September 10, 2008	Wednesday	Ramazan 09, 1429

TYRE (Lebanon), Sept 9: A Lebanese woman working in a restaurant kitchen found 26 pearls in an oyster she was preparing for the table and is to submit the find to the Guinness Book of Records.

Amal Salha, 50, said she was helping out her son in his restaurant on the waterfront in the southern port of Tyre, when she made the astonishing find on Monday evening.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

“I was in the process of opening the shells when I found a number of shining pearls inside one of them,” she said. “I was so startled I screamed.

After counting them, there turned out to be 26 pearls of varying sizes. “We buy these oysters at $10 a kilo,” said Salha’s husband, Raymond.

“Generally we find one or two pearls but 26 is very rare,” he said, adding that the couple hoped their find would merit an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.—AFP