Wanted: 2-yr-old

Dubai, Nov. 4 (Reuters): A two-year-old boy was briefly banned from boarding a Turkey-bound flight in the United Arab Emirates after his name appeared on a list of wanted suspects, a newspaper reported today.

Emirates Today said the boy’s passport details, including the date of birth, matched those in an arrest warrant. The reason for the mix-up was not known.

“While going through the passport checking procedures to get on board, one of the officers on duty said they wanted to take Suhail,” Emirates Today quoted the boy’s father, Abdullah Mohamed Saleh, as saying.

“I thought he was kidding me and said: ‘Take him if you want’,” he said.

God letters

Philadelphia (Reuters): A US man who found 300 letters to God floating in the Atlantic Ocean said on Friday he will donate them to a church instead of selling them on eBay following protests from religious people. The letters, sent to a deceased Baptist clergyman, mysteriously wound up in a sealed plastic shopping bag near a beach in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They include one from a teenage girl asking God to forgive her for having an abortion, one from a prisoner who said he was innocent and wanted to be at home with his family and one from a man who wanted God’s help winning the lottery.

Whale time

Madrid (Reuters): Yulka, a whale in a Spanish zoo, has given birth to the first Beluga born in captivity in Europe. After a six-month pregnancy and an eight-hour labour, Yulka gave birth to the grey blue baby of undisclosed sex on Thursday, the Valencia Zoo in eastern Spain said. The baby whale weighed 90 kg and measured 1.20 metres. A team of experts will attend to the young mammal to give it the best chance of survival. The zoo noted the mortality rate for newborn Belugas was high.

Luck loss

Dublin (Reuters): A million euros ($1.3 million) is no longer enough to pull in Irish lottery players. Dermot Griffin, director of Ireland’s National Lottery, says that rising wealth in Ireland means people are not as attracted as they used to be by the prizes on offer. “A million euros doesn’t cut it any more,” Griffin told The Irish Times newspaper on Friday. From this week, the National Lottery is raising its minimum weekly jackpot to 2.0 million euros from 1.3 million euros at present in an effort to boost flagging sales. “Our lottery sales over the last number of years have been declining,” Griffin said.