News in Brief
Pippa gets job: Pippa Middleton, the younger sister of Prince William’s wife Catherine, has signed a deal to write for the in-house magazine of a British supermarket, it announced on Monday.
The 29-year-old, who shot to fame when she was a bridesmaid at the royal wedding in 2011, will share her tips on entertaining for friends in a monthly column for upmarket supermarket Waitrose.
In a statement, she said she was “delighted” at her new job at the magazine, for which she is the cover star for the April issue.
“My column, ‘Pippa’s Friday Night Feasts’, will be an exciting opportunity to share my own passion and enthusiasm for food and entertaining, and I can’t wait to get started,” she said. (AFP) Poor to get kebabs: Finnish food company Pouttu on Monday said it plans to donate kebab dishes found to contain horsemeat to charities for the poor, after receiving the green light from food safety authorities.
“It’s good if we can help those most in need,” Pouttu production manager Esko Virta said.
The company said around a dozen charities have expressed interest in distributing the kebab dishes to the poor, but that deliveries can only begin once cold trucks have been organised to deliver the food.
Pouttu last week withdrew more than five tonnes of kebab dishes from sale after internal company tests found traces of horsemeat in products listing other meats on their labels.
About 1.7 tonnes of dishes containing horsemeat that were still in Pouttu’s stocks will be donated. Initially fresh, the dishes were frozen last week after the horsemeat was discovered. (AFP) French beef sales fall: Sales of frozen prepared dishes containing beef plummeted by 45 percent in France in the week following the horsemeat scandal, a study showed on Monday.
The study by global consumer information company Nielsen, based on sales records from leading French supermarkets from February 11 to 17, showed a drop of about 300 tonnes in sales of prepared frozen dishes.
The drop represented a loss of about one million euros ($1.3 million), the study said, with the most affected dishes being lasagne (sales down 45 percent), shepherd’s pie (down 49 percent) and moussaka (down 52 percent). (AFP) UK aid for ICC: Britain pledged £1.4 million ($2.1 million, 1.6 million euros) on Monday to fund Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge war crimes court (ICC), which is close to running out of money.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the court, which is trying top leaders of the murderous communist regime that ruled Cambodia in the late 1970s, was one of the most important since the post-World War II Nuremberg trials.
“Both the international and national sides of the court are facing severe financial shortfalls,” Hague told parliament.
“We will continue to call on international partners, including states in the region, to contribute to the court.”
The court, whose top donors include Japan, the European Union, Australia, France and Germany as well as Britain, urgently needs $9.5 million for 2013.
Some 270 of its Cambodian employees, including drivers, prosecutors and judges, have received no pay since November. (AFP)