Quirky World ... Politician who missed vote was badly briefed
Opposition politician Pat Martin told parliament he had bought some men’s underwear for half price which were clearly too small for him, making it difficult to sit for any length of time.
He apologised for missing the vote amid laughter in the chamber and asked for his vote to be counted. The speaker of the House of Commons allowed his vote.
Saying “Om” actually does help you feel calmer, the Sunday Times reported.
Researchers who studied 21 men listening to a mantra found that, as the chanting progressed, the parts of the brain used in day-to-day activity slowed while those involved in emotional awareness took over.
Uttam Kumar of the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow, India, said: “Listening to the ‘Om’ sound . . . activates areas of the bilateral cerebellum, left middle frontal gyrus and right precuneus.”
Agatha Christie’s devotion to fans has been highlighted in a series of touching letters she collected over the years.
The bestselling crime writer hoarded hundreds of messages from her readers which have been published for the first time to mark the 125th anniversary of her birthday.
They include a note from the author PG Wodehouse and a Polish woman in London, who told how one of Christie’s novels helped her to survive a war-time labour camp in Germany.
MPs, peers and their staff are munching through 100,000 bars of chocolate and packets of sweets each year, according to the Sunday Times.
Freedom of information figures revealed the cafes, shops and coffee bars at Westminster sold 199,966 items of confectionery between 2013 and 2014.
Kit Kats were the most popular snack, with more than 39,000 sold over the two years.
Bugs in a gourmet kitchen are usually something to be squashed or swatted — but at esteemed French cooking school Le Cordon Bleu, chefs and food scientists have been simmering, sauteing and grilling insects to extract innovative flavours they say could open a new gastronomic frontier.
As a finale to their research, the school’s Bangkok branch held a seminar called Edible Insects in a Gastronomic Context, which booked up weeks in advance and offered a tasting menu which included a vial of ant-infused gin, a shot glass of warm cricket consomme, then an hors d’oeuvre of beetle butter and herb crisp.
Before anyone else could crack a joke about bugs in fine French food, the chefs made their own. “This is the first time that insects have been granted access to the Cordon Bleu,” instruct Christophe Mercier said with a smile.
Cheese lovers are already lining up to secure a nibble of a 20-year-old cheddar set to be released for sale early this summer.
Hook’s Cheese in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, created a stir in the cheese world in 2009 when it debuted a 15-year-old cheddar. John Hook set aside another 500lb for sale this year.
The Wisconsin State Journal reports that despite a price tag of $209 (€183) per pound, foodies are eagerly ordering now, although the cheese will not be available until late May. Mr Hook’s cheese is not a case of forgotten inventory, but a plan he put in place after his 15-year product was such a hit.
Staff at a branch of Afghanistan’s central bank in southern Kandahar province may have got away with as much as 81m Afghanis (€1.2m) when they robbed their own bank and ran, an official said.
Security cameras showed the bank’s vault had been cleaned out, but investigators were waiting to gain access before confirming the total missing, he said.
“Yesterday we could only open one of the treasury’s doors. We hope to open the next one today,” the central bank director for Afghanistan’s southwestern region, Fazel Ahmad Azimi, said.
Weak regulation undermines confidence in Afghanistan’s fragile banking system, which has yet to fully recover from a 2010 scandal over a bank that collapsed triggering a financial crisis.
An international financial watchdog last year threatened to place Afghanistan on a blacklist and has since warned it needs to do more to enforce laws to regulate its banking sector.
The Kandahar raid is believed to have been carried out by a senior official at the bank, an employee of nine years, with the help of his son and brother-in-law who were also on staff, according to Azimi.
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