Outcry as Pygmies are housed in zoo

A GROUP of 20 Pygmy musicians who were taking part in a Pan-African music festival were housed in tents at a zoo in the Congo city of Brazzaville. This sparked an outcry with human rights activists accusing the organisers yesterday of mistreating the Pygmies. The Pygmies, from Congo's northeast Likouala forest region, had been gathering wood daily in the zoo to prepare fires to cook their food, said executive director of the Congolese Observatory of Human Rights Roger Bouka Owoko. "We denounce this discrimination," Owoko said. He added the group included a three-month-old baby. Organisers of the festival said as Pygmies normally live in the forest, they had hoped to recreate their natural habitat by housing them in the zoo. But officials said they were going to relocate the group to a hotel.

Baby born drunk

A POLISH baby came into the world under the influence of alcohol because his mother was drunk during labour, police said yesterday. Tests 12 hours after the birth revealed a level of 1.2gm of alcohol per 1,000 gm of blood. The baby was in intensive care and although he was in a stable condition, doctors said they feared his brain could have suffered lasting damage. His mother fled the hospital in the southern city of Zabrze after the birth but was later arrested

Intruder found in toilet

A WOMAN who stepped out to buy a newspaper returned home in Virginia to find that an intruder had made himself comfortable on her toilet. The man apparently cut a screen and unlocked a door while the woman in her 80's was out, police said. The man is described as a Hispanic male in his late 20's

US teen birth rate falls

FEWER US high school students are having sex these days and more are using condoms. The teen birth rate has hit a record low. More young people are finishing high school and more little kids are being read to, according to the latest government snapshot on the well-being of the nation's children released yesterday. The teen birth rate was 21 per 1,000 young women ages 15-17 in 2005 - an all-time low.

'Insulting' gesture

FLIPPING up your middle finger at a Dutch policeman is insulting, appeals judges ruled yesterday. A 25-year-old man who made the gesture to two police officers in the town of Almelo on May 25, 2006, was sentenced to three months imprisonment for crimes including theft, public disorder, refusing to give a breath test and the middle-finger gesture.