World Vignettes

The case seeks 200 billion in damages for up to 500,000 sick Florida smokers. It is the latest challenge for the industry, which has settled four state lawsuits for nearly 37 billion and has let only individual smokers8217; cases go to juries, with mixed results. The smokers charge the tobacco industry made a defective product and conspired to deceive the public and government about smoking-related illnesses.

Van Gogh painting

ROME: Police has announced eight arrests and therecovery of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh und Paul Cezanne stolen from Italy8217;s Modern Art Museum in Rome at the end of May. The overall value of the three paintings, which were undamaged, was far in excess of 5.5 million, authorities said on Monday.

One of the arrested was a woman who had worked as a guard in the museum, Culture minister Walter Veltroni told reporters. The works were two portraits by Van Gogh, Madame Ginoux 1890 and The Gardener 1889, and Cezanne8217;s Le Cabanon De Jourdan, his last oil painting before he died in 1906.

Hairstyle goes on Internet

BARCELONA: Hairstylist Josep Maria Urbea, based in Barcelona, is offering hairstyling advice on the Internet. Within 48 hours and without even leaving the house, customers can see themselves on their computer screens with up to four different hairstyles. All they have to do is scan in a photograph of themselves, answer a few questions about their hair quality and style preferences classic, casual or extravagant, and transfer 20. They can also add specific instructions such as I hate fringes8217;. The Spanish culture ministry was so impressed that it decided to use the idea to help train hairdressers. Internet address: Urbea.com.

Worldly wise monk

BANGKOK: One day after handing over 182 kg of gold, a popular thai Buddhist monk has donated at least 1.2 million to the country8217;s central bank, proceeds from a campaign to help the government cope with an economic downturn.

The 87-year-old monk, Phra Maha Bua Yanasampanno from the northeastern province of Udorn Thani, collected the donations from overseas Thais as well as his devotees throughout the country.

His campaign, begun in April this year, was one of several launched with the general theme of Thai help Thai.8217;

Surrogate cow mother dies

TOKYO: A surrogate cow that gave birth to cloned twin calves died, a day after Japanese researchers celebrated the first cloning from the biopsied cells of an adult cow. A spokesman for IshikawaPrefecture Livestock Research Centre, where the cloning was carried out, said the surrogate died on Monday, 34 hours after giving birth to the twin females. Officials at the centre, north of Tokyo, said they were performing an autopsy to determine the cause of death. The calves were born eight minutes apart on Sunday. The surrogate stopped eating about 24 hours after the births and died despite intravenous feeding when her condition was discovered. The cow had given birth to twin calves produced by cloningsomatic cells taken from an adult cow with unfertilised eggs.

Exposing poverty of Ukraine

KIEV: More than 100,000 Ukrainian women, many of them minors, have been trapped and enslaved in the western sex industry since 1991, the International Organisation for Migration IOM said. It is very hard to say how many women have been trafficked to the West because by its nature. This is a criminal problem,8221; Steve Cook, the IOM8217;s representative in Ukraine, said in Kiev on Monday.

Theenslavementwomen, duped by false promises of a better life in the West, is the most brutal outcome of economic hardship suffered by the former Soviet republic8217;s 50 million population since independence in 1991.