World Briefs … World leaders pay final tribute to France’s Chirac

PARIS – Dozens of world leaders, including Russian president Vladimir Putin, on Monday paid their final respects to ex-president Jacques Chirac as France held a national day of mourning for the popular former head of state.

Putin, former US president Bill Clinton and other dignitaries joined president Emmanuel Macron for a funeral service at Saint-Sulpice church in Paris, a day after 7 000 people queued to view Chirac’s coffin at Invalides military hospital and museum. Chirac’s death on Thursday aged 86 prompted a flood of tributes to the centre-right politician whose career spanned four decades, capped by 12 years as president from 1995 to 2007. But it also sparked questions about how much the consummate political operator actually achieved and again threw the spotlight on a 2011 conviction for graft over his time as Paris mayor.

SYDNEY – A man bearing a strong resemblance to Elvis Presley has been accused of stealing a fake vagina from a New Zealand sex shop, prompting a police investigation. The Elvis lookalike allegedly stole the prosthesis from the ‘Peaches and Cream’ sex store in suburban Auckland, after a failed attempt to purchase it. “He was very energetic and erratic, going around the shop, talking a lot… he brought a sex toy called ‘Like a Virgin’ up to the counter but his card declined,” staff member Kat Maher told stuff.co.nz. Maher said the man – whose Elvis-like characteristics included slicked-back black hair and large sunglasses, incongruously teamed with a high-visibility vest – then ran out of the shop with the NZ$100 sex toy in hand. New Zealand police confirmed they had received a report of a theft at the store on 23 September.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis on Monday gave a high-profile private audience to a prominent American Jesuit priest who has been attacked repeatedly by conservative Catholics and media outlets for ministering to homosexuals. By meeting Father James Martin during the morning, when the pope’s meetings are part of his published schedule, instead of privately in the afternoon, Francis appeared to be defending Martin pointedly from the attacks. In the last two years, a number of Catholic seminaries and universities have cancelled lectures and appearances by Martin, often after pressure from conservative groups. Martin, a Jesuit like the pope, is the author of the 2017 book ‘Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity’.

PATNA – At least 100 people have died in northern India over the last three days in unusually heavy late monsoon rains which have submerged streets, hospital wards and houses, officials said. Dozens of boats were pressed into service on streets overflowing with gushing rainwater in Patna, the capital of the eastern state of Bihar, after torrential downpours far stronger than the norm. At least 27 people have lost their lives across the state and another 63 in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh since Friday, authorities said. With more rain predicted, weather experts say September could end as the wettest month in more than a hundred years. “Patna alone has recorded some 226mm of rainfall since Friday,” Bihar disaster response official M Ramachandru told AFP. Photos showed patients lying on hospital beds in dirty rainwater at the state-run Nalanda Medical College and Hospital in Patna.

– Nampa-AFP-Reuters

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