Two Bangladeshi men lived in New Delhi airport for 48 days as they did not have passports to return home in a reprise of a role played by Tom Hanks in the Hollywood film "The Terminal", a newspaper said on Thursday.
The men were sent back to the Indian capital by Saudi Arabian authorities in March for arriving without proper papers on a Dhaka-Delhi-Riyadh Air India flight, the Times of India newspaper reported.
Saudi Arabia keeps passports of such visitors and sends them back with emergency travel certificates, the daily quoted an airline spokesman as saying.
But with Dhaka not allowing people without passports to enter the country, the men who had left their homes hoping for lucrative jobs in Saudi Arabia were stuck in the transit lounge of Delhi's Indira Gandhi airport.
Simon de Bruxelles
The TimesFri, 04 May 2007 15:54 UTC
Rose, the goat that found international celebrity last year after being forced into marriage with a Sudanese man, has died after accidentally swallowing a plastic bag.
The town of Juba in southern Sudan, if not exactly in mourning, at least has the satisfaction of having had the world in stitches, having been the source of one of the internet's best-read news items.
It is a story that began in February last year when the BBC Monitoring Service reported that a Mr Alifi had been startled by a noise in the middle of the night. Leaving the safety of his wattle hut, Mr Alifi went outside to find a stranger engaged in indecorous behaviour with his goat.
Matt Frei
BBCThu, 03 May 2007 19:22 UTC
I am happy to report to you that the Oxford Union, in its infinite wisdom, has allowed America to continue existing.
After a raucous debate in front of a packed house, the motion - "this House regrets the Founding of America" - was overwhelmingly squashed.
Police in Germany had to call in a locksmith to break into jail when the lock on a cell broke, trapping a prisoner inside, authorities said Wednesday.
NBCThu, 03 May 2007 10:14 UTC
A recent survey found that seven out of 10 U.S. adults take their laundry to a dry cleaner -- and it sometimes happens that things get lost.
But in Washington, D.C., an unsatisfied customer has turned a dispute with his cleaner into a huge legal battle, asking a court to award him millions of dollars over a pair of pants.
Roy Pearson, a D.C.-area judge, is the plaintiff in the case. Pearson said it all began two years ago when he took the pants from a pinstripe suit to a dry cleaner for alterations. He claims the cleaner lost the pants, then tried to pass off other gray slacks as his.
Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.
They'll also find the Gaia equipped with waterless urinals, solar lighting and recycled paper as it marches toward becoming California's first hotel certified as ''green,'' or benevolent to the environment. Similar features are found 35 miles south at San Francisco's Orchard Garden Hotel, which competes for customers with neighboring luxury hotels like the Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont.
''I'm not your traditional Birkenstocks and granola type of guy,'' said Stefan Muehle, general manager of the Orchard Garden, who said green measures are reducing energy costs as much as 25 percent a month. ''We're trying to dispel the myth that being green and being luxurious are mutually exclusive.''
A federal judge sentenced an Idaho inmate to three years in prison for threatening to kill George W. Bush in a letter in which the accused called the U.S. president "stupid," federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Ricky Arnell Ward, 20, put his name and address on the January 2006 letter he sent to the FBI claiming he planned to kill the president because "he is a stupid ... man."
Ward said Bush needed to be killed before he got "all the people in the USA killed," according to a release by the U.S. attorney's office in Idaho. He was sentenced on Monday.
PATNA, India - Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom's more sober brother instead, police said Monday.
TWIN FALLS, Idaho - Canoeist Dennis Bohrn and his companions were stunned when they saw a woman jump off the Perrine Bridge, her body landing near them in the Snake River. Many in the group were crying by the time they managed to reach the woman and paddle her body to shore.
In a culture that finds it hard to love most bugs, spiders are nonetheless the ones we tend to accept or at least admire at a distance for their ingenuity with locomotion, insect hunting and home-building.
In each of those areas, the web's the thing, as any Spider-Man fan can see starting Friday when "Spider-Man 3" opens. Spider silk could stop a Boeing 747 in flight, is stronger than bullet-proof Kevlar and more elastic than nylon, biologists say.