World Vignettes — A drink a day keeps death at bay

DEC 11: BOSTON: The biggest study ever of alcohol's effects on health found that a drink a day in middle age reduces the risk of death by 2...

DEC 11: BOSTON: The biggest study ever of alcohol’s effects on health found that a drink a day in middle age reduces the risk of death by 20 per cent. The research documented this decrease over a nine-year period in American men and women whose average age at the start of the study was 56. Many reports over the past two decades have shown that a little alcohol is good for the heart. However, some have also found an increased risk of breast cancer and other diseases. The latest research, conducted by the American Cancer Society, attempts to add up the pluses and minuses and calculate the net effect of alcohol on health. Like most other studies, this one found that modest drinking is, on balance, healthful.

Another Bobbit

FAIRFIELD: A US woman was on the run yesterday after apparently seducing the man convicted of killing her friend and taking revenge by slicing off his penis with a knife, police said. Alan Hall, 43, suffered the injury from Brenda. Doctors were unable to reattach Hall’s organ. Brenda was till at large. Police said the tale of sharp revenge began in 1983 when Hall was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of Denise Denofrio. Brenda, apparently a friend of Denofrio but unknown as such by Hall, somehow met the latter at a petrol station on Thursday and accompanied him to the house where he lived.

Diana song

LONDON: Pop singer Elton John on Wednesday gave a check for 20 million pounds (32 million dollars) to Princess Diana’s Memorial Fund, the first installment from the sale of Candle in the wind, the hit song he reworked in her honor. The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, set up after her death in a Paris car crash on August 31, will channel the money to her favourite charities. John moved many mourners to tears when he sang Candle in the wind at Diana’s funeral.

Saddam Mosque’

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BAGHDAD: Saddam Hussein has approved the design for what he calls the world’s largest mosque — a domed hall capable of holding 30,000 worshipers alongside a huge artificial lake shaped like a map of the Arab world.

Iraqi newspapers carried a picture on Wednesday of the Iraqi leader and his Cabinet examining plans for the Baghdad mosque, to be called the Saddam Grand Mosque’. The largest existing mosque is the King Hassan Mosque in Morocco, with a capacity for 18,000 people.