ABRACADABRA

Helicopter as Birthday Gift
Queen Elizabeth II has decided to treat her grandson Prince William to a £8 million helicopter as an early birthday present, reports PTI from London.
The 2008 Augusta A109S Grand will be used to ferry William and wife Kate between official royal engagements.
The Duke of Cambridge, who turns 32 tomorrow, is a qualified RAF helicopter pilot but it is not clear whether he will get behind the controls of the Augusta.
The Daily Mirror reported that the aircraft will be leased out by the Queen, and that other members of the royal family also be able to use the aircraft.

Sources close to the royal couple told Sky News that the helicopter, which has no previous owners, represented “better value for money”.      

Karachi raises water bill on 

Jinnah’s sister after ½ a 

    century of her death

KARACHI: Pakistani authorities here have sent a water bill amounting Rs. 263,774 to Fatima Jinnah (in picture in a photo from the archives), the sister of the country’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, 47 years after her death. 

The Karachi Water and Sewerage Board has sent the bill to Fatima Jinnah and she has been directed to pay the amount within 10 days of receipt of the notice, the News reported. 

It said that according to the Land Revenue Act, the property could be confiscated, auctioned and a fine can be imposed. 

According to the notice, the last date for payment of the amount was May 28.

Her address has been written as RA 241, Cantt, a property of Jinnah which is being used as a museum. In September 1948, Fatima moved into the house and lived there till 1964. After losing an election in 1965, she vacated the house. She died in 1967. 

Commissioner of Karachi said he had directed the managing director of Karachi water board to take back the notice. – PTI  

Demonstration better than precept!

New York: The mother of a 12-year-old student was arrested in the US after her son brought a hand grenade to school as the class was studying World War II. The son of Lisa Marie Miguel, 44, brought the WWII simulated hand grenade to the Johnson Academy in Stratford, Connecticut. The student told the teacher he brought in the grenade because they were studying World War II. The students at Johnson Academy were moved from their classrooms to the auditorium and Stratford police along with the Connecticut State Police were called to the scene, the WFSB-TV reported.   

Jilted lover books 4 cinemas to prove his girlfriend wrong

Beijing: A jilted Chinese man spent $40,000 to book four entire IMAX cinemas for first-day showings of the latest Transformers movie on Friday to prove his ex-girlfriend was wrong when she dumped him for being poor seven years ago, he said. 

“Hu Xiaoyun: I was so poor when we were in our fourth year at college in 2007 that I could not afford just two film tickets,” the man said in a posting on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo. “You said when you left for Beijing that I will always be that way. I have been working hard for the past seven years because of that sentence and today I spent half my monthly income to book all the seats in Beijing’s IMAX cinemas on June 27. I just want to say maybe your choice back then was wrong.” He called on Internet users to spread the message “until she sees it” and promised to reward reposters with free tickets. They quickly ran out, and his message had been reposted more than 110,000 times by Friday. 

The man said separately that his old flame had contacted him by phone. Both had put the feud behind them, he indicated, but there was no hope of rekindling their relationship. –AFP  

Attention at what cost!

A 23-year-old Australian woman was jailed for six years for deliberately poisoning her four-year-old daughter with cancer drugs and then detailing the girl’s “fight for life” on Facebook to garner attention, the Brisbane Courier-Mail reported. The mother, who was not named to protect the identity of the child, pleaded guilty for giving the drugs to her child. The mother’s lawyer said the woman suffered a rare mental disorder by proxy, whereby a person deliberately produces or exaggerates symptoms of someone in their care. The child is now under the care of her grandparents and is making good recovery. 

Beware, there could be dead body next to you

London: A BBC documentary about British Airways has revealed the techniques which flight attendants use to deal and disguise people who die when on flight, says ANI. 

According to the Sunday People, to avoid chaos in between the aircraft cabin crew has to use some bizarre methods to hide the dead body, the Mirror reported. 

A woman trainer told that earlier they used to mask them with vodka and tonic, a newspaper and eye shades but now they just cover up the body with blanket up to the neck. 

The trainer says, according to, The Mirror, “In a nice easy world, if somebody dies, which someone dying on an aircraft isn’t, you put them back in their seat. I know crew who had to sit next to somebody who had passed away for the rest of the flight. The main thing is you cannot block a door, you cannot put a dead passenger in a toilet. It is not respectful and also they are not strapped in for landing.”