World Vignettes

Unique museum

PARIS: Brushed off with art museums and historic buildings? Try a heartwarming new Paris museum dedicated to hot water bottles. From a 15th century tin bed-warmer used by nuns for chilly convent beds to a grenade-shaped hand-warmer, they are all on display in two tiny rooms at the back of a courtyard. "I like a bit of a laugh, and the idea for a hot water bottle museum came to me by chance," said museum creator Albert Weinberg, a 78-year-old former fashion designer.

The first "cama"

DUBAI: The first of a new cross-bred animal species called "cama" has been produced successfully for the first time at Dubai’s camel reproduction centre, the Gulf News daily reported Tuesday. Named Rama, the 5.5-kg first specimen of the camel-llama crossbreeding, was born after artificial insemination of a llama, the newspaper said. "It took a lot of patience but now it has happened. We are all delighted," Dr Lulu Skidmore, technical director of the centre was quoted as saying in the newspaper.