D Tuesday, January 26, 2010 News 11 Eye of the storm: Matthew Albaneses model tornado image Pictures: Solent At work: Mr Albanese uses faux fur for grass Model maker cottons on to nature pictures THESE stunning landscape images look like they belong in a National Geographic magazine but they are actually models made using household items, such as cotton wool, spices and grout. Artist Matthew Albanese brings his sculptures to life using clever photography. Some designs are less than 1m (3ft) long but the effect is created by the angle of the camera. Mr Albanese, 26, who was bored of his job as a visual merchandiser, began making his models two years ago and has already sold seven of them for more than 680 each. One day I knocked over a tub of paprika and as I was cleaning up the mess I began to daydream, he said. I thought it was a great shade of red and reminded me of Mars, an exotic place I could only dream of seeing. So I figured I would bring Mars to me. I went out and bought 5.4kg of the pungent spice and created my first landscape Paprika Mars. Since then Mr Albanese, from New Jersey in the US, has created models of a volcano, the northern lights and a tornado. Sugarland involved growing sugar crystals to create a polar landscape. On fire: A volcano model BURMA: Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be freed when her house arrest ends in November, a member of the ruling junta claimed yesterday. The 64- year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner will be freed a month after the country is expected to hold its first parliamentary elections in two decades, said Maj Gen Maung Oo. The election would be the first since 1990, when Suu Kyis National League for Democracy scored a landslide victory that the military regime refused to recognise. She must be freed to work for national reconciliation, said an NLD official. Suu Kyi may be freed after vote GERMANY: Heidi Klum poses with her wax double at Madame Tussauds. The model, 36, was at the launch of her figure at the Berlin branch of the waxwork museum. Its pretty good, she said Picture: EPA Unifying internet censorship to stay CHINA: Curbs on internet use are here to stay, officials have said in a statement likely to further strain relations with the US. Bans on using the web to subvert state power and wreck national unity will remain and there is ample legal basis to punish those linked to harmful content, said the State Council Information Office. This is completely different from so-called restriction of internet freedom, added a spokesman. Web giant Google no longer wants to censor its Chinese site. President releases third pop album INDONESIA: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is hoping to reverse his waning popularity in the opinion polls with his music. The 60-year-old leader (pictured) has released his third pop album entitled Im Certain Ill Make It. In my struggle to serve the country, sometimes I express my feelings in the form of arts, he said. A spokesman for a student action group said they were surprised he was singing while the people are crying. worlddigest and finally... POLAND: A beekeeper who passed out after being stung woke up inside a coffin. Jozef Guzy from Katowice was declared dead and placed inside the casket. But Guzy, 76, awoke and his screams alerted officials. He made enough noise to raise the dead, said the undertaker. Evil Chemical Ali executed in IraqSADDAM Husseins cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid was hanged yes- terday. Chemical Ali, as he was known, ordered the infamous poison gas attack on the northern Iraqi Kurd- ish village of Halabja in 1988 which killed 5,000 people. The chemical air raid is thought to have been the worst single attack of its kind against civilians. Graph- ic pictures taken after the attack showed bodies of men, women, children and animals lying in the streets where they inhaled the gas. Al-Majid was executed a week after he received his fourth death sentence for the Halabja attack. He bore a striking resemblance to Saddam and was one of the most brutal of the dictators inner circle. The general led sweeping mili- tary campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s that claimed tens of thou- sands of lives wiping out entire villages in attacks against rebel- lious Kurds and cracking down on Shiites in southern Iraq. He was one of the last high-pro- file members of the former Sunni- led regime still on trial in Iraq. Al-Majid started out as a warrant officer and motorcycle messenger in the army. After Saddams Baath party coup in 1968, he was promot- ed and served as defence minister from 1991 to 1995. By Brian Murphy in Baghdad index.html2.html3.html4.html5.html6.html7.html8.html9.html10.html11.html12.html13.html14.html15.html16.html17.html18.html19.html20.html21.html22.html23.html