FRANCE’S BABY PANDA HAS HIS 1ST BIRTHDAY
FRANCE» France’s BEAUVAL, first baby panda celebrated his first birthday Saturday with a cake of bamboo, honey, apples, oranges, strawberries and lemons.
The panda named Yuan Meng — which means “accomplishment of a dream” — weighs about 66 pounds. He has recently started eating bamboo while still suckling milk from his mother, Huan Huan.
For the occasion Saturday, the Beauval Zoo south of Paris was free to all visitors born Aug. 4.
Yuan Meng’s mother and father, Yuan Zi, are at Beauval on a 10-year loan from China aimed at highlighting its good ties with France.
Family of four dies in crash of small plane. A small plane crashed Saturday into a forest in central Switzerland, killing a local family of four who had just taken off for France, police said.
Police in the central state of Nidwalden said an aircraft went down Saturday morning near the town of Hergiswil, which is on Lake Lucerne at the foot of Mount Pilatus. Authorities had to send up a helicopter to extinguish the resulting fire before rescue workers could get to the scene, they said.
There was no immediate word on the possible cause of the crash, which was under investigation by Swiss authorities.
Police said later Saturday the victims were a couple and their two children from the region aboard the plane, which had taken off less than 20 minutes earlier from an airfield in Kaegiswil and was headed for France.
Party names jailed leader as presidential nominee. PAULO» The
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Workers’ Party in Brazil named jailed former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Saturday as its nominee for the country’s top job. Delegates of the left-leaning party confirmed da Silva, who served two terms as Brazil’s president between 2003 and 2010, with enthusiastic approval at a convention in São Paulo. Since March, the former president has been jailed on a corruption conviction, but he denies any wrongdoing and claims he is being persecuted politically.
Woman fined $156 for wearing face veil in Denmark. A 28-year-old woman wearing a face veil has become the first person in Denmark to be fined for violating a new law banning such garments in public places. Police were called Friday to a shopping center in Horsholm, a city of 46,000 close to Copenhagen, to confront a woman wearing a niqab. The woman was fined $156 and was asked to remove the veil or leave the premises. She opted to leave.
Since Aug.1, the country’s much-debated “burqa ban” has prohibited fullbody burqas, as well the niqab — Muslim dress that shows only the eyes.
Austria, France and Belgium have similar laws.