odds ’n’ ends

SHIBIN EL KOM, Egypt: Mohamed Hagras stands barechested as dozens of honeybees congregate around his face, eventually forming what he calls the “Beard of Bees”. To attract the insects he has a box housing their queen’s hormones strapped to his chin.

The 31-year-old engineer-turned-beekeeper has been doing this for years both competitively — he fondly recalls a Canadian model’s “Bikini of Bees” at a beekeeping event — and as an effort to educate Egyptians on the usefulness of bees.

“The goal is to show that bees are not aggressive,” he told Reuters at his farm in Shibin El Kom, the capital of the Nile Delta province of Menoufia.

“One the contrary, they are helpful and produce things that help humans and agriculture.” (RTRS)

PARIS: He changed technology and how the world communicates. Now, five years after he died, Apple founder Steve Jobs may be remembered in another way — on a Paris street.

“Rue Steve Jobs” is among names shortlisted for one of the new roads in the French capital’s southeastern 13th arrondissement that will lead to a new incubator for hi-tech start-ups.

The tech titan’s name was put forward by the district’s socialist mayor who credited Jobs — whose company altered the face of computing, revolutionised music with the iPod and launched the iPhone and iPad — with “changing our daily lives”. (AFP)

LONDON: A British pensioner has returned a library book to her school some 63 years after taking it out, the librarian said Friday.

The woman, now in her 70s, found the 1929 copy of “Travels With A Donkey In The Cevennes” by Robert Louis Stevenson while clearing out her house.

The book, which charts the author’s 120-mile (195-kilometre) solo hike through the Cevennes mountains in southern France, contained a stamp showing it was due to be returned to North Walsham High School in Norfolk, eastern England, in 1953. (AFP)