarding a return flight to Rome, officials for Mistral Air said. Airport officials refused to comment on the incident, saying only that international regulations banning passengers from carrying containers with more than 3 ounces of liquid aboard are applied across the board.

Dublin, Ireland

Country's warming beats global rate

Ireland's average temperature has been rising at twice the global rate since the early 1980s and parts of the country are becoming wetter and more prone to flooding due to climate change, a report compiled by National University of Ireland climatologists for the Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday. It said Ireland's average temperature has been rising at the rate of 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1980, and six of Ireland's 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 1990.

Amman, Jordan

U.S. school model for Jordan king

King Abdullah II on Wednesday opened a private school in Jordan that is modeled after Deerfield Academy, the Massachusetts prep school he attended as a young man. About 100 male and female students from Jordan and the region are enrolled in King's Academy in Manja, about 20 miles southwest of Amman. Abdullah studied at Deerfield from 1977 to 1980.

Elsewhere

Kinshasa, Congo: More than 100 people have died in a remote part of Congo, including all those who attended the funerals of two village chiefs, in what health officials fear is an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever.

London: Police arrested a 15-year-old boy Wednesday on suspicion of murdering Rhys Jones, 11, as he returned home from a soccer game in the northern city of Liverpool. Eleven people arrested earlier have been released on bail or freed without charge.

New Delhi: Police imposed a curfew in the northern Indian city of Agra, home to the country's most popular tourist attraction, the Taj Mahal, after a truck ran over and killed four men on a motorcycle early Wednesday, fueling violent clashes on the streets.

Istanbul, Turkey: Turkish troops killed eight Kurdish rebels in a clash in the country's southeast, reports said Wednesday. Security forces, acting on a tip from a defector, launched an operation in a rural area in the province of Siirt, some 680 miles southeast of the capital, Ankara, state-run news agency Anatolia said.

Yangon, Myanmar: Pro-government gangs on trucks staked out key streets in Myanmar's largest city on Wednesday as the country's military rulers sought to crush a rare wave of dissent by pro-democracy activists protesting fuel price increases.

Moscow: Prosecutors charged a soldier Wednesday in connection with the death on Monday of Pvt. Sergei Sinkonen, a conscript who was allegedly beaten by two drunken officers and left overnight in a dog kennel.

[Last modified August 30, 2007, 00:44:43]