Mona Lisa no more a mystery
Researchers in Germany claim to have found the final proof of Mona Lisa’s identity. According to researchers at Heidelberg University, scribbled notes in the margin of a book 500 years old are the evidence that establishes the identity of this Leonardo da Vinci painting.
“It is Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Giocondo a Florentine merchant, whose portrait hangs in the Louvre museum in Paris,” researcher Viet Probst said.
Many aficionados have long supposed La Gioconda, as she was also known, was the sitter. Now notes by Agostino Vespucci, a friend of Leonardo, found in the university library, confirm the sitter as Lisa del Giocondo.
Court maintains ruling on Spears
Britney Spears will get another chance next month to persuade a court commissioner to restore her visitation rights to see her two little boys, AP reports from Los Angeles.
The pop star went to a courthouse on Monday but never made it inside, leaving abruptly amid a swarm of paparazzi without attending a hearing in her child-custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline. The court ruled that an order suspending Spears’ visitation rights and giving custody to Federline would remain in effect.
Mother called
Diana a ‘whore’
Princess Diana’s former butler was to give more testimony on Tuesday at the inquest into her death, a day after revealing that her mother had called her a “whore” for dating Muslim men, AFP reports from London. Paul Burrell gave five hours of evidence at the inquest into her death in an August 1997 car crash in Paris along with Dodi Fayed.
“She called the princess a whore and she said she was messing around with ‘effing Muslim men’ and she was disgraceful,” he told the inquest, referring to Diana’s mother Frances Shand Kydd, who died in 2004.
Hike for expat docs, nurses
In a move likely to benefit many Indian doctors and nurses, Saudi Arabia will give a pay hike of 15 to 80 per cent to expatriate doctors, nurses and medical technicians working in government hospitals, PTI reports from Dubai.
Hillary-Tenzing Airport
Lukla Airport, the gateway to the world’s highest peak Mt Everest, will be rechristened as Hillary-Tenzing Airport, PTI reports from Kathmandu. “The government is considering to name the airport after the summiteers,” said Minister for Tourism Prithvi Subba Gurung. Tenzing Norgey and Hillary were the first to climb Everest in 1953.
Life’s ingredients in far-off galaxy
Astronomers claim to have discovered two ingredients that build life-forming amino acids — the molecules methanimine and the hydrogen cyanide — in a galaxy nearly 250 million light years away from Earth. The group of astronomers at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have found the two ingredients in distant Arp 220, an ultra-luminous starburst galaxy.
