Best of Web: 39 wives, 94 kids, 33 grandkids...

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INDIA: The world's biggest family: The man with 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren 

Ziona Chana lives with all of them in a 100-room mansion

He is head of the world's biggest family - and says he is 'blessed' to have his 39 wives, reports Daily Mail.

Ziona Chana also has 94 children, 14-daughters-in-law and 33 grandchildren.

They live in a four storey house set amidst the hills of Baktwang village in the north-eastern Indian state of Mizoram, where the wives sleep in giant communal dormitories.

Chana told the Sun: 'Today I feel like God's special child. He's given me so many people to look after.

'I consider myself a lucky man to be the husband of 39 women and head of the world's largest family.'

The family is organised with almost military discipline, with the oldest wife Zathiangi organising her fellow partners to perform household chores such as cleaning, washing and preparing meals.

One evening meal can see them pluck 30 chickens, peel 132lb of potatoes and boil up to 220lb of rice.

Coincidentally, Chana is also head of a sect that allows members to take as many wives as he wants.

He even married 10 women in one year, when he was at his most prolific, and enjoys his own double bed while his wives have to make do with communal dormitories.

He keeps the youngest women near to his bedroom with the older members of the family sleeping further away - and there is a rotation system for who visits Mr Chana's bedroom.

Rinkmini, one of Mr Chana's wives who is 35 years old, said: 'We stay around him as he is the most important person in the house. He is the most handsome person in the village.

She says Mr Chana noticed her on a morning walk in the village 18 years ago and wrote her a letter asking for her hand in marriage.

Another of his wives, Huntharnghanki, said the entire family gets along well. The family system is reportedly based on 'mutual love and respect'

Chana, whose religious sect has 4,00 members, says he has not stopped looking for new wives.

'To expand my sect, I am willing to go even to the U.S. to marry,' he said.

One of his sons insisted that Mr Chana, whose grandfather also had many wives, marries the poor women from the village so he can look after them. 

 

LONDON: A Muslim airport worker has accused airline Cathay Pacific of racism after he was refused a job interview – only to be offered one when he applied two days later using a fake white British-sounding name.

Algerian-born Salim Zakhrouf applied to Cathay Pacific for a job as a passenger services officer at Heathrow Airport, reports Daily Mail.

Zakhrouf, 38, who has lived in Britain since 1991 and is a UK citizen, was told by email he had not been selected for interview, the paper said.

But applying 48 hours later as 'Ian Woodhouse' with an identical CV and home address, he was invited for an interview by the same personnel officer who had first refused him.

A furious Mr Zakhrouf, who has 17 years’ customer-service experience and works as a Heathrow flight handling agent, refused to attend, the Daily confirmed.

 

 

US: If your trainers kick up a stink with your other half, a gadget that uses ultra-violet light to sterilise shoes could be your salvation.

Its inventors claim the device – called SteriShoe – sterilises the bacteria which causes odours by using UV light.

Ultra-violet light is used as a disinfectant in hospitals, dental surgeries, swimming pools and other water treatment systems, but has not previously been used to tackle smelly trainers. 

The gadget, which looks like a shoe tree, is placed inside the shoe and turned on at the mains before blitzing the smell away.

The makers reckon the average person produces up to half a pint of sweat per foot each day, but that the SteriShoe kills 99.9 per cent of bacteria in just 45 minutes. 

 

ROME: A dog saved a teenage Italian girl from being raped by its master as the canine began barking, eventually leading to the man's arrest, ANSA news agency said.

The 14-year-old girl from Milan was playing with the dog and met its 40-year-old owner, a father of a six-year-old, in a park in the northern city after skipping class on September 20 last year, the agency reported.

The girl accepted an invitation for coffee but on leaving the cafe the man grabbed her neck and tried to undress her. At that moment the dog began barking distracting his owner.

The girl managed to flee after hitting him in the groin.

A medical examination confirmed the assault after she reported the incident to the police.

The assailant was identified after a five-month investigation as the girl remembered the dog's name and identified both the animal and the man in police photos.

 

SYDNEY: One is a landlocked, mountainous country in Europe; the other is a vast, island continent in the southern hemisphere. But it seems some people still confuse Austria and Australia.

In the latest sign of collective dyslexia about the countries, Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd admitted he sometimes gets his Austrian counterpart's post, and vice versa.

"Yes, we do occasionally get each other's correspondence because the rest of the world doesn't know about the extra syllable," Rudd said, during a visit by Austria's Michael Spindelegger.

It is not the first time the countries, which are thousands of kilometres (miles) apart but separated by just two letters when written down, have been muddled up.

During November's G20 meeting in Seoul, a model of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard appeared in Sound of Music-style traditional Austrian dress, before being hastily replaced.

The mix-up was prophetically lampooned in 1994's comedy "Dumb and Dumber", when Jim Carrey's character tells an Austrian acquaintance to "throw a shrimp on the barbie".