Strange News

Raid Gaza

2009-01-06T21:54:00.002+01:00

This is a flash game ("Raid Gaza"), with what you can learn to be a good killer.

May the force be with you.

Officer asks for ID, receives bag of marijuana

2008-12-21T13:42:00.000+01:00

A police officer investigating why a car was stopped in the middle of College Boulevard at 4 a.m. on Dec. 14 found the driver and his passenger either asleep or unconscious. The car smelled of alcohol and vomit, he noted in his report.

The officer managed to wake the driver, but could not rouse the passenger. He finally took her pulse to make sure she was OK, according to the report.

The driver handed the officer his license upon request. When the officer asked for the passenger's identification, the driver handed over a small coin purse with a bag of marijuana in it.

The officer asked again for identification and the driver gave him the passenger's open purse, which had a marijuana pipe clearly visible inside of it.

Both of the individuals were arrested for possession of marijuana and possession of narcotics equipment.

Obama name craze for Kenya babies

2008-11-09T18:40:00.002+01:00

Mothers in Kenya have marked Barack Obama's historic win in the US presidential elections by naming their newborns after him and his wife.

More than half of the babies born in a Kisumu Hospital on the day after the election were named either Barack or Michelle Obama.

Kisumu is close to the village where Mr Obama's father was born and raised and Mr Obama is a local hero.

The region erupted in celebration after he won the race for the White House.

Out of 15 babies born in the New Nyanza Provincial Hospital in the western city of Kisumu on Wednesday, five boys were named Barack Obama and three girls were called Michelle.

Pamela Adhiambo, who gave birth to twins – a boy and a girl - on the night after the elections, named them Barack and Michelle Obama.

"I made up my mind to name them long before the elections, and even if Obama had not won, I would still have done the same," she said.

Some of the mothers said they admired the couple and hoped that their children would be inspired to reach for great heights by sharing the names.

Mrs Adhiambo said she hoped the names would motivate her children to work hard and achieve as much as the Obamas.

She invited Mr Obama and his wife to come and visit their twin namesakes.

Boxers or briefs? Dallas thief picks 130 panties

2008-11-05T06:38:00.000+01:00

A man has proven that you can never have too much underwear when he stole more than 130 pairs of panties from a Victoria's Secret store.

The Dallas Morning News reported online Tuesday that a man snatched $1,067 worth of underwear from a table at the Dallas store Monday.

A police report says a female accomplice held open the door during the theft and both sped away in a green car.

The report did not indicate what styles or sizes were stolen.

Murderers in the Money

2008-11-01T17:28:00.000+01:00

Murderers in the Money: Reggie Townsend, 29, serving 23 years in a Wisconsin prison for reckless homicide against an 11-year-old girl, won $295,000 from a jury in September as compensation for a two-month confinement with only a "wet, moldy and foul smelling" mattress to sleep on (about $4,900 per unpleasant night). [TheSmokingGun.com, 9-19-08]

The woman in red drives the men crazy, study finds

2008-10-29T21:33:00.000+01:00

If a woman wants to drive the men wild, she might want to dress in red.

Men rated a woman shown in photographs as more sexually attractive if she was wearing red clothing or if she was shown in an image framed by a red border rather than some other color, U.S. researchers said Tuesday.

The study led by psychology professor Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, seemed to confirm red as the color of romance -- as so many Valentine's Day card makers and lipstick sellers have believed for years.

Although this "red alert" may be a product of human society associating red with love for eons, it also may arise from more primitive biological roots, Elliot said.

Noting the genetic similarity of humans to higher primates, he said scientists have shown that certain male primates are especially attracted to females of their species displaying red. For example, female baboons and chimpanzees show red coloring when nearing ovulation, sending a sexual signal that the males apparently find irresistible.

"It could be this very deep, biologically based automatic tendency to respond to red as an attraction cue given our evolutionary heritage," Elliot, whose findings appear in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, said in a telephone interview.

The study involved more than 100 men, mostly college undergraduates, who were shown pictures of women and asked to rate how pretty they were, how much the men would like to kiss them and how much the men would like to have sex with them.

Men were shown a woman, with some of the pictures bordered in red and some bordered in white, gray or green. Even though it was the same picture of the same woman, when she was framed in red the men rated her as more attractive than when she was bordered by another color.

Men were then shown photographs of a woman that were identical except that the researchers digitally made her shirt red in some versions or blue in others. And once again, the men strongly favored the woman in red.

The men also were asked, "Imagine that you are going on a date with this person and have $100 in your wallet. How much money would you be willing to spend on your date?" When she was clad in red, the men said they would spend more money on her.

The researchers noted that the color red did not alter how men rated the women in the photographs in terms of likeability, intelligence or kindness -- only attractiveness.

The researchers then had a group of young women rate whether the pictured woman was pretty. Red had no impact on whether women rated other women as pretty, they found.

Gay men and color blind men were excluded from the study.

Men nabbed after playing 'chicken' with police car

2008-10-24T23:19:00.000+02:00

Three Oklahoma City men were arrested after playing "chicken" with a police car. Police said a 23-year-old man drove his car at the oncoming patrol car driven by Capt. J.D. Reid and didn't move until Reid swerved out of the way. Reid then chased the car until it crashed. The driver was found inside the car, another 22-year-old man was found lying outside the vehicle and a third man was found hiding behind a traffic sign.

Two of the men were hospitalized and the third was treated and taken to the Oklahoma County jail where he's being held without bond.

Police say the driver apparently decided on a whim to play chicken car and didn't realize the car was a police car.

Berlin plans flat tax on prostitutes

2007-03-03T10:04:00.000+01:00

Berlin plans to levy a flat rate daily tax on prostitutes from April to raise some extra revenues for its strained finances.

Following a model used by Cologne, which collected over $1 million (514,000 pounds) last year with its own flat tax, the German capital plans to tax prostitutes 30 euros (20 pounds) per working day. Berlin has rising debts of more than 60 billion euros.

Prostitution is legal in most places in Germany and sex workers are required to pay income tax as well as value-added tax (VAT). However, tax collectors have long suspected their income and VAT was not being fully reported on tax returns.

Local leaders in the Verdi service sector union have warned that the 30-euro tax will push up prices in Berlin, Germany's biggest metropolis with some 3.4 million inhabitants.

"The prostitutes will have no choice other than to pass the cost on to the customers,", Verdi spokesman Andreas Sander was quoted as saying in German daily newspaper Bild.

Katharina Cetin, of the prostitute support organisation Hydra, said sex workers earn less than city leaders estimate.

"The income level here in Berlin is rather low," she said. "A daily tax rate of 10 to 15 euros would be more appropriate."

Cologne, home to roughly 1 million, has been a worldwide pioneer in taxing prostitution at a flat rate of 150 euros per month. It earned 828,000 euros in 2006 after 790,000 euros when the "pleasure tax" on sex services was first levied in 2005.

Man pays library $171, 47-year late fee

2007-01-07T17:30:00.000+01:00

Robert Nuranen handed the local librarian a book he'd checked out for a ninth-grade assignment — along with a check for 47 years' worth of late fees.

Nuranen said his mother misplaced the copy of "Prince of Egypt" while cleaning the house. The family came across it every so often, only to set it aside again. He found it last week while looking through a box in the attic.

"I figured I'd better get it in before we waited another 10 years," he said after turning it in Friday with the $171.32 check. "Fifty-seven years would be embarrassing."

The book, with its last due date stamped June 2, 1960, was part of the young Nuranen's fascination with Egypt. He went on to visit that country and 54 others, and all 50 states, he said, but he never did finish the book.

Nuranen now lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches seventh-grade social studies and language arts.

The library had long ago lost any record of the book, librarian Sue Zubiena said.

"I'm going to use it as an example," she said. "It's never too late to return your books".

Space tourism to be fashion's final frontier

2006-12-11T22:27:00.000+01:00

You've booked your seat on the spaceship and passed the medical -- but what to wear for that flight into the final frontier?.

Orbital Outfitters has the answer. The new Los Angeles-based company on Thursday promised to dress the first space tourists and crew members in style.

"When someone puts on an IS3 (sub-orbital space suit), they will be protected by the best technology we cam muster, yet they will look like they've stepped off the set of a science fiction movie," said Orbital Outfitters president Rick Tumlinson.

"With billionaires funding the new space companies and passengers paying up to $200,000 for a ride, safety is important. We intend to also make it chic," Tumlinson said.

Tumlinson said Orbital Outfitters planned to be on the leading edge of space suit fashion in a tourism industry expected to blast off around 2008.

It will deliver its first space suits in 2007 to crews of the California-based rocket powered vehicle company XCOR and then lease custom-fitted suits to the first mass space tourists.

Designs are still in the early stages but Tumlinson said the suits will have a Grand Prix or NASCAR jumpsuit look to them and will bear the colors and logos of the rocket firm on which the passenger is flying.

Safety will be paramount and the suits will be made to protect passengers from extreme cold, a lack of air and atmospheric pressure and provide life-support functions for 30 minutes at 500,000 feet, or 95 miles high.

The cost of leasing the suit for one trip is expected to be about $3-6,000.

Military radio signal jams garage doors

2006-12-03T00:21:00.000+01:00

What do remote-control garage door openers have to do with national security? A secretive Air Force facility in Colorado Springs tested a radio frequency this past week that it would use to communicate with first responders in the event of a homeland security threat. But the frequency also controls an estimated 50 million garage door openers, and hundreds of residents in the area found that theirs had suddenly stopped working.

"It would have been nice not to have to get out of the car and open the door manually," said Dewey Rinehard, pointing out that the outage happened during the first cold snap of the year, with lows in the teens.

Capt. Tracy Giles of the 21st Space Wing said Air Force officials were trying to figure out how to resolve the problem of their signal overpowering garage door remotes.

"They have turned it off to be good neighbors," he said.

The signals were coming from Cheyenne Mountain Air Station, home to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S. and Canadian operation set up during the Cold War to monitor Soviet missile and bomber threats.

Technically, the Air Force has the right to the frequency, which it began using nearly three years ago at some bases. Signals have previously interfered with garage doors near bases in Florida, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

In general, effects from the transmissions would be felt only within 10 miles, but the Colorado Springs signal is beamed from atop 6,184-foot Cheyenne Mountain, which likely extends the range.

Holly Strack, who lives near the entrance to the facility, said friends in the neighborhood all had the same problem.

"I never thought my garage door was a threat to national security," she said.

David McGuire, whose Overhead Door Co. received more than 400 calls for help, said the Air Force may be able to slightly adjust the transmission frequency to solve the problem. If not, it will cost homeowners about $250 to have new units installed.

"The military has the right to use that frequency. It is a sign of the times," he said.

Panda poop paper yields big profits

2006-11-26T15:55:00.000+01:00

There's the Panda Express fast-food chain. Jing Jing, a mascot for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The forthcoming animated movie, Kung Fu Panda. Even a Mexican rock band named after the cuddly bear.

Not to be outdone, Thailand has come up with yet another, seemingly unlikely way to capitalize on this globally loved, bamboo-munching animal — panda poop.

When keepers of the country's panda couple — Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui — got tired of disposing the 55 pounds of feces daily produced by the duo, Prasertsak Buntragulpoontawee came up with the idea of turning it all into notebooks, fans, bookmarks and key chains.

"At first the Chinese were very skeptical," says the head of Chiang Mai Zoo's panda unit, referring to the proprietary attitude China takes toward its iconic animal.

But the multicolored paper products have proved hot selling-items at the zoo, with the 300,000 baht (US $8,200) earned to date helping balance the accounts of panda keeping.

The Thai government pays $250,000 a year to China's Wulong Panda Research Institute to rent the pandas, who, depending on the weather, reside in either a $1 million air-conditioned cage or an extensive, fan-cooled outdoor enclosure ringed by a mini-replica of China's Great Wall.

Panda poop paper production involves a daylong process of cleaning the feces, boiling it in a soda solution, bleaching it with chlorine and drying it under the sun. Experimentation continues on how to reduce the chemicals now used.

Prasertsak says he was inspired by sa paper, or mulberry leaf paper, a traditional, local product which has proved a highly popular gift item in recent years.

"We tried selling it on markets outside but so far with not so much success," he says. "But in the zoo, when people see real pandas and then their product they're excited and buy".

Turkeys try to catch train out of N.J.

2006-11-23T08:54:00.000+01:00

Some wild turkeys, it appears, were trying to get out of New Jersey before Thanksgiving Day. A spokesman for the NJ Transit said train officials reported a dozen or so wild turkeys waiting on a station platform in Ramsey, about 20 miles northwest of New York City, on Wednesday afternoon. The line travels to Suffern, N.Y.

"For a moment, it looked like the turkeys were waiting for the next outbound train," said Dan Stessel, a spokesman for NJ Transit. "Clearly, they're trying to catch a train and escape their fate."

Transit workers followed the bird's movements on surveillance cameras. "I have no idea how they got there," Stessel said.

A Ramsey police dispatcher said the department had received three calls about the traveling turkeys who also were blamed for causing morning rush hour traffic problems on a roadway.

"From time to time, I've heard calls that there are turkeys on the loose," said Erik Endress, president of the Ramsey Rescue Squad, a volunteer group. "Maybe they're trying to make a break".

238 blame dead guy, neighbor for tickets

2006-11-13T18:26:00.000+01:00

More than 200 Australian motorists have avoided parking and speeding fines by blaming either a dead man or an interstate resident for their errors in what police said Saturday may be a widespread fraud.

Under New South Wales state law, if a car owner signs a sworn statement that they were not driving the vehicle when an offense was committed, they can avoid paying speed camera fines, which arrive by mail, and parking tickets left under windshield wipers.

A recent government audit of the excuses given in those sworn statements revealed that 238 motorists had blamed one of two people — a dead man who had, when alive, lived in Sydney and a person living in neighboring South Australia state — Police Superintendent Daryl Donnolly said in a statement.

Some 80,000 Australian dollars ($61,000) of fines have been avoided this way in the past three years, Donnolly said.

He did not identify the scapegoats or explain why police had not uncovered the scam by pursuing the pair for the money owed.

Donnolly said 49 of those car owners have since been charged with swearing false statements and face up to five years' imprisonment. The others will be questioned as part of a police crackdown, he said.

"These offenses amount to fraud and, if proven, those involved could face stiff penalties," Donnolly told reporters.

Restaurant chain offers food for signs

2006-11-08T23:44:00.000+01:00

Turn in those ubiquitous campaign signs and get some free food. That's the message from Southeast restaurant chain Sticky Fingers, which is offering a free appetizer to anyone who cleans up the campaign clutter and brings in a sign.

"Just think of those leftover campaign signs as oversized, roadside gift certificates," said Sticky Fingers co-owner Jeff Goldstein. "It's an easy way to help take care of our neighborhoods."

The Charleston-based ribs restaurant will offer coupons for a free appetizer through next Wednesday.

The chain operates 17 restaurants in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida.

3-month old baby charged with robbery

2006-11-05T18:18:00.000+01:00

Police charged a suspect after a bus driver was robbed of his fares, then realized the suspect was a 3-month old baby.

The boy, Parveen Kumar, had been listed along with his father on an initial charge sheet after the bus driver was robbed, police in the eastern Indian state of Bihar said Friday.

The baby had been charged with robbery, extortion and banditry, said local superintendent of police Rattan Sajai.

Though the robbery in the remote village of Muzzafarpur occurred Sept. 19, the fact that a prime suspect was an infant only came to light recently when police launched their investigation, Sanjai said.

Police blamed the bus driver, saying he reported the baby as a conspirator because of a personal grudge he had with the father.

The charges against the boy have since been dropped, Sanjai said.

Smell of pizza leads deputy to suspects

2006-10-31T22:11:00.000+01:00

A sheriff's deputy sniffed out two men suspected of robbing a pizza delivery woman when he caught a whiff of pepperoni and sausage pizza at their home.

Bartholomew County Sheriff's Deputy Jimmy Green was searching the area where the delivery woman was robbed for potential witnesses Sunday night when he grew suspicious of one man, Maj. Mark Gorbett said.

"It just didn't seem right to Jimmy, and he wanted to take it a step further and went to the witness' residence. That's when Jimmy smelled the aroma of pizza," Gorbett said. "I'm sure our K-9 unit wouldn't have hit on the pizza."

Green noticed a phone book in the house opened to the pizza section. Officers also found the pizzas and cash taken in the robbery and a knife they believe one of the suspects used, Gorbett said.

Police arrested two men in their early 20s at the home, a couple of blocks from where the delivery woman was robbed. Deputies believe the men called in the pizza order and gave a phony address, then one of the men robbed the delivery woman at knifepoint while the other served as a lookout.

Columbus, a town of about 40,000 residents, is 40 miles southeast of Indianapolis.

Denver voters can ride to polls in style

2006-10-30T09:19:00.000+01:00

Don't feel like standing in line on Election Day? In Denver, you can get a limo ride to the polls if you take advantage of early voting Saturday.

Fearing that new voting machines, new voting centers and a ballot full of measures could create gridlock Nov. 7, a coalition of advocacy groups is offering door-to-door service to the city's six new voting centers.

"We're expecting a lot of confusion, voter fatigue and, because of the long ballot, we're expecting long lines on Election Day," Lindsey Hodel, a spokeswoman for the limo effort, said Friday.

Her coalition includes groups aiming to increase turnout among Hispanic women and black voters. The coalition is nonpartisan, though some of its members have endorsed some proposals on the ballot.

The group has reserved two limos to handle pickup requests. To get as many people to the polls as possible, the limos will be making multiple stops to fit up to eight people on each ride, Hodel said.

Officials probe finger-in-sandwich claim

2006-10-23T20:23:00.000+02:00

Health officials are investigating a woman's claim that she found part of a human finger in a Subway sandwich — an allegation reminiscent of the chili bowl finger hoax at a Wendy's restaurant last year.

Two health inspectors visited the Subway restaurant Thursday in Chowchilla after the woman reported finding what appeared to be a half-inch piece of a finger a day earlier, said Jill Yaeger, director of the Madera County Environmental Health Department.

The inspectors did not find any evidence that a restaurant worker had lost part of a finger, and they found no violations of food handling procedures there, Yaeger said. The purported human digit was sent to a laboratory for testing, and the incident was reported to police.

The Subway manager, Anita Munoz, said she was in the restaurant when the woman returned with what she claimed looked like a finger.

"It looked like a thick piece of fat," she told The Fresno Bee. "It doesn't look anything human to me."

Munoz said the incident would be investigated by Subway's national headquarters.

Subway spokesman Kevin Kane said the company was aware of the woman's claim but would not comment until Madera County officials completed their investigation.

"The Subway restaurant chain takes every customer comment seriously," Kane said Friday. "We don't know what the foreign object is yet."

Chowchilla is about 90 miles east of San Jose, where a Las Vegas woman claimed in March 2005 that she bit into a fingertip in a bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant. Anna Ayala's stomach-turning claim made headlines around the world.

The claim was found to be a hoax and Ayala was sentenced to nine years in prison. Her husband was sentenced to more than 12 years for getting the finger from a co-worker who lost it in a workplace accident.

Wendy's, based in Dublin, Ohio, said it lost $2.5 million in sales because of bad publicity and had to lay off dozens of employees at its Northern California franchises.

Subway, which has more than 26,000 restaurants in 85 countries, is owned by Doctor's Associates Inc., based in Milford, Conn.

Rush to marry ends in tragedy

2006-10-16T19:52:00.000+02:00

A Pakistani man has committed suicide outside his fiancee's home after he thought he accidentally killed her while trying to persuade her to get married early, police said Saturday.

The man, Ahmed Ashraf, was shooting a gun in the air outside his fiancee's home in the southern city of Karachi on Friday as part of his efforts to persuade her to get married two months early when a stray bullet accidently hit her, police said.

"He was so eager to get married he stood in front of his fiancee's house and started firing shots in the air to catch her attention," said investigating officer Ghulam Hussain.

The young woman was coming downstairs when a bullet ricocheted off a wall and hit her. She fell down screaming "I have been shot," Hussain said.

"He thought he had killed her and within seconds shot himself. The girl is fine," Hussain said.

"It is a tragic accident. They were engaged to be married with their parents' consent on December 25. He was insisting they get married earlier."

Ashraf had told his fiancee, Naureen, he would do something drastic if she didn't agree to get married straight away. The woman insisted the marriage date had already been set and there was no need to hurry, Hussain said.

Burning desire to be fireman lands man in jail

2006-10-06T15:21:00.000+02:00

An Australian conman who wanted to be a fireman stopped at traffic accidents to offer help and even stole a fire truck so he could impress his girlfriend with a joyride, a court heard on Friday.

Simon Francis Jobson pleaded guilty to 30 charges including fraud, theft, forgery and impersonating a public official, local media reported.

Judge Michael Forde sentenced Jobson to five years in jail but told the District Court in the Queensland state capital Brisbane that he would be eligible for parole in a year.

The court heard that Jobson had broken into Queensland fire stations, stealing uniforms, radios and safety equipment during a spree lasting from September 2003 until December 2004 -- soon after he had been released from jail on similar offences.

Pretending to be a fireman, he would stop at traffic accidents and offer help, Australian Associated Press reported.

Prosecutors said Jobson had even done a fire inspection on a pub in Queensland's Sunshine Coast holiday strip and made safety suggestions that were acted upon.

He also broke into a Sunshine Coast fire station and stole a fire truck, which he used in a joyride for his girlfriend, who believed he was a fireman.

Jobson's lawyer Tony Entriken said his client wanted psychiatric treatment because he had a "burning desire to overcome his disorder".

Britain's Prince Charles' aides dip into boiled egg story

2006-09-25T22:22:00.000+02:00

In an unusual move, aides to Britain's Prince Charles denied a report on Saturday that the heir-to-the-throne's staff have to cook him seven boiled eggs to allow him to choose one with the perfect consistency.

According to BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman's new book "On Royalty," Charles enjoys a boiled egg after a day's hunting but he is fussy about how long it is cooked.

"If the Prince felt that number five was too runny, he could knock the top off number six or seven," Paxman told Saturday's Guardian newspaper, which is to serialize the book next week.

"The story is not true," said a spokesman for Britain's Prince Charles, despite Paxman saying the story's source is one of the royal heir's friends.

I'll be home for Christmas...

2006-09-15T23:07:00.000+02:00

Criminals and lawyers in the Seychelles islands are conspiring to delay court cases so the felons can enjoy Christmas before serving their sentences, a top judge said Friday.

"Why rush to prison when you can delay the process and celebrate Christmas in freedom first?" the islands' chief judge Vivekanand Allear told Reuters.

With holidays highly prized in the laid-back Indian Ocean islands, some prisoners have been known to bust out for festivals before then heading back to their cells.

But now they are working with lawyers on delaying tactics before they're imprisoned, Allear said, citing failures to attend hearings and constant moves to adjourn cases as typical delaying tactics.

"(They) hope that witnesses will die or forget key evidence with time, forcing the courts to dismiss cases," he added.

The 'crossed legs' strike

2006-09-13T21:57:00.000+02:00

They are calling it the "crossed legs" strike.

Fretting over crime and violence, girlfriends and wives of gang members in the Colombian city of Pereira have called a ban on sex to persuade their menfolk to give up the gun.

After meeting with the mayor's office to discuss a disarmament program, a group of women decided to deny their partners their conjugal rights and recorded a song for local radio to urge others to follow their example.

"We met with the wives and girlfriends of gang members and they were worried some were not handing over their guns and that is where they came up with the idea of a vigil or a sex strike," mayor's office representative Julio Cesar Gomez said.

"The message they are giving them is disarm or if not then they will decide how, when, where and at what time," he told Reuters by telephone.

Gomez said the city, in Colombia's coffee-growing region, reported 480 killings last year.

Crime and violence have dropped in Colombia since 2002 when President Alvaro Uribe was first elected promising to crackdown on left-wing rebels fighting a four-decade insurgency and the illegal militia groups who formed to counter them.

But cocaine-trafficking gangs and armed groups still roam parts of Colombia and murder and kidnappings remain a problem despite the fall in crime statistics.

Skinny models wearing thin in fashion shocker

2006-09-12T23:01:00.000+02:00

The world's first ban on overly thin models at a top-level fashion show in Madrid has caused outrage among modeling agencies and raised the prospect of restrictions at other venues.

Madrid's fashion week has turned away underweight models after protests that girls and young women were trying to copy their rail-thin looks and developing eating disorders.

Organizers say they want to project an image of beauty and health, rather than a waif-like, or heroin chic look.

But Cathy Gould, of New York's Elite modeling agency, said the fashion industry was being used as a scapegoat for illnesses like anorexia and bulimia.

"I think its outrageous, I understand they want to set this tone of healthy beautiful women, but what about discrimination against the model and what about the freedom of the designer," said Gould, Elite's North America director, adding that the move could harm careers of naturally "gazelle-like" models.

Madrid's regional government, which sponsors the show and imposed restrictions, said it did not blame designers and models for anorexia. It said the fashion industry had a responsibility to portray healthy body images.

"Fashion is a mirror and many teenagers imitate what they see on the catwalk," said regional official Concha Guerra.

The mayor of Milan, Italy, Letizia Moratti, told an Italian newspaper this week she would seek a similar ban for her city's show unless it could find a solution to "sick" looking models.

QUALITY, NOT SIZE

The Madrid show is using the body mass index or BMI -- based on weight and height -- to measure models. It has turned away 30 percent of women who took part in the previous event. Medics will be on hand at the September 18-22 show to check models.

"The restrictions could be quite a shock to the fashion world at the beginning, but I'm sure it's important as far as health is concerned," said Leonor Perez Pita, director of Madrid's show, also known as the Pasarela Cibeles.

A spokeswoman for the Association of Fashion Designers of Spain, which represents those at Madrid fashion week, said the group supported restrictions and its concern was the quality of collections, not the size of models.

Eating disorder activists said many Spanish model agencies and designers oppose the ban and they had doubts whether the new rules would be followed.

"If they don't go along with it the next step is to seek legislation, just like with tobacco," said Carmen Gonzalez of Spain's Association in Defense of Attention for Anorexia and Bulimia, which has campaigned for restrictions since the 1990s.

Bush, the big coward motherfucker terrorist

2006-09-06T22:14:00.000+02:00

President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged previously secret CIA prisons around the world and said 14 high-value terrorism suspects — including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks — have been transferred from the system to Guantanamo Bay for trials.

He said a small number of detainees have been kept in CIA custody including people responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen and the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in addition to the 2001 attacks.

"It has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held secretly, questioned by experts and, when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts," Bush said in a White House speech. Families of some people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made up part of the audience.

Bush said of the suspects: "These are dangerous men, with unparalleled knowledge about terrorist networks and their plans of new attacks. The security of our nation and the lives of our citizens depend on our ability to learn what these terrorists know."

The announcement from Bush was the first time the administration had acknowledged the existence of CIA prisons, which have been a source of friction between Washington and some allies in Europe. The administration has come under criticism for its treatment of terrorism detainees.

European Union lawmakers said the CIA was conducting clandestine flights in Europe to take terror suspects to countries where they could face torture.

"Today the administration finally recognized that the protections of the Geneva Convention should be applied to prisoners in order to restore our moral authority and best protect American troops," said Sen.

John Kerry, D-Mass. "Today's shift in policy follows the sad legacy of five years during which this administration abused our Constitution, violated our laws and most importantly failed to make America safe."

Bush has sought with a series of speeches to sharpen the focus on national security two months before high-stakes congressional elections.

The president successfully emphasized the war on terror in his re-election campaign in 2004 and is trying to make it a winning issue for Republicans again this year.

Bush said the CIA program has involved such suspected terrorists as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, believed to be the No. 3 al-Qaida leader before he was captured in Pakistan in 2003; Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be Sept. 11 hijacker; Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells before he was captured in Pakistan in 2002.

The list also includes Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, who was suspected of being the mastermind of a string of deadly bomb attacks in Indonesia until his 2003 arrest in Thailand.

Defending the prison program, the president said the questioning of these detainees has provided critical intelligence information about terrorist activities that has enabled officials to prevent attacks, including with airplanes, within the United States. Other attacks thwarted through intelligence gathered in the program include a planned strike with an explosives-laden water tanker on U.S. Marines at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, an attack with car and motorcycle bombs on the U.S. consulate in Karachi, and a plot to fly passenger planes into London's Heathrow Airport or Canary Wharf, Bush said.

Bush would not detail interrogation techniques used through the program, saying only that they are tough but do not constitute torture. He did use language that suggested its nature, saying the CIA turned to an "alternative set of procedures" that were successful after Zubaydah and others had stopped providing information.

"This program has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they have a chance to kill," the president said.

A senior administration official said that fewer than 100 people have been detained under the CIA program, rejecting allegations that perhaps thousands have been held in secret prisons. With the transfer of the 14 detainees to Guantanamo, the CIA is no longer holding any suspects, the administration official said. He added, however, that the administration wants the program to continue.

The president said the 14 key terrorist leaders, including Mohammed, Binalshibh, and Zubaydah, who have been transferred to the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay would be afforded some legal protections consistent with the Geneva Conventions.

"They will continue to be treated with the humanity that they denied others," Bush said.

Bush also laid out his proposal for how trials of such key suspected terrorists — those transferred to Guantanamo and already there — should be conducted, which must be approved by Congress. Bush's original plan for the type of military trials used in the aftermath of World War II was struck down in June by the Supreme Court, which said the tribunals would violate U.S. and international law.

"As soon as Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, can face justice," the president said.

Aides said the legislation being introduced on Bush's behalf later Wednesday on Capitol Hill insists on provisions covering military tribunals that would permit evidence to be withheld from a defendant if necessary to protect classified information.

As part of the package, Bush asked Congress to shield from prosecution or lawsuits federal personnel who handle terrorist suspects.

"Passing this legislation ought to be the top priority," Bush said.

Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham have drafted a rival proposal. It would guarantee certain legal rights to defendants, including access to all evidence used against them.

"I think it's important that we stand by 200 years of legal precedents concerning classified information because the defendant should have a right to know what evidence is being used," said McCain, R-Ariz.

Administration officials also have said that allowing coerced testimony in some cases may be necessary, while McCain said the committee bill would ban it entirely. "We have some differences that we are in discussion about," said McCain, who had not seen the White House bill in writing.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is expected to side with the administration. He planned to introduce Wednesday the White House legislative proposal on the floor and refer it to the Armed Services Committee for review.

Also on Wednesday, the Pentagon put out a new Army field manual that spells out appropriate conduct on issues including prisoner interrogation. The manual applies to all the armed services, but not the CIA.

It bans torture and degrading treatment of prisoners, for the first time specifically mentioning forced nakedness, hooding and other procedures that have become infamous during the war on terror.

The United States began using the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in eastern Cuba in January 2002 to hold people suspected of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. About 445 detainees remain there, including 115 considered eligible for transfer or release.

The president said he eventually wants to close Guantanamo as critics and allies around the world have urged. But he said that cannot happen until Congress creates the process for trying its most dangerous prisoners, and other countries negotiate acceptable terms for taking back their citizens who are being held there.

Queen: Is this the world we created?
Just look at all those hungry mouths we have to feed
Take a look at all the suffering we breed
So many lonely faces scattered all around
Searching for what they need

Is this the world we created?
What did we do it for?
Is this the world we invaded
Against the law?
So it seems in the end
Is this what were all living for today?
The world that we created

You know that every day a helpless child is born
Who needs some loving care inside a happy home
Somewhere a wealthy man is sitting on his throne
Waiting for life to go by

Is this the world we created?
We made it on our own
Is this the world we devastated
Right to the bone?
If theres a God in the sky looking down
What can he think of what weve done
To the world that he created?

Youtube (link):

Home alone, and back again, for sleeping beauty

2006-09-03T11:55:00.000+02:00

A sleeping teen-ager flew home to Bulgaria and then back to Malta after aircrew apparently failed to notice she was still on the plane.

Maria Ilieva, 17, was traveling alone and fell asleep on an Air Malta plane taking her overnight from Valletta to Sofia.

Unfortunately she had returned to Malta by the time she woke up, the girl's family said Friday.

"Air Malta officials said the airplane was not a place for sleeping. But I have not seen any signs saying 'No sleeping', I have only seen signs saying 'No smoking'," the girl's mother, Nadezhda Vulova, told Reuters.

Maria was finally reunited with her family Thursday, almost four days after her sleepover. She had to pay 200 euros ($256) for the second flight home.

The family said they had filed a complaint against the airline and asked for a refund. Air Malta was not immediately available for comment.

Robber mistakes town hall for a bank

2006-08-23T21:45:00.000+02:00

A would-be robber was arrested after he tried to hold up his local town hall, mistaking it for a bank, Austrian police said Wednesday.

Wearing a mask and waving a toy pistol, the unemployed man burst into the town hall in the village of Poggersdorf, southern Austria, and shouted: "Hold-up, hold-up!"

The building has a sign signaling there is a cash point on the outside wall, police said.

He realized his mistake when an employee explained to him where he was, police said in a statement, adding he fled to a nearby wood.

The 34-year-old man was arrested when he came back later to pick up his motorbike which he had parked outside the town hall.

Are you SURE you want to remove that?

2006-08-19T19:58:00.000+02:00

An Indian businessman born with two penises wants one of them removed surgically as he wants to marry and lead a normal sexual life, a newspaper report said Saturday.

The 24-year-old man from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh admitted himself to a New Delhi hospital this week with an extremely rare medical condition called penile duplication or diphallus, the Times of India said.

"Two fully functional penes is unheard of even in medical literature. In the more common form of diphallus, one organ is rudimentary," the newspaper quoted a surgeon as saying.

The surgery was expected to be challenging as both organs were well-formed and full blood supply to the retained penis had to be ensured to allow it to function normally, he added.

The newspaper did not disclose the identity of the man or the hospital to protect the patient's privacy.

There are about 100 such reported cases of diphallus around the world and it is known to occur among one in 5.5 million men, the newspaper said.

It is caused by the failure of the mesodermal bands in the embryo to fuse properly. The mesodermal bands are one of three primary layers of the embryo from which several body parts are formed.

You know anybody who needs an 'anti-stupid' pill?

2006-08-07T16:48:00.000+02:00

A German scientist has been testing an "anti-stupidity" pill with encouraging results on mice and fruit flies, Bild newspaper reported Saturday.

It said Hans-Hilger Ropers, director at Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, has tested a pill thwarting hyperactivity in certain brain nerve cells, helping stabilize short-term memory and improve attentiveness.

"With mice and fruit flies we were able to eliminate the loss of short-term memory," Ropers, 62, is quoted saying in the German newspaper, which has dubbed it the "world's first anti-stupidity pill".

Abusing their power by abusing their power...

2006-08-04T22:36:00.000+02:00

Two Chinese officials cut off power to a hotel after they were not invited to its opening party and forced managers to drink spirits before they would turn the electricity back on, a state newspaper said Friday.

The two officials, who were subsequently fired, said they would lessen the power outage by one hour for every bottle of "baijiu" -- a strong grain-based alcohol -- two female managers drank, the Beijing Times said.

The two officials, who worked at the power company in the central province of Hunan, were found to have "severely harmed the image of the electricity bureau" and "caused a depraved social disturbance," the newspaper said.

The loss of power also caused chaos and blackouts for surrounding residents, it added.

You don't expect this sort of thing in France

2006-07-31T22:38:00.000+02:00

Parisian sunbathers will no longer be allowed to go nude or wear g-strings on the capital's artificial beaches and risk a fine if they are caught baring their breasts or buttocks.

City hall has issued a decree banning indecent clothing to preserve the tranquility of the sandy beaches created on the banks of the River Seine every summer since 2001.

"People must behave according to good standards to maintain tranquility, security and public order," the decree said, according to Saturday's edition of Le Parisien. "Notably indecent attire (nude sunbathing, g-strings and toplessness etc) is forbidden."

The city police will be enforcing the rules, and anyone caught baring too much flesh risks a 38 euro ($48) fine.

Defending the decree, city hall sports official Pascal Cherki told Le Parisien that indecent clothing "could have led to temptations and dangerous behavior on the banks of the river."

Topless sunbathing and g-strings are common on real beaches around France in the summer.

India's bank ordered to pay up over 'dead' sweeper

2006-07-25T20:57:00.000+02:00

India's central bank has been ordered to pay a former employee 10,000 rupees ($213.50) in compensation after mistakenly declaring him dead and making him the butt of jokes, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

In 2000, Dharam Pal -a sweeper at the Reserve Bank of India offices in New Delhi- left to visit his uncle in Moradabad, 60 miles east of the capital, without informing the bank or his family, the Hindustan Times said.

His employers said Pal clearly didn't think much of his job, but admitted a clerical error.

"It was almost two years since he was absconding so his employment was terminated and we sent a letter to his wife asking her to collect the money owed to him," said an official from the bank. "But due to a clerical mistake, the letter was written saying the 'late' Dharma Pal."

Assuming that the bank had made all the necessary checks and having not heard from him, Pal's family believed he was dead.

Pal turned up 13 days after his family received the letter, shocking his relatives who took him for a ghost. He has been the subject of jokes ever since, prompting him to seek action against the bank for his embarrassment.

"Considering the circumstances under which the plaintiff found himself and having no reason to disbelieve when he states he had become the butt of jokes in his social circle, I award a damage of 10,000 rupees," Delhi High Court's Justice Pradeep Nandrajog was quoted as saying.

The amount is about three months' wages for a sweeper in New Delhi.

For the richest guy in Margaritaville...

2006-07-23T09:35:00.000+02:00

Forget about the kind of tequila you slam down on the bar or knock back at parties in throat-burning shots with salt and lemon. If you're paying six figures, you might prefer to savor it in small sips.

An impossibly upmarket brand of tequila -- 100 percent blue Agave lovingly aged for six years and sold in a limited edition platinum bottle with fancy artwork on the label -- went on sale in Mexico on Thursday night for $225,000 a bottle.

"Tonight we are trying for the Guinness Book of Records with the most expensive bottle in the world," Fernando Altamirano, chief executive of producer Tequila Ley .925, told a launch party for the liquor.

Tequila Ley .925 has produced 66 bottles of the "Pasion Azteca" tequila, half of them pure platinum bottles and half of them gold and platinum-decorated bottles that sell for the slightly less extravagant price of $150,000.

"Since we started out, we began with the idea of making the finest, most expensive bottle of tequila in the world," Altamirano told Reuters.

For those on a smaller budget, there are 999 bottles of the same tequila in silver and gold bottles priced at $25,000.

Showing off one of each type, Altamirano said they had already been sold to a collector, but declined to give away the buyer's identity.

Altamirano, whose company has won awards for its stylish bottles, said his next goal was to create a million-dollar tequila bottle made from diamond-encrusted platinum and auction it at Sotheby's next year.

Don't believe everything you read...

2006-07-20T08:19:00.000+02:00

The National Enquirer celebrity magazine has apologized to Britney Spears in its British edition for reporting that the pop star was ready to divorce her husband Kevin Federline.

"In the 5th and 12th June 2006 issues of the UK Enquirer, we published articles under the headlines 'Britney Marriage is Over!' and 'Britney and Kevin: And Now Their Divorce!'" the Enquirer said in its latest edition on news stands Tuesday.

"Contrary to what our articles might have suggested, we now accept that their marriage is not over and they are not getting divorced," the British National Enquirer added.

"These allegations are untrue and we now accept Britney's position that the statements are without foundation. We apologize for any distress caused," it added.

Paul Tweed, Spears' libel lawyer based in Belfast, told the BBC that the apology was a "rare if not unprecedented gesture."

While it was not clear if the articles also appeared in the U.S. edition, the successful legal action against the British National Enquirer highlights how the country's libel laws are considered more plaintiff-friendly than in the United States.

London is dubbed the libel capital of the world, because the burden of proof is on a publication that produces contentious material, as opposed to in the United States where the claimant must prove an article is either wrong or printed maliciously.

Spears, 24, has seen her marriage and parenting skills under a media microscope in recent months, and in an interview aired in the United States in June she admitted to being an "emotional wreck."

She has denied she is estranged from her husband, saying he had helped her weather the ups and downs of her second pregnancy.

Spears married dancer Federline in September, 2004, and gave birth to their first child, a son named Sean Preston, the following September. Federline has two other children by his former girlfriend, actress Shar Jackson.

Guy confuses sumo with American TV wrestling

2006-07-18T07:11:00.000+02:00

Russian sumo wrestler Roho became the latest foreign import to land himself in trouble after smashing a window and hitting two photographers in a fit of pique.

The wrestler was given an unprecedented three-day ban from Japan's ancient sport Sunday for throwing a tantrum after a defeat the previous day.

Sunday's newspapers carried pictures of Roho in various stages of combustion after he lost his temper in Nagoya on Saturday.

Roho, nicknamed the "Russian bear," chased opponent Chiyotaikai into a bathroom after an explosive bout where both men broke several of sumo's strict rules of engagement.

After exchanging angry words with Chiyotaikai following his loss, Roho punched through a window of a bathroom door, showering his conqueror with broken glass.

Roho, whose real name is Boradzov Soslan Feliksovich, then slapped two photographers just moments after being reprimanded by sumo officials.

One of the photographers was taken to hospital suffering bruises to his face.

UNWANTED FIRST

Roho's outburst was condemned by Japan Sumo Association officials and earned him the indignity of becoming the first wrestler to be banned for violent conduct outside the ring.

"I shouldn't have lost control of my emotions like that," a contrite Roho said. "It was a bad thing I did. I'm very sorry for what I did."

Saturday's incident was reminiscent of the infamous 'battle of the bathtub' involving firebrand Mongolian Asashoryu in 2003.

Grand champion Asashoryu squared off with another towel-clad Mongolian as tempers flared during a post-bout soak at the Nagoya tournament three years ago.

Asashoryu, who became the first Mongolian to reach sumo's elite rank of "yokozuna" in January 2003, has broken several sumo taboos during his meteoric rise to the top.

He has been disqualified for pulling an opponent's hair, criticized for complaining to judges after losing a decision and accused of breaking the mirror of a rival's car.

Professional sumo has some 60 foreign-born wrestlers plying their trade in Japan, ranging from South Koreans to Brazilians with many more from Eastern Europe.

Postal worker caught with thousands of letters

2006-07-15T00:24:00.000+02:00

A Berlin postal worker who was caught with more than several thousand undelivered letters in his basement has admitted he was overwhelmed by the job but insisted he planned to deliver them soon.

Police recently found 90 boxes of post stacked in his basement. The postal worker, 36, identified as Thomas H., told Bild newspaper Friday he was only temporarily storing the post at his house and friends would help with delivery.

"There were just too much and I couldn't deliver it all by myself," he told the newspaper. Police said some of the letters found had been postmarked as early as April. The postal worker faces disciplinary action.

Bush overstepped his authority

2006-06-30T00:12:00.000+02:00

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees, saying in a strong rebuke that the trials were illegal under U.S. and international law.

Bush said there might still be a way to work with Congress to sanction military tribunals for detainees and the American people should know the ruling "won't cause killers to be put out on the street."

The court declared 5-3 that the trials for 10 foreign terror suspects violate U.S. military law and the Geneva conventions.

The ruling raises major questions about the legal status of the approximately 450 men still being held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba and exactly how, when and where the administration might pursue the charges against them.

It also seems likely to further fuel international criticism of the administration, including by many U.S. allies, for its handling of the terror war detainees at Guantanamo in Cuba, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and elsewhere.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett said the administration's task now is mostly technical — trying to determine how to design military tribunals that would pass muster under the decision. Republican senators said they would cooperate.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the court, said the Bush administration lacked the authority to take the "extraordinary measure" of scheduling special military trials for inmates, in which defendants have fewer legal protections than in civilian U.S. courts.

The decision blocked a trial for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring to commit terrorism against U.S. citizens from 1996 to November 2001.

It was a broad defeat for the government, which two years ago suffered a similar loss when the high court held the president lacked authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny them access to courts or lawyers.

Thursday's vote was split 5-3, with moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joining the court's liberal members in most of the ruling against the administration. Chief Justice John Roberts, named to the lead the court last September by Bush, was sidelined in the case because as an appeals court judge he had backed the government over Hamdan.

Thursday's ruling, the final one of the court's term, overturned that decision. Justices began a three-month break after releasing the ruling. Six different justices wrote 176 pages.

The administration had hinted in recent weeks that it was prepared for the court to set back its plans for trying Guantanamo detainees.

The president also has told reporters, "I'd like to close Guantanamo." But he added, "I also recognize that we're holding some people that are darn dangerous."

The court's ruling says nothing about whether the prison should be shut down, dealing only with plans to put detainees on trial.

"Trial by military commission raises separation-of-powers concerns of the highest order," Kennedy wrote in his opinion. "Concentration of power (in the executive branch) puts personal liberty in peril of arbitrary action by officials, an incursion the Constitution's three-part system is designed to avoid."

The prison at Guantanamo Bay, erected in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States, has been a flash point for international criticism. Hundreds of people suspected of ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban — including some teenagers — had been swept up by the U.S. military and secretly shipped there since 2002.

Three detainees committed suicide there this month, using sheets and clothing to hang themselves. The deaths brought new scrutiny and criticism of the prison, along with fresh calls for its closing.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a strongly worded dissent from Thursday's ruling and took the unusual step of reading part of it from the bench — something he had done only once before in his 15 years. He said the court's decision would "sorely hamper the president's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy."

The court's willingness, Thomas wrote in the dissent, "to second-guess the determination of the political branches that these conspirators must be brought to justice is both unprecedented and dangerous."

Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito also dissented.

In his own opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer said, "Congress has not issued the executive a 'blank check.'"

"Indeed, Congress has denied the president the legislative authority to create military commissions of the kind at issue here. Nothing prevents the president from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary," Breyer wrote.

Justices also rejected the Bush administration's claim that the case should be thrown out on grounds that a new law stripped the court's authority to consider it, and that Hamdan should not have been allowed to appeal until after the conclusion of his trial.

The court said the law passed last year to limit lawsuits by Guantanamo detainees does not apply to pending cases like the one brought by Hamdan.

"It's certainly a nail in the coffin for the idea that the president can set up these trials," said Barbara Olshansky, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents about 300 Guantanamo detainees.

Hamdan has claimed he is innocent and worked as a driver for bin Laden in
Afghanistan only to eke out a living for his family.

Stevens suggested that the administration would be best off trying Hamdan and others before regular military courts-martial trials.

The case is Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 05-184.

Teen burns down house over test grades

2006-06-26T23:03:00.000+02:00

A Japanese boy burned down his home, killing his stepmother and two younger siblings, for fear his parents would find out he had lied about his score on an English test.

The 16-year-old, whose name has not been released, is thought to have set fire to the house in Nara, western Japan, and left his stepmother to die along with his 7-year-old brother and 5-year-old sister, domestic media reports said on Saturday.

The boy's parents had been due to attend a meeting with teachers about his exam results that same day, reports said. The teen-ager told police his father, a doctor, had put him under extreme pressure over his academic performance, Kyodo news agency said.

American Medical Quackery from the 1700s to Today

2006-06-24T00:07:00.000+02:00

American Medical Quackery from the 1700s to Today

For once, a bad boss could be a good thing...

2006-06-21T05:28:00.000+02:00

The U.S. labor movement is asking workers to move their complaints about their bosses from the water cooler to the Web.

Working America, the AFL-CIO union federation's affiliate for nonunion workers, invited workers throughout the country on Monday to share their best stories about their worst bosses in its "My Bad Boss Contest".

Top prize is a one-week vacation.

"It's an opportunity for people to get this off their chests and to see what's happening out there and to shine a spotlight on this," said Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum.

It's also an opportunity for the worker advocacy group, which has more than 1 million members, to pick up new members, since contestants must go to www.workingamerica.org to enter.

Standing by to weigh in with on-line comments about the worst-boss stories are author Barbara Ehrenreich, who chronicled the plight of the working poor in "Nickel and Dimed," comedian tuned liberal talk show host Al Franken and liberal commentator Jim Hightower.

Voting for the best worst-boss stories will be done by Web readers over the next six weeks. Each week's top vote-getter will be eligible to compete for the grand prize, a seven-night vacation getaway and $1000 for a round trip air fare, to be announced by August 16

Leading vote-getters as of Monday were:

-- "Russ," whose table-thumping boss at a small Maryland company nixed bonuses, cut overtime and ordered managers to "instill fear" in workers to boost productivity, all because a competing company's owner had a more expensive car, and

-- "Graphics Girl," who left her Pennsylvania media company, and was publicly berated for doing so, after 10 years, including the last five where she worked 50 to 80 hours a week without overtime pay and often without seeing her children. "I missed birthdays and health and years of seasons changing since my office was in a basement with no windows, all for nothing," she wrote.

"It's important to legitimize for people that when you're treated unfairly on the job, that it's not necessarily something you have to swallow," commented Nussbaum.

And then there was "Nobody" from California who warned others by his own example of the perils of entering the contest from a workplace computer. "The fact that my entire Internet connection is monitored by my employer prohibits me from making a contribution," he wrote.

Wife accused in swordplay death of husband

2006-06-21T05:23:00.000+02:00

A Chinese woman has been charged with accidentally killing her husband with a sword after he refused to make her dinner, the Shanghai Daily said on Tuesday.

Police said Tang Xiaowan, 25, who has been practicing swordsmanship since she was young, had often forced her husband of three years at swordpoint to carry out her demands.

On March 3, her husband, Li Weidong, refused to cook dinner because he was late for work.

Police said Tang picked up her sword and put it on Li's chest and promptly slipped, stabbing Li by mistake.

Li died in hospital from loss of blood.

Tang was arrested Monday and charged with manslaughter.

Mother duck makes annual traffic-stopping trip

2006-06-17T15:27:00.000+02:00

A mother duck brought traffic in central Dublin to a standstill for an annual event Friday as she marched her seven ducklings to a pond for their first swim.

The duck, encouraged by delighted passersby, was relocating her young from their birthplace in the grounds of Trinity College to St. Stephen's Green, the city's historic public park, around half a mile away.

"She's been doing it for about the last six or seven years now -- laying her eggs at the college and then taking the babies to the green," Trinity groundsman David Hackett told Reuters.

"Usually she's good and picks an evening when it's quiet to waddle them up the street but sometimes she doesn't and in the past we've had to have the police help us out with the traffic."

This time two members of Trinity's zoology department escorted the new family safely along several busy streets.

DNA test to clear up Confucius confusion

2006-06-17T15:26:00.000+02:00

Chinese claiming Confucius for an ancestor can now use a genetic test to prove a direct blood connection to the grandfather of Chinese social mores, a state newspaper said Friday.

The fifth-century BC social philosopher's ideas of filial piety and deference to elders influence Chinese society and politics even today.

Now his countrymen can establish a genetic link in a test that will cost more than 1,000 yuan ($125), according to the Shanghai Morning Post.

"We would like to help these unconfirmed claimants to test their DNA and to establish a Confucius-DNA database," it quoted Deng Yajun, a DNA expert from Beijing Institute of Genomics at the Chinese Academy of Science, as saying.

How the scientists had obtained a sample of Confucius's DNA was not explained.

"One of the most difficult things in the project is to confirm the blood connections of these numerous claimants," said Kong Dewei, one of the editors of the new family tree, who has the same Chinese surname of Confucius, "Kong" in Chinese.

Association with Confucianism was fatal during the tumult of the Cultural Revolution, when "old China" and its traditions were condemned as reactionary by fervent Communist Red Guards.

But since the 1990s, Beijing has been encouraging Confucianism as part of celebrating traditional Chinese culture -- and of pushing a message of obedience to those in power.

Art gallery loses its head, displays plinth

2006-06-15T20:02:00.000+02:00

One of Britain's most prestigious art galleries put a block of slate on display, topped by a small piece of wood, in the mistaken belief it was a work of art.

The Royal Academy included the chunk of stone and the small bone-shaped wooden stick in its summer exhibition in London.

But the slate was actually a plinth -- a slab on which a pedestal is placed -- and the stick was designed to prop up a sculpture. The sculpture itself -- of a human head -- was nowhere to be seen.

"I think the things got separated in the selection process and the selectors presented the plinth as a complete sculpture," the work's artist David Hensel told BBC radio.

The academy explained the error by saying the plinth and the head were sent to the exhibitors separately.

"Given their separate submission, the two parts were judged independently," it said in a statement. "The head was rejected. The base was thought to have merit and accepted.

"The head has been safely stored ready to be collected by the artist," it added. "It is accepted that works may not be displayed in the way that the artist might have intended".

Bulls get simulated cows at farmers' fair

2006-06-15T12:25:00.000+02:00

Live "sex shows" of bulls mounting a simulated cow have become a big attraction at an agricultural exhibition taking place in New Zealand.

The fake 'cow' -- a small go-kart with natural cowhide on its roof -- was developed by Ambreed New Zealand Ltd. to collect semen from bulls more safely and efficiently and improve artificial breeding of cows.

Similar machines are widely used in Europe but have yet to be introduced in New Zealand, where dairy products are its largest export.

The go-kart, driven by a human operator, draws close to a bull and adjusts to the proper height.

The experience can be a little alarming.

"It's quite a daunting feeling when you consider you've got a bull there that weighs a thousand kilograms sitting on top of you and is in quite an aggressive mood," Andrew Medley, production manager at Ambreed, told Reuters.

Bull semen is commonly obtained using a rubber device known as an artificial vagina which is put in place manually by two handlers.

The president, the prime minister and the king

2006-06-15T12:23:00.000+02:00

President George W. Bush and Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a huge Elvis Presley fan, will visit Graceland Mansion on June 30 to pay homage to the king of rock and roll.

Presley moved into the 13-acre estate in Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1950s and died there in 1977, aged 42. Graceland draws Elvis fans from all over the world and ranks officially as a U.S. historic landmark.

Koizumi, 64, and Presley were both born on January 8.

Elvis fan websites say the Japanese leader is an enthusiastic member of his country's Elvis Presley fan club and even sang along to an Elvis number played at a banquet during a visit to Australia last year.

Koizumi is due to leave office in September and his U.S. visit for talks with Bush at the White House on June 29 is likely to be his last as prime minister.

Bush often talks about his warm friendship with Koizumi and uses it as an example of how relationships between countries can change over time. The United States and Japan fought each other during World War Two.

Sleepy workers costing billions

2006-06-10T11:46:00.000+02:00

Japan's corporate warriors aren't getting enough sleep -- and it's costing the country billions.

In the country that gave the world the word "karoshi," or death from overwork, drowsy employees turning up late, taking days off or struggling to stay awake on the job are causing economic losses of some $30 billion a year, according to a survey.

"The idea is to raise awareness of the problem," said Makoto Uchiyama, professor and chairman of the department of neuropsychiatry at Nihon University School of Medicine, who conducted the survey.

"Not everyone who is sleepy at work is lazy. It's hard to tell your boss that you are sleepy, but ignoring the problem can lead to losses in the long run."

Japanese routinely work long hours, as much from cultural constraints on leaving before colleagues as from volume of work. Suited salarymen napping, often standing up, are a common sight on crowded commuter trains.

The survey questioned some 3,075 workers at a chemical company on their sleeping and working habits for a month.

Some 37 percent of respondents said they had problems sleeping. They said their efficiency at work was reduced by about 40 percent and reported a high frequency of accidents, lateness and absenteeism.

Uchiyama said other countries may be in a similar situation.

"It may be thought that this is a Japanese problem. But it's not, it's global".

Court bars man from seeing dog

2006-06-02T23:58:00.000+02:00

A Spanish court has ruled that dogs should not be treated like children with allocated visiting rights when it comes to divorce cases.

A Spanish man was originally given permission by his wife to visit Yako, a golden retriever, when they separated but he appealed to a lower court when she stopped him from seeing the dog. The court ruled in his favor and set up visiting hours.

But the provincial court of Barcelona then overturned that decision, saying it set a precedent for pets to be treated like children in divorce cases.

"This sort of litigation is rare, given that common sense and reason dictate that people should not take such cases to court," said court papers obtained by Reuters Friday.

Anna Nicole Smith says she's pregnant, little else

2006-06-02T23:56:00.000+02:00

Former Playboy Playmate model, reality TV star and would-be oil heiress
Anna Nicole Smith announced on her official Web site on Thursday that she is pregnant, but offered few other details.

Smith, 38, revealed the news in a brief home video clip in which she appears to be lounging on an inflatable raft in a backyard swimming pool, with two yapping poodles visible in the background.

"Hi, it's me, Anna Nicole," she says, smiling into the camera. "I've been hearing a lot of gossip in the papers ... Is she pregnant? She's pregnant by some guy? Well, let me stop all the rumors. Yes, I am pregnant."

Smith goes on to say that she is "very, very happy about it" and that "everything's going really, really good."

But she never says when she's expecting, nor offers any hint of the father's identity.

The video was shot at a close camera angle that reveals little more than Smith's face and shoulders, though she promises future updates that will "let you see me as I'm growing."

The video was posted on Smith's official Web site (http://www.annanicole.com) with a message promoting the footage as a first installment in what will become, starting next week, a subscriber-supported video diary.

Unconfirmed reports that Smith was pregnant began surfacing weeks ago on the Internet, gossip columns and supermarket tabloids, but her lawyer-spokesman Howard K. Stern had previously declined to confirm the stories.

Last month, Smith won a U.S. Supreme Court decision giving her another chance to collect millions of dollars left by her late Texas oil tycoon husband, J. Howard Marshall by allowing her to contest a probate court judgment in federal court.

The former Vicki Lynn Hogan from Mexia, Texas, she met Marshall at a Houston strip club and was 26 when she married the wheelchair-bound, 89-year-old billionaire in 1994.

His death after 14 months of marriage triggered a legal battle over his estate between Smith and his son, E. Pierce Marshall.

She has a son Daniel Smith, born in 1986 during her first marriage.

'F-word' banned in hotel

2006-06-01T22:31:00.000+02:00

A British hotel is offering football-free breaks for "soccer widows" desperate to escape wall-to-wall coverage of the World Cup.

Any guest who overhears a member of staff mentioning the f-word -- football -- will be given a free glass of champagne.

"The bookings are starting to stream in," said Mike Bevans, manager of the Linthwaite House Hotel in the picturesque Lake District, one of Britain's prime tourist destinations.

The sport supplements are being taken out of daily newspapers and, instead of blanket TV coverage of the big games, guests will be offered a string of romantic movies on DVD like "Dirty Dancing" and "Pretty Woman."

The World Cup finals in Germany start on June 9, with the final in Berlin on July 9.

Would-be robber asks bank how to do it

2006-06-01T22:30:00.000+02:00

A would-be Japanese bank robber asked staff how he should carry out the crime before meekly obeying a request to leave and then accidentally stabbing himself in the leg with a knife he was carrying.

The 58-year-old unemployed man went into a branch of the Saitama Resona Bank in the town of Kumagaya, north of Tokyo, on Wednesday, intending to rob it, a police spokesman said.

According to local media reports the man first asked a bank teller, "Any idea how you rob a bank?" The teller alerted another member of staff, who asked the man to leave.

"He left quietly when asked to," the police spokesman said.

However, the staff member escorting the man out of the bank noticed the knife sticking out of his pocket and a bloodstain on his trousers.

Police arrested the man for illegal possession of a weapon.

"He didn't brandish the knife at anyone ... but he injured himself in the leg," the police spokesman said.

Finders keepers for plane loader

2006-05-30T23:54:00.000+02:00

A Maltese court has ordered the Customs Department to return to an aircraft loader $5,000 he found on a plane.

The loader found the cash on a plane that arrived in Malta from Tripoli in July 2000. He handed it to customs, but asked for it to be returned when no one claimed it. Customs refused, arguing it was illegal to hold foreign currency under a law existing at the time.

A court Monday decided however that the loader, John Fiteni, had a right to the money, the Malta Times newspaper reported Tuesday.

Fishy discovery leads to drug bust

2006-05-25T20:04:00.000+02:00

Australian customs officers thought something was fishy when they inspected a man's luggage and found jars of pickled fish.

Closer inspection found 39 condoms of heroin inside the fish.

Officers at Adelaide airport in South Australia "became suspicious about pickled fish fillets inside jars found in the passenger's luggage" Wednesday, a Customs statement said.

"Closer inspection revealed a number of condoms sewn inside the fish pieces," said the statement Thursday.

A 32-year-old Australian man returning from Cambodia was arrested and will be charged with importing more than two kg (4.4 pounds) of heroin, Customs said.

The charge of importing a commercial quantity of drugs carries a penalty of life imprisonment and/or a fine of up to A$825,000 (US$620,000).

Lingering longer in the lingerie

2006-05-15T22:24:00.000+02:00

Saudi Arabia has postponed plans to replace male sales assistants in lingerie shops, saying it wants to give outlets more time to prepare for the move which has irritated the influential religious circles.

The government, which wants more women to work as part of its efforts to reduce reliance on foreign labor, took the decision last June and businesses were given a year to prepare for implementation.

"Based on pleas by shop owners ... that they were unable to comply with the deadline, the ministry's decision is postponed until all the required preparations are finalized," state news agency SPA quoted the Labor Ministry as saying.

While women in Saudi Arabia are forbidden from mixing with men outside their immediate family in public, they have little alternative to buying their most intimate items of clothing from men.

Many clerics and Islamists in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam which imposes a strict version of Sunni Islam, have opposed the idea as the start of reform process promoted by King Abdullah that they fear will liberalize the stringent system.

A Western diplomat said the move had irritated some of the most influential clerics in kingdom, where women are not allowed to drive and face employment restrictions because of the need to segregate sexes.

"The ministry may very well be honest in its argument (for the postponement). But the facts hint at a setback for the ministry future efforts in integrating Saudi women in the job life," the diplomat said.

Labor Minister Ghazi Algosaibi, who is despised by hardline Islamists as a liberal reformer, said plans to allow women to work in other sectors would go ahead, citing a group of government-backed clerics who have approved the reforms.

And the world's loneliest Web users are..

2006-05-15T22:23:00.000+02:00

Ireland may be enjoying stellar economic growth and seen as one of the best places in the world to live, but its inhabitants are apparently also the globe's loneliest.

Google Trends, which works out how many searches have been done via the Internet search engine on particular terms, showed the word "lonely" was entered most frequently by Internet users in Ireland: http://www.google.com/trends?q=lonely.

The Irish, enjoying new-found wealth and a flood of immigration following more than a century of economic decline, are followed in the misery stakes by residents of Singapore and New Zealand -- although Singaporeans are the most frequent searchers of "happiness."

Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for a given term coming from each city, region or language divided by total Google searches coming from the same area.

Ireland's capital, Dublin, topped the city list for "lonely" searches, followed by Melbourne, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand.

In 2004, the Economist magazine named Ireland the best place to live in the world in a "quality of life" assessment.

Man buys fighter jet, wants refund

2006-05-09T22:47:00.000+02:00

A Chinese businessman who bought a Russian fighter jet online wants his money back after finding it could not be shipped to China, state media reported on Tuesday.

Zhang Cheng, a Beijing businessman, bid $24,730 and paid a $2,000 deposit for the former Czech air force plane on Chinese-based eBay, Xinhua news agency said.

But legal experts informed Zhang that the MiG-21, located in Idaho in the United States, was "almost impossible to ship back," Xinhua said, quoting the Beijing Times.

Moreover, the seller had clearly confined the destination of the plane to the United States and Canada, Xinhua quoted a member of eBay's public relations staff as saying.

Chinese Web surfers have accused Zhang of trying to gain fame, but others suggest it merely shows the improved living standards of the Chinese, Xinhua said.

The buyer, however, said he was building a collection.

"I like to collect valuable items," he said. "I have the buying power and my company has an empty space where I can display the plane".

Study: US mothers deserve $134,121 in salary

2006-05-03T23:50:00.000+02:00

A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released Wednesday.

A mother who works outside the home would earn an extra $85,876 annually on top of her actual wages for the work she does at home, according to the study by Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts Salary.com.

To reach the projected pay figures, the survey calculated the earning power of the 10 jobs respondents said most closely comprise a mother's role -- housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist.

"You can't put a dollar value on it. It's worth a lot more," said Kristen Krauss, 35, as she hurriedly packed her four children, all aged under 8, into a minivan in New York while searching frantically for her keys. "Just look at me."

Employed mothers reported spending on average 44 hours a week at their outside job and 49.8 hours at their home job, while the stay-at-home mother worked 91.6 hours a week, it showed.

An estimated 5.6 million women in the United States are stay-at-home mothers with children under age 15, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.

NOT 'JUST A MOM'

"It's good to acknowledge the job that's being done, and that it's not that these women are settling for 'just a mom,'" said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation at Salary.com. "They are actually doing an awful lot."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, some 26 million women with children under age 18 work in the nation's paid labor force.

Both employed and stay-at-home mothers said the lowest-paying job of housekeeper was their most common role, with employed mothers working 7.2 hours a week as housekeeper and stay-at-home mothers working 22.1 hours in that role.

"Every husband I've ever spoken to said, 'I'm keeping my job. You keep yours.' It's a tough one," said Gillian Forrest, 39, a stay-at-home mother of 22-month-old Alex in New York. "I don't know if you could put a dollar amount on it but it would be nice to get something."

To compile its study, Salary.com surveyed about 400 mothers online over the last two months.

Salary.com offers a Web site (http://www.mom.salary.com) where mothers can calculate what they could be paid, based on how many children they have, where they live and other factors. The site will produce a printable document that looks like a paycheck, Coleman said.

"It's obviously not negotiable," he said.

On average, the mother who works outside the house earns a base pay of $62,798 for a 40-hour at-home work week and $23,078 in overtime; a stay-at-home mother earned a base pay of $45,697 and $88,424 in overtime, it said.

In a Salary.com study conducted last year, stay-at-home mothers earned $131,471. The potential earnings of mothers who work outside the home was not calculated in the previous study.

Da Vinci judge's secret code revealed

2006-04-30T10:26:00.000+02:00

A secret code embedded in the text of a court ruling in the case of Dan Brown's bestseller "The Da Vinci Code" has been cracked, but far from revealing an ancient conspiracy it is simply an obscure reference to a Royal Navy admiral.

British High Court Justice Peter Smith, who handed down a ruling that Brown had not plagiarized his book, had embedded his own secret message in his judgment by italicizing letters scattered throughout the 71-page document.

In Brown's book, a secret code reveals an ancient conspiracy to hide facts about Jesus Christ.

The judge's own code briefly caused a wave of amused speculation when it was discovered by a lawyer this week, nearly a month after the ruling was handed down.

But the lawyer, Dan Tench, cracked it after a day of puzzling. The judge's code was based on the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical progression discussed in the book.

"After much trial and error, we found a formula which fitted," wrote Tench, who had nothing to do with the Brown case but discovered the italicized letters when studying the ruling.

The judge's secret message was: "Jackie Fisher, who are you? Dreadnought," Tench wrote in the Guardian newspaper.

Judge Smith is known as a navy buff, and Fisher was a Royal Navy admiral who developed the idea for a giant battleship called the HMS Dreadnought in the early 20th century.

Tench wrote that the judge had e-mailed him to confirm he had guessed the secret code right.

The judge later confirmed the existence of the code, and revealed that the Fibonacci sequence was indeed the secret to its solution.

"The message reveals a significant but now overlooked event that occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the trial," he said in a statement.

He said that he is not normally much of a fan of puzzles, such as the Japanese number puzzles that have become an obsession of the British press.

"The preparation of the Code took about 40 minutes and its insertion another 40 minutes or so," he wrote. "I hate crosswords and do not do Sudoku as I do not have the patience".

And the world's sexiest woman is...

2006-04-28T08:18:00.000+02:00

British actress Keira Knightley was voted the world's sexiest woman in a magazine poll on Thursday, beating model Keeley Hazel and Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson into second and third place respectively.

The poll, which British magazine FHM said was based on two million votes, saw homegrown model and TV presenter Kelly Brook slip to 5th from first last year, while Angelina Jolie, expecting a baby in mid-May, came fourth.

Beyonce Knowles was the sexiest pop star at number seven and Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova the top sportswoman at number 56.

FHM said the poll was the only one of its kind voted for entirely by the British public.

Latest Da Vinci mystery: judge's own secret code

2006-04-27T23:49:00.000+02:00

Three weeks after a British court passed judgment in the copyright case involving Dan Brown's bestseller "The Da Vinci Code," a lawyer has uncovered what may be a secret message buried in the text of the ruling.

Lawyer Dan Tench noticed some letters in the judgment had been italicized, and it suddenly dawned on him that they spelled a phrase that included the name of the judge: "Smith code."

Justice Peter Smith, who during the trial displayed a sense of humor unusual in the rarified world of bewigged barristers and ancient tradition, appears to have embraced the mysterious world of codes and conspiracy that run through the novel.

"I thought it was a mistake, that there were some stray letters that had been italicized because the word processor had gone wrong," Tench told Reuters.

Tench initially told The Times newspaper that apparently random letters in the judge's ruling appeared in italics. Wouldn't it be clever if the judge had embedded a secret message in the text? The Times ran a jokey item.

"And then I got an e-mail from the judge," said Tench.

He said Smith told him to look back at the first paragraphs. The italicized letters scattered throughout the judgment spell out: "smithcodeJaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz"

Those in the first paragraphs spell out "smith code."

But what does the rest mean?

The novel, and upcoming movie starring Tom Hanks, are about a secret code that reveals ancient mysteries about Jesus Christ.

Smith, who ruled that author Brown had not plagiarized his hugely popular thriller from another book, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," has so far not given any clues to his own mystery code.

For now, the judge is not speaking. His clerk said he is refusing interviews. She would not confirm whether there truly was a secret mystery embedded in his judgment.

But she did confirm that he is, generally speaking, a humorous type of person.

Tempest in a D-cup as bust sizes grow

2006-04-25T23:33:00.000+02:00

Bra producers have been forced to offer bigger cup-sizes in China because improved nutrition is busting all previous chest measurement records.

"It's so different from the past when most young women would wear A- or B-cup bras," Triumph brand saleswoman Zhang Jing told the Shanghai Daily from the Landmark Plaza of China's commercial hub.

"You...never expect those thin women to have such nice figures if they are not plastic."

The report, seen on the daily's Web site Tuesday, said that the Hong Kong-based lingerie firm Embry Group no longer produces A-cups for larger chest circumferences and has increased production of C-, D- and E-cup bras to meet pressing demand.

The Beijing Institute of Clothing Technology released a report last week saying the average chest circumference of Chinese women has risen by nearly 1 cm (0.4 inch) to 83.53 cm (32.89 inches) since the early 1990s, the daily said.

This phenomenon, it said, was due to women eating more nutritiously and taking part in more sport.

Similar growth in the average height of children prompted a rethink last year in Beijing on the height allowance for free bus rides.

Official arrested for chewing gum at ceremony

2006-04-25T23:29:00.000+02:00

An official in Turkey's ruling party has been arrested for chewing gum while laying a wreath at a monument to the country's revered founder Kemal Ataturk, the state Anatolian news agency said Monday.

Veysel Dalci, head of the local branch of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Black Sea town of Fatsa, was charged with insulting Ataturk's memory during Sunday's ceremony marking Turkey's National Sovereignty Day.

CNN Turk television quoted Dalci, a 38-year-old pharmacist and father of two, as saying he chewed gum to hide the smell of garlic which he had eaten the previous evening.

"After laying a wreath at the monument, I noticed I had gum in my mouth. I am very sorry," CNN Turk quoted him as saying.

Anatolian said Dalci was arrested after a local army garrison commander complained to state prosecutors. It was not immediately clear what kind of penalty Dalci would face.

Showing disrespect to Ataturk, the soldier-statesman who founded the modern Turkish Republic on the ashes of the old Ottoman Empire in 1923, is a crime in the
European Union candidate nation. Ataturk died in 1938.

Secularists especially revere Ataturk as the leader who banished religion from political life and modeled Turkey's state institutions on those of Europe, especially France.

The secularists, who dominate Turkey's military and judiciary, deeply distrust the AKP on account of its roots in political Islam. The AKP denies any Islamist agenda but wants to ease some of Turkey's restrictions on religious expression.

Global sex survey: guess who's satisfied

2006-04-20T11:54:00.000+02:00

Around the world, middle-aged and elderly men tend to be more satisfied with their sex lives than women in the same age group, a survey released on Wednesday said.

Substantial majorities of people who are married or who have a partner remain sexually active throughout the second half of their lives, according to a survey of 27,500 people aged 40 to 80 in 29 countries.

"There was very little effect of age on sexual well-being," though other factors such as health problems or depression had a substantial impact, said lead researcher Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago in a telephone interview.

The survey published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior looked at how they viewed their sex lives, their health, and their happiness.

It found that a greater proportion of people in Europe, North America, and Australia, where men and women have more or less equal relations, enjoyed sex physically and emotionally, Laumann said.

A smaller percentage of people reported satisfying sex lives in male-dominated cultures in poorer countries, the research showed.

But the gender gap persisted around the world.

"There's a systematic disparity between men and women, where men are on the average substantially -- or about 10 points -- higher in their levels of satisfaction as women in that country," he said.

Most of those surveyed at random were married, though there was an obvious bias toward participants who were willing to talk about sex, and toward urban populations in less-developed nations.

"Pleasure is not part of the story" in sexually conservative cultures in the Far East -- China, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, Laumann said. "Procreation is the rationale for sex. Many women ... characterize sex as dirty, as a duty, something they endure" -- and often stop having it after age 50.

But roughly two-thirds of adults in Western nations reported their sex lives were very to extremely satisfying -- though some countries appeared happier than others.

Roughly four out of five middle-aged to older Austrians, for instance, rated their sex lives highly, while considerably fewer adults in France and Sweden shared that sentiment.

In the United States, about three-quarters of men and two-thirds of women reported they were very satisfied with the physical and emotional aspects of their sex lives.

In Japan, by contrast, just 18 percent of the men and 10 percent of the women answered positively about their sex lives. And in Taiwan, only 7 percent of the women said sex was very important in their lives.

Satisfying sex is not the same as a satisfying sexual relationship, Laumann said the survey showed.

"People who are dating have higher levels of sexual satisfaction than (married) couples ... but when they think the relationship is temporary, they're not going to feel as positive about sex," he said.

Clinical web site may be target of porn seekers

2006-04-18T23:29:00.000+02:00

It seems that online dermatological images, intended as a references for doctors, are sometimes being used pruriently.

The idea that a searchable archive of clinical photographs was being misused first occurred to the site's curators when they noticed a marked jump in queries for images of genital areas.

In light of this, Dr. Christoph U. Lehmann and colleagues, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, emphasize in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology that "anonymous misuse of collaborative archives must be anticipated, addressed and prevented to preserve their integrity and the integrity of the learning communities they support."

The researchers assessed request patterns received by the site over a 6-month period, in terms of diagnosis, age group and anatomic site.

Of the more than 7800 dermatological images available on the site, 5.5 percent involve genital regions. However, 12 percent of queries for a specific diagnosis involved a genital area. Also, 37 percent of the requests for an anatomic site involved a genital region, and 12 percent of the 10,000 free text queries were for images of genitalia.

In searches that specified both an age group and an anatomic site, images involving children were 48 percent more likely to be requested than those involving an adult.

An analysis of the top 43 referring sites to the dermatology service revealed that 9 (21 percent) were pornographic/fetish sites. However, these sites only accounted for 14.3 percent of all 141,285 referrals.

The authors conclude, "Developers of online clinical image libraries containing potentially sensitive health information on topics such as sexuality and anatomy must be aware of issues beyond technical and domain knowledge".

Texas halts arrests of drunks in bars

2006-04-15T20:11:00.000+02:00

A controversial Texas program to send undercover agents into bars to arrest drunks has been halted after a firestorm of protest from the public.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has "temporarily suspended" what it called "Operation Last Call" even though it still believes it was worthwhile, commission spokeswoman Carolyn Beck said on Thursday.

"We understand that everything has room for improvement, this included," she said.

She said most of those arrested in the sting operations had been "dangerously drunk" and might have tried to drive if TABC agents had not busted them.

The TABC has launched an internal investigation of Operation Last Call and a Texas Legislature committee will hold hearings on the program on Monday.

The TABC announced the program in late August but it received little attention at the time.

But recent media reports that drunks were being arrested in bars provoked both ridicule and anger around the world and, perhaps more importantly, complaints from hotels, restaurants and bars in Texas who said it could hurt business.

The program drew support from groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The Houston Chronicle found that 1,740 people across the state had been arrested for public intoxication in Operation Last Call.

Thieves steal ancient cannon from British barracks

2006-04-15T20:06:00.000+02:00

British police are hunting for thieves who stole a 200-year-old cannon from outside a military barracks in southern England.

They said at least two people would have been needed to hoist the 150 lb (68 kg) cannon from outside St George's Barracks in Gosport on the south coast.

"These artefacts are loaned to various locations in Gosport to show the pride that people have in the history of our town," said Josephine Lawler, curator of the museum which owned the cannon. "However, if this is what happens to them, there will soon be no more left to display."

Spider-hunting nudist ends with ring of fire

2006-04-03T22:46:00.000+02:00

A red-faced Australian nudist who tried to set fire to what he thought was a deadly funnel web spider's nest ended up with badly burned buttocks, emergency officials said Monday.

The 56-year-old man was at a nudist colony near Bowral, about 60 miles southwest of Sydney, Sunday when he spotted what he believed to be a funnel web spider hole.

Ambulance workers, including a helicopter crew, were called to the scene after the man poured petrol down the hole and then lit a match in an attempt to kill the offending arachnid.

"The exploding gasoline fumes left the man with burns to 18 percent of his body, on the upper leg and buttocks," the NRMA Careflight helicopter rescue service said in a statement.

It said the man's lack of clothing probably contributed to the extent of his burns.

"The fate of the bunkered spider was unknown, although other guests at the resort thought it was probably a harmless trapdoor spider and not a deadly funnel web," the statement said.

NRMA Careflight said it was called to a property in the same area in January when another man kicked a spider that was crawling up the wall of a friend's cabin. The man broke his leg in two places, it said.

China offended by Berlusconi's comments

2006-03-28T23:33:00.000+02:00

China, which is marking 2006 as the Year of Italy, has denounced comments by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that the Chinese under Mao Zedong boiled babies.

"We are dissatisfied with this groundless talk," China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement faxed to Reuters on Tuesday.

"Words and deeds by Italian leaders should benefit the stability and development of friendly relations between China and Italy."

Berlusconi, who has been accused of being obsessed with the "communist threat" in Italy, said Sunday that communists had a history of boiling babies.

"Go and read the black book on communism and you'll find that under Mao's China they didn't eat babies but boiled them to fertilize the fields," he told a rally.

Finding drunks in a bar -- what are the chances?

2006-03-24T07:24:00.000+01:00

Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said on Wednesday.

The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission's Carolyn Beck.

Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkeness, Beck said.

The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.

"We feel that the only way we're going to get at the drunk driving problem and the problem of people hurting each other while drunk is by crackdowns like this," she said.

"There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they're intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car," Beck said. "People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss."

She said the sting operations would continue throughout the state.

Porn star hits it big as wine-maker

2006-03-23T06:55:00.000+01:00

It seemed like the perfect gimmick: a celebrity porn star would launch her own wine, with her alluring picture on the label.

Savanna Samson did just that, but when it received a score of 90 to 91 out of 100 by wine guru Robert Parker, the project became serious. It turns out Samson, the star of "The New Devil in Miss Jones," has produced an exceptional wine, becoming the toast of two industries: wine-making and pornography.

"I never wanted to just do gimmick. That would just happen with me being a porn star, me having a photographer shoot the label, how risque could I get on the label -- all those things," Samson, the stage name for 31-year-old Natalie Oliveros, said in an interview.

The seriousness of the idea was lining up a respected wine maker. So she convinced Italy's Robert Cipresso -- also a vintner to the
Vatican -- to join the project.

Samson went to Tuscany and tasted dozens of Cipresso's Italian-grown varieties, then she selected a mix of 70 percent Cesanese, 20 percent Sangiovese and 10 percent Montepulciano. She ordered over 400 cases.

"I knew I wanted Roberto to make my wine -- I just love his passion for wine," said Samson.

The result is Sogno Uno, a 2004 vintage of an Italian red wine packaged under the Savanna name with a label of Samson in a see-through gown. It was launched last month.

Parker has been called the most influential wine critic in the world, and a score of 90 to 95 denotes "an outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character."

"Trust me, I didn't add any points for Ms. Samson's personal presentation," Parker wrote in his review.

NAUGHTY AND SPICE

Samson is one of the biggest names in pornography, having won best actress in the Adult Video News Awards (AVN), the pornographic equivalent of the
Oscars, and another AVN Award for a scene she shared with Jenna Jameson in last year's "The Masseuse". She has made two dozen porn flicks.

The wine "really represents who I am," said Samson.

"There's spiciness -- the Cesanese has the naughty side of me. And yet it's an elegant wine. I love the opera, and I'm a classically trained ballet dancer. And there is some chocolate undertone, which I just love. There's a little bit of sweetness. Like, 10 percent of the time I'm sweet," she said.

She is working on a white wine -- Sogno Due -- that could be out later this year, and also has ideas of expanding into champagne, ice wine and grappa.

Samson, who was raised Catholic in upstate New York, said it was pure coincidence that Cipresso also sells wines to the Vatican. She met him through her husband, a wine merchant.

"My priest said in Mass once, 'Violence or pleasures of the flesh. What is the greater of two evils?' I think we all know the answer. I felt like he was saying that toward me," she said.

Still, she never had her parent's blessing for her career choice as an adult movie star. "They were so devastated. They were terribly, terribly upset."

But while she will continue her film career, wine-making may offer some redemption. "I wanted to do something that my parents could be proud of," she said.

Don't read this if you get nightmares...

2006-03-19T15:22:00.000+01:00

Burglars in Kazakhstan locked a funeral parlor employee in a coffin and kept him there unconscious while rummaging for cash in the shop.

Serik Sarsenbayev said he was on his own late at night when two masked burglars burst into the parlor and beat him until he fainted.

The thieves then nailed him into a wooden coffin and carried on their search for a money safe, he told Reuters by telephone from the steppe town of Temirtau.

He was later freed by the driver of the parlor's hearse.

The thieves made away with the equivalent of $23,000 and remain at large, the daily Express K reported.

Which do you prefer? TV or sex?

2006-03-16T22:03:00.000+01:00

When it comes to sex and romance, aging Canadian baby boomers spend a lot more time watching television or surfing the net, according to a new study.

The survey by pollsters Ipsos Reid, commissioned by Pfizer Inc., the maker of Viagra, found that Canadians between the ages of 40 and 64 spend an average of 15 minutes a day on sex and romance, but can spend as much as five hours a day watching TV or surfing the Internet.

"Later in life, you have a different perspective of what sex is all about," John Wright, an Ipsos Reid spokesman, said on Thursday.

Of 2,500 people surveyed, more than half said they were often too tired to have sex, while 42 percent said they were too stressed out and 40 percent said they did not have time.

Around half of the respondents said when they do have sex it is intimate and tender.

Wright said another yet-to-be released study found that 37 percent of Canadians over 55 prefer a good night of sex to a good night of sleep, indicating that sex is still important to that age group.

"I think the last two decades have opened up sexuality as far as (older) couples engaging in a variety of sexual activities," he said. "There's been much more openness about this... sex shops abound."

Linda Proulx, owner of Winnipeg, Manitoba's Love Nest boutiques, said the boomers' preference for watching TV is not such a bad thing. She said many of her customers are baby boomers and senior citizens who have taken a cue from television and decided to rejuvenate their sex life.

"People are spending time watching TV, but it is bringing them into our stores," she said, noting that more television shows have sexual themes. "They're buying the products to maybe help them engage in a more intimate or longer sex act because of something they've seen on TV."

The Ipsos Reid survey found that even though boomers are having less sex, only 28 percent say it is less enjoyable now than it was in their 20s, and more than 80 percent say sex makes them feel loved and appreciated.

Don't these guys know how to really curse?

2006-03-16T09:42:00.000+01:00

Britain's television advertising regulator has agreed to review a ban on an Australian tourism campaign centered on the slightly risque phrase "bloody hell," officials said on Wednesday.

"It's a bloody good result," Australian Tourism Minister Fran Bailey said after she flew to London to save the campaign.

Britain's Broadcasting Advertising Clearance Center had banned the ads from British television because of concerns over the campaign's use of the word "bloody" and ordered censored ads run in their place.

Bailey said the center had now agreed to review the ban.

The ads begin with characters saying: "We've poured you a beer and we've had the camels shampooed, we've saved you a spot on the beach ... and we've got the sharks out of the pool."

They end with a bikini-clad woman on a beach asking "so where the bloody hell are you?"

So concerned were Australian tourism officials by the British decision that Bailey was sent to London to lobby broadcasters and regulators, along with the woman in the bikini, Sydney model Laura Bingle.

"My faith in British justice and humor has been restored and I am now hopeful that common sense will prevail," Bailey said in a statement issued by her Canberra office.

Bailey had argued that the word "bloody," a very mild profanity commonly used in Australia and Britain, was not generally considered offensive and had been used in other British advertising campaigns.

The A$180 million ($133 million) campaign is already running in the United States, New Zealand and in British cinemas and newspapers, and will also target China, Japan, India and Germany.

The full advertisement can be seen at www.wherethebloodyhellareyou.com

Iraq Edges Closer to Open Civil Warfare

2006-03-15T00:42:00.000+01:00

Iraqi authorities discovered at least 87 corpses — men shot to death execution-style — as Iraq edged closer to open civil warfare. Twenty-nine of the bodies, dressed only in underwear, were dug out of a single grave Tuesday in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad.

The bloodshed appeared to be retaliation for a bomb and mortar attack in the Sadr City slum that killed at least 58 people and wounded more than 200 two days earlier.

Iraq's Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, meanwhile, told The Associated Press security officials had foiled a plot that would have put hundreds of al-Qaida men at critical guard posts around Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the U.S. and other foreign embassies, as well as the Iraqi government.

A senior Defense Ministry official said the 421 al-Qaida fighters were recruited to storm the U.S. and British embassies and take hostages. Several ranking Defense Ministry officials have been jailed in the plot, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Police began unearthing bodies early Monday, although the discoveries were not immediately reported. The gruesome finds continued throughout the day Tuesday, police said, marking the second wave of sectarian retribution killings since bombers destroyed an important Shiite shrine last month.

In the mayhem after the golden dome atop the Askariya shrine in Samarra was destroyed on Feb. 22, more than 500 people have been killed, many of them Sunni Muslims and their clerics. Dozens of mosques were damaged or destroyed.

Underlining the unease in the capital, Interior Ministry officials announced another driving ban, from 8 p.m. Wednesday to 4 p.m. Thursday to protect against car and suicide bombs while the Iraqi parliament meets for the first session since the Dec. 15 election.

After the driving ban was announced, the Cabinet said Thursday would be a holiday in the capital, presumably because residents would not be able to get to work. Restrictions on movement also had been put in place on the two weekends after the Samarra bombing in an attempt to quell the violence.

The most gruesome find Tuesday — the 29 bodies dressed only in underwear — was made after police, acting on a tip, discovered an 18-by-24-foot grave in an empty field in Kamaliyah, a mostly Shiite east Baghdad suburb, Interior Ministry official Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said. He estimated the victims were killed about three days ago — before the Sadr City attack Sunday evening.

Residents watched, some covering their eyes in horror, others offering scarves and newspapers to cover the bodies as they were pulled from the grave.

An abandoned minibus containing 15 other bodies was found earlier on the main road between two mostly Sunni west Baghdad neighborhoods — not far from where another minibus containing 18 bodies was discovered last week, al-Mohammedawi said.

At least 40 more bodies were recovered elsewhere in Baghdad, in both Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, al-Mohammedawi said. Police found three other corpses dumped in the northern city of Mosul.

Also Tuesday, the U.S. military reported the deaths of two more soldiers in fighting in Anbar province. The soldiers, assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 28th Infantry Division, Pennsylvania Army National Guard, were killed Monday, bringing the number of U.S. military members killed to at least 2,310 since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld hinted Tuesday that U.S. troop levels may increase slightly in Iraq in the coming days because of pilgrimages connected to the holiday of Ashura. The holiday, which ends March 20, includes pilgrimages to holy sites in Najaf and Karbala. Increased attacks marked the celebration during 2004 and 2005.

Rumsfeld said Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq, "may decide he wants to bulk up slightly for the pilgrimage." He did not elaborate.

Scores of frightened Shiite families have fled predominantly Sunni parts of Baghdad in recent weeks, some at gunpoint. More than 100 families arrived between Monday and Tuesday alone in Wasit province, in the southern Shiite heartland, said Haitham Ajaimi Manie, an official with the provisional migration directorate.

More than 300 Baghdad families — 1,818 people — have taken shelter in the province after fleeing the capital, he said.

North of the capital, a roadside bomb exploded Tuesday among Shiite pilgrims headed on foot to the holy city of Karbala, killing one person near Baqouba, police said.

The sectarian violence has complicated negotiations for Iraq's first permanent, post-invasion government. A caretaker government has been in charge since the December elections and U.S. and Iraqi officials fear the vacuum in authority has fueled the bloodshed.

Once parliament meets Thursday, it has 60 days under the new constitution to elect a president and approve the nomination of Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and his Cabinet.

After members of all the major Iraqi political blocs met Tuesday with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, no breakthrough was reported on solving the deadlock over the nomination of al-Jaafari to head a new government.

But in an interview with Fox television, U.S. Embassy Political Counselor Robert Ford seemed guardedly optimistic.

"I can't say that we've had a breakthrough, but we had good talks today," Ford said.

But Iraqis in the meeting said the sides were still so far apart that major Sunni politicians were again pressing for the new constitution be thrown out, despite its adoption late last summer and approval in a subsequent national plebiscite.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iraqi forces and civilians, as well as coalition forces, need to provide stability to allow the new government to do its work.

"The Iraqi people themselves are standing at a crossroads," Pace said Monday night in a speech at the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs, "and they are making critical decisions for their country right now about which road they'll take."

Gives new meaning to 'going back home'

2006-03-13T23:06:00.000+01:00

Police charged an Australian driver with "reversing further than necessary" after he traveled backwards for more than 25 miles along one of the country's busiest highways.

Police said the man was stopped on the Hume Highway -- which runs between the cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

Police said the man told them reverse was the only gear in the car that worked and that he was traveling home to the small regional town of Numurkah, another 56 miles away.

He was also charged with unlicensed driving and driving an unregistered car. He will appear in court later this year.

This is what he gets for following etiquette?

2006-03-13T23:04:00.000+01:00

A letter of apology sent to a robbery victim spelled arrest for a Japanese man after police investigating the case identified him from the handwriting.

NHK television said the man had pushed his way into the house of a 78-year-old woman in the town of Misato, western Japan, and stole 15,000 yen ($125) after threatening her with a knife.

He later wrote the victim a letter saying he was sorry and returning the cash.

The handwriting "and other things" led police to the man, a 51-year-old construction worker who lives near the victim, NHK said. The man, who has confessed, is heavily in debt, it said.

NHK did not say how the handwriting was linked to the man.

A local police official declined to give details, saying an investigation was still under way.

Court says oral sex law violates rights

2006-03-07T21:45:00.000+01:00

A 22-year-old Californian man who received oral sex from a sixteen-year-old girl should not be forced to register for life as a sex offender, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

The state's top court found that California denied Vincent Hofsheier equal protection under the law because those having intercourse in such circumstances would not be forced to register as lifetime sex offenders.

Hofsheier appealed after being ordered to register his name on the list, which is shared with the public and carries significant stigma.

"Requiring mandatory lifetime registration of all persons who, like defendant here, were convicted of voluntary oral copulation with a minor of the age of 16 or 17, but not of someone convicted of voluntary sexual intercourse with a minor of the same age, violates the equal protection clauses of the federal and state Constitutions," the court ruled.

"We perceive no reason why the legislature would conclude that persons who are convicted of voluntary oral copulation with adolescents 16 to 17 years old...constitute a class of 'particularly incorrigible offenders'... who require lifetime surveillance as sex offenders."

U.S. law on oral sex has evolved over the years, and it was not until 1975 that oral sex between consenting adults was decriminalized in California. Today, in 38 of the 50 U.S. states consensual sex with a 16- or 17-year old is legal.

In the case, Hofsheier pleaded guilty and received probation after meeting the teenager in an Internet chat room and sharing rum and orange juice with her at a beach.

The California Supreme Court's decision returns the case to a lower court to decide whether he should still be subject to registration under that court's discretionary authority.

Farmer feeds family friend's corpse to pigs

2006-03-07T21:44:00.000+01:00

A German farmer confessed to feeding the corpse of an elderly family friend to his pigs and then stealing from his bank account, police said Monday.

Police ruled out murder and the 29-year-old farmer has been charged with improper burial and fraud.

The elderly friend died in the farmer's yard in February 2005 and the farmer, through his mother, had power-of-attorney giving him access to the dead man's bank account and pension.

The farmer initially put the corpse in a deep freezer, police in the German town of Frizlar-Haddamar said, and told curious locals the old man was in a nursing home.

"From lectures about various religions the 29-year-old knew that Buddhists either burn the dead or allow wild animals to eat them. That was how he decided to feed the corpse to his pigs," the police statement said.

He let the corpse thaw, dismembered it and fed it to his pigs. He put the parts the pigs did not eat into a sack and buried it.

The farmer told police "it was a great act of stupidity" and said "the only explanation was his difficult financial situation at the time."

Woman seizes police car for 2-hour ride

2006-03-04T13:08:00.000+01:00

A 25-year-old woman grabbed a sheriff deputy's sports utility vehicle on Thursday and led police on a two-hour televised car chase through suburban Los Angeles County.

No injuries were reported in the pursuit -- a staple of local TV news in the sprawling car capital of the world.

Deputy Dave Jennings said the woman, who was described as having a long criminal record, was being questioned in the back seat of a deputy's SUV about a stolen vehicle. She made her way into the front seat and drove off.

Followed by police cars and news helicopters, the woman screamed and sobbed into the on-board radio as officers tried to calm her down. In the end, the woman came to a stop and was arrested at gunpoint.

She is expected to face charges of theft and evading arrest.

Witnesses report seeing nothing unusual...

2006-02-27T21:55:00.000+01:00

Four armed men stole several famous paintings on Friday, including a Picasso and a Monet, from a Rio de Janeiro museum and then slipped away in a crowd of Carnival revelers.

Officials of the Chacara do Ceu museum in downtown Rio de Janeiro said among the stolen paintings were Pablo Picasso's "Dance," Claude Monet's "Marine," Henri Matisse's "Luxemburg Garden," and Salvador Dali's "Two Balconies."

The men, who were suspected of carrying a grenade, forced the guards to turn off the internal television circuit. One of the guards was manhandled.

"They took advantage of a Carnival parade passing by the museum and disappeared into the crowd," said Vera de Alencar, director of the museum, which is administered by the federal government.

Museum officials did not say how many paintings were stolen or place a value on them.

The thieves also walked away with the belongings of several visitors, including three foreign tourists.

The Federal Police are investigating the case and taking measures to prevent the paintings from leaving the country.

Here are the paintings:

Picasso: Dance

Matisse: Luxemburg Garden

Monet: Marine
Dali: Two balconies

Man sentenced for ride-by bottom slap

2006-02-26T17:21:00.000+01:00

A Colombian man has been sentenced to four years' house arrest for slapping a woman's bottom as he rode by her on his bicycle, sparking debate on whether the punishment fit the crime.

Showing re-enactments of the incident, television news shows were filled on Friday with legal experts offering opinions about the judgment handed down earlier in the week by Bogota's district court.

Some said that to confine bicycle messenger Victor Garcia to his home for four years for smacking Diana Marcela Diaz's buttocks was excessive. Others said it would deter other men.

One program showed three models having their denim clad bottoms smacked so hard by a phantom hand it could be clearly heard by television viewers.

The women said that while the punishment seemed extreme, they hoped the case would mean they would be safer while on foot.

"It happened to me once," one of the models said. "I was walking very relaxed and a guy rode by on his bicycle and, 'ta!' He smacked me. I took off my shoe to hit him with it but he was already too far away".

Japan's blondes vanish as women turn to dark side

2006-02-26T17:19:00.000+01:00

It's a case of the vanishing blondes.

Ten years ago, a stroll through central Tokyo could leave travelers wondering what country they were in as they watched a parade of tanned, fair-haired women walking tall in precarious platform shoes.

Now fashion has moved on and hairdressers say bleached blonde tresses are going the way of fake tans, although a dark brown tint still seems more popular than natural black.

The only fair-haired women to be seen on the covers of Japanese fashion magazines nowadays are foreign models.

Even Ayumi Hamasaki, the Japanese pop world's answer to Madonna, has dyed her trademark platinum locks sleek black to stay ahead of the curve.

"What's seen as attractive now is to look well groomed and cute," said hairdresser Yuko Shimizu of the afloat-f salon in Tokyo's trendy Aoyama district. "People want natural-looking shiny hair, whereas dyeing it blonde tends to damage it."

Neighboring countries are providing inspiration, with popular actresses Zhang Ziyi of China and Choi Ji-woo of South Korea often seen showing off their glossy dark hair in TV commercials that emphasize their Asian identity.

Japanese women of a certain age have long tinted their tresses to cover the grey.

Light-colored hair was popular because it was believed to make the face appear brighter and to be easier to coordinate with Western-style fashions, hairdressers say.

Admiration for European hair made even mousy brown tones a more desirable option than black, while younger Japanese of both sexes sought to express individuality with a palette of colors.

While brassy blonde is out, hairdressers say few fashion-conscious Japanese women are prepared to go completely natural, since many feel poker-straight black hair is unflattering.

"Black hair simply doesn't suit Japanese women any more, because their complexions are fairer than they used to be," said Kenichi Uehara, a veteran stylist at the Double salon in Harajuku, an area popular with young people.

"Magazines put forward the idea of black hair, but women aren't actually taking it up," he added. "The idea is to find a color that's not too light but not too dark".

Americans work more, seem to accomplish less

2006-02-24T12:40:00.000+01:00

Most U.S. workers say they feel rushed on the job, but they are getting less accomplished than a decade ago, according to newly released research.

Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products.

The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say.

"Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically," said John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

"We never concentrate on one task anymore. You take a little chip out of it, and then you're on to the next thing," Challenger said on Wednesday. "It's harder to feel like you're accomplishing something."

Unlike a decade ago, U.S. workers are bombarded with e-mail, computer messages, cell phone calls, voice mails and the like, research showed.

The average time spent on a computer at work was almost 16 hours a week last year, compared with 9.5 hours a decade ago, according to the Day-Timer research released this week.

Workers typically get 46 e-mails a day, nearly half of which are unsolicited, it said.

Sixty percent of workers say they always or frequently feel rushed, but those who feel extremely or very productive dropped to 51 percent from 83 percent in 1994, the research showed.

Put another way, in 1994, 82 percent said they accomplished at least half their daily planned work but that number fell to 50 percent last year. A decade ago, 40 percent of workers called themselves very or extremely successful, but that number fell to just 28 percent.

"We think we're faster, smarter, better with all this technology at our side and in the end, we still feel rushed and our feeling of productivity is down," said Maria Woytek, marketing communications manager for Day-Timers, a unit of ACCO Brands Corp.

The latest study was conducted among a random sample of about 1,000 people who work at least part time. The earlier study surveyed some 1,300 workers.

Expectations that technology would save time and money largely haven't been borne out in the workplace, said Ronald Downey, professor of psychology who specializes in industrial organization at Kansas State University.

"It just increases the expectations that people have for your production," Downey said.

Even if productivity increases, it's constantly outpaced by those expectations, said Don Grimme of GHR Training Solutions, a workplace training company based in Coral Springs, Florida.

"The irony is the very expectation of getting more done is getting in the way of getting more done," he said. "People are stressed out."

Companies that are flexible with workers' time and give workers the most control over their tasks tend to fare better against the sea of rising expectations, experts said.

Businesses that have moved to 24-hour operations, bosses who micro-manage and longer commutes all add to the problem, they said, while downsizing leaves fewer workers doing the work of those who left.

Finally, there's a trend among companies to measure job performance like never before, said Challenger. "There's a sense that no matter how much I do, it's never enough," he said.

Injured woman can sue Postal Service

2006-02-24T12:23:00.000+01:00

A woman who tripped and fell over letters, packages and periodicals left on her front porch can sue the U.S. Postal Service for damages, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

The 7-1 ruling was a victory for Barbara Dolan, who said she suffered wrist and back injuries when she fell in 2001 in front of her Glenside, Pennsylvania, home.

She said postal employees acted negligently by leaving the mail on her porch. No further details were available on the circumstances of her fall.

The justices said a U.S. appeals court had been wrong to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that federal law provided immunity to the Postal Service over lawsuits claiming negligent mail delivery or placement.

In the court's majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy rejected the federal government's argument that Congress in adopting the law must have intended to insulate the Postal Service from liability over delivery-related lawsuits.

The Postal Service delivers about 660 million pieces of mail each day, and government lawyers had raised the specter of frivolous slip-and-fall lawsuits inundating the Postal Service if the high court ruled against it.

But Kennedy rejected that argument and said the risk of lawsuit is shared by any business that makes home deliveries.

Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the ruling.

Dart injuries rise as beginners get the point

2006-02-21T20:22:00.000+01:00

A wave of international victories for Dutch darts players has prompted an increase in the number of injuries as people take up the game at home, according to the Dutch consumer safety association.

Over-eagerness caused some of the most injuries, said a spokeswoman for the group, with players hurling their darts before opponents had finished retrieving their own.

Poorly hung dartboards also posed problems. "Often the board falls down on someone's foot or worse on someone's head," she added.

About 120 people are admitted to hospitals each year with injuries sustained during darts, with pierced fingers and wrists most common. Eye injuries were rare, the association said.

"Maybe it is national pride that when one of us is good at a sport, we all want a go," the spokeswoman said.

Last month 21-year-old Dutchman Jelle Klaasen wowed audiences at the World Darts championship, with a victory over fellow Dutchman Raymond van Barneveld, to become the youngest ever world champion and a national hero.

Stripping away the mystery

2006-02-20T12:52:00.000+01:00

Amsterdam's famed red light district held its first ever "open day" Saturday as its peep-shows and brothels gave crowds of wide-eyed visitors free entry to help shed the area's increasingly negative reputation.

Armed with a list of 25 establishments opening their doors and flinging back their red curtains, hundreds of tourists and locals seized the opportunity to see a prostitute's bedroom, watch a brief live peep-show or chat to a lap dancer.

Harrowing reports of forced prostitution and human trafficking have caused a public outcry in recent months and even prompted calls from councillors for the 800-year-old red light district to be shut down, to the fury of many sex workers.

Stories of petty crime and gang violence also dominate.

"The open day is partly to promote the red light district but also to help change the image of the area because we think it is too negative," said organizer Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute who now runs an information center on the district.

"There are not just problems here," she added.

Prostitution has been fully legal in the Netherlands since 2000, and sex workers are self-employed and subject to tax.

However one rights group estimates that around 3,500 women are trafficked to the Netherlands each year from eastern Europe and Asia to work in secret brothels or illegal escort agencies, where they are often held captive and abused.

Tourist authorities admit the district -- a clutch of narrow alleys and canals lined with sex shops, brothels and neon signs -- is as big an attraction as Amsterdam's museums and coffee shops, where marijuana is freely smoked and sold.

Every night visitors throng the streets, agog at the scantily clad women sitting behind huge red-lit windows, but only a fraction venture inside.

"GOOD IDEA"

"This is a very good idea," said 28-year-old Dutchman Maarten Ritsema, grinning after experiencing his first ever lap-dance at the Bar La Vie en Proost.

"I've never been inside anywhere like this before ... it's pretty casual, not as tense or hostile as I imagined," he said.

Many of the area's sex workers also took the chance to explain more about their work and dispel myths.

Candy, a 39-year-old dancer from France, sat in her usual position behind the counter of the Banana Bar, joking with visitors and posing for photographs.

"People out today see it's fun, that this is entertainment."

There may have been less flesh on display than usual for the non-paying public, but visitors, mostly drawn by curiosity, didn't seem to mind. "It was still sexy and you can use your imagination," said 31-year-old Rob Jansen, on leaving the Casa Rosso theater.

Amsterdam resident Ina van Leyan, 49, said she hoped the area would never be closed down: "It belongs to Amsterdam. Its for the tourists, it's for the men without wives, it's a key part of the city."

Those goats are back, honey -- get the tiger poop

2006-02-18T10:40:00.000+01:00

A tiger's roar might be scary, but Australian researchers have found that the predator's poo is just as potent.

Researchers at the University of Queensland said Friday they had successfully tested a tiger poo repellant, warding off wild goats for at least three days.

"Goats wouldn't have seen a tiger from an evolutionary point of view for at least 15 generations but they recognize the smell of the predator," repellent creator Peter Murray said in a statement.

"If we can show this lasts weeks ... we've just tapped into probably a billion-dollar market. It's enormous," he said.

Murray said the repellant, made of fatty acids and sulphurous compounds extracted from tiger excrement, also worked on feral pigs, kangaroos and rabbits and might deter deer, horses and cattle too.

In an average year pest animals cause about A$420 million (US$311 million) worth of agricultural damage in Australia the government has said. Others put the cost in the billions, mostly from European imports such as rabbits, foxes and crop-choking weeds.

Girl's prosthetic legs stolen for second time

2006-02-17T21:59:00.000+01:00

For the second time in three months, a 16-year-old California girl who lost a leg in an accident has had her artificial limbs stolen.

Melissa Huff, an Arcadia High School student who uses a $16,000 prosthetic limb to play softball for the school team and another one, valued at $12,000, for everyday use, said both were taken from her bedroom Tuesday.

"I was picking up my little brother from school when my mom called me and asked where I left the two prosthetic legs," Huff, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Temple City, told Reuters in an interview.

"I knew right then that it had happened again."

Lisa Huff, her mother, said she came home around midday on Tuesday and found the room shared by Melissa and her older sister a mess. Only the prosthetic limbs were missing.

Police say they were talking to the girl's friends, neighbors and relatives for information about the missing legs.

In November, thieves broke into the Huff residence and took just her prosthetic limb. After that incident, Melissa's prosthetist and a local real estate company donated about $16,000 for a new limb.

The stolen limb was discovered in the teenager's backyard about a month ago, apparently thrown there by the thieves.

Melissa lost her real leg two years ago when a driver accidentally ran into her as she stood in front of her middle school.

She said she intends to get back on the field this week and just practice throwing until she gets another prosthetic limb.

Great Wall of China wards off ravers

2006-02-16T23:16:00.000+01:00

Beijing has called up a team of dedicated Great Wall monitors to protect it from damage from tourists, adventurous hikers and party revelers, the China Daily said Thursday.

The Great Wall, which snakes its way across more than 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) of China, receives an estimated 10 million visitors a year, mostly to a few miles of wall opened to tourists at Badaling, the nearest stretch to Beijing.

All that traffic had taken a heavy toll on the structure, prompting the move to employ local villagers to keep watch, the report said.

Less than 20 percent of the original facade of the wall near the capital had been preserved well, Yu Ping, deputy director of Beijing's cultural heritage administration, was quoted as saying.

"Almost every brick at Badaling has been carved with people's names and graffiti," the newspaper said.

More adventurous visitors climbed wilder, crumblier sections that are not officially open to the public, making them potentially dangerous and more susceptible to damage.

Stretches of the wall near the capital have also become popular sites for summer raves.

Last July, "some participants were involved in such indecent and illegal activities as urinating and drug abuse on the wall," the China Daily said of a party that was widely reported and sparked a public uproar.

The Great Wall was begun in 221 BC during the Qin dynasty as an earthen structure to ward off invaders, though much of the existing structure was built much later.

The United Nations listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1987 and it is protected against development by Chinese law.

But it is not clear how effective the new wall-watching team will be -- the same villages that will provide the monitors have been exploiting the wall for their own gain for years.

Locals set up ladders at unopened stretches, allowing visitors to climb on to the wall for a price, and have used its heavy bricks to build their own homes.

Singer's body exhumed 39 years after death

2006-02-16T23:15:00.000+01:00

Italian prosecutors exhumed the body of a popular singer Wednesday and said they had laid to rest suspicions that he had been murdered.

Luigi Tenco, one of Italy's most famous modern singers, was found dead in his hotel room with a single gunshot wound to the head on January 27, 1967, hours after learning that his song had been eliminated from a national music competition.

A hand-written note found near Tenco said he had decided to kill himself as a protest against the jury and members of the public who had voted against him.

Yet doubts over his death have lingered for almost 40 years as no autopsy was carried out at the time and, although a pistol was found next to Tenco, the bullet that killed him was not.

But Mariano Gagliano, the Sanremo magistrate who ordered the exhumation, told reporters Wednesday that an examination of the body proved that Tenco had died of a gunshot wound.

"The Tenco case is definitively closed. Checks have confirmed that it was suicide," Gagliano was quoted as saying by the Italian media.

He did not give any further details, nor explain why he was so certain that the gunshot wound had been self-inflicted. State television said it would take four months to draw up a full report.

The doubts surrounding Tenco's death was a typical Italian controversy in a land where nothing is taken at face value and where mysteries shroud countless tragedies and crimes.

Tenco was only 29 when he died but had already made his name as a headstrong protest singer whose songs were often censored by state broadcaster RAI.

In 2003, an investigation by three journalists highlighted the inconsistencies in the case and called for prosecutors to reopen their probe and consider the possibility of murder.

Grocery shopping? Take your rubber gloves!

2006-02-15T00:01:00.000+01:00

Shopping cart handles are the most bacteria-infested items among some commonly used objects while doorknobs on public bathrooms are not as bad as might be expected, according to a survey conducted in South Korea.

The Korea Consumer Protection Board tested six items that are commonly handled by the public and ran tests for their bacteria content.

Shopping cart handles led the way with 1,100 colony forming units of bacteria per 10 sq cm (1.55 sq inches) followed by a mouse used on computers in Internet cafes, which had an average of 690 colony forming units.

"The reason that shopping cart handles had so much bacteria is because the area is larger than the others and people have more space to place their hands," Kwon Young-il, an official at the consumer body, said by telephone.

Hand straps on buses were next with 380 units, followed by bathroom doorknobs at 340.

Rounding out the list were elevator buttons at 130 colony forming units and hand straps on subways at 86.

The report released this week said washing hands with soap removes almost all of the bacteria.

Morality police send bored city to sleep

2006-02-10T13:36:00.000+01:00

Nightlife in India's entertainment capital has become deadly dull, youngsters in Mumbai complain, as the authorities continue a crackdown on discos and bars that they accuse of corrupting impressionable young minds.

The city's nightlife -- not so long ago pulsating, risque and never-ending -- has become a non-event, they say, ever since officials declared a war on adult fun in August, forcing hundreds of popular dance bars to shut their doors saying they bred crime and prostitution.

After the ban, thousands of dancers found themselves out of work, with many moving to other states to earn a living. Others are reported to have become prostitutes.

As if that was not bad enough for Mumbai's party set, police are now reining in the city's ordinary watering holes, asking them to obtain a dozen licenses, pull down the shutters at midnight, and make their guests behave.

"This is moral policing at its best and we don't need any of this," said Sebastian Ambrose, a computer professional and a regular pub-goer. "They say this city never sleeps. Now Mumbai sleeps by 12. This is boring."

More than 30 pubs have closed in the last two weeks, with the police often kicking out drinkers as they relaxed after work, and many more look set to follow unless the authorities relent.

Anyone hoping to serve alcohol needs to spend more time in government offices than pouring drinks, with permits for parking, pest control, the playing of music (one each for live or recorded sets) and many others needed before opening time.

"A pub owner here has to go from table to table seeking more than a dozen licenses that may take more than a year to obtain," said Kamlesh Barot, secretary of a hotels and restaurants association.

While only four of the permits have been introduced recently, in the past many licenses were more often than not overlooked. But not any more.

Bar owners say the crackdown is just an excuse for government officials and the police to collect bribes.

"We don't mind licenses but the wait for getting them should not be endless. Files don't move till officers' palms are greased," said Jehani Farhang, the director of a south Mumbai pub.

NO FUN, PLEASE

It is not just the bar owners who are coming under pressure. Police are stepping up patrols outside popular nightspots.

"We feel like criminals with police watching over outside the pubs and nightclubs. They have to stop being a bully," said Sanjay Khadas, a young advertising executive.

"The dance bars are gone. Now they are after the bars to ensure there is no entertainment in Mumbai," said Paritosh Sehgal, a college student.

For pub owners, the early hours of the morning are when they do their best business, and early closures are hitting them hard.

The police are unapologetic. "We are targeting only those that don't comply with rules. All of them have to get licenses," said Ashutosh Dumbre, deputy police commissioner.

Local newspapers have gone to town protesting police "excesses," saying officers were spending more time watching over pub and nightclubs than solving murders or catching rapists and fraudsters.

"For cops, public is public enemy No.1," said a headline in Times of India Thursday. "Moral policing is easy to do and gets policemen and politicians a lot of cheap publicity. Never mind that the public enemy number one becomes the public itself," the newspaper said.

Ban rock concerts and football games?

2006-02-10T13:34:00.000+01:00

An Iowa sheriff's decision to hand out tickets instead of arrests for small amounts of marijuana invited a lawmaker's slap that it would be simpler to ban rock concerts and football games.

Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek, who oversees the University of Iowa in Iowa City, told a legislative committee he would treat possession of small amounts of marijuana like a traffic violation, allowing hundreds of students arrested each year to graduate without a criminal record.

"The guy that's carrying 50 bales of marijuana ... that's a different animal," Pulkrabek said, adding he favored rounding up intoxicated people in a locked "detox center" in lieu of the crowded jail.

But Republican legislator Clel Baudler, a former state trooper, shot down the notion as sending the wrong message to drug users and abusers.

"We could simplify law enforcement's job if we didn't have rock concerts. We could simplify their job a lot quicker if we just didn't have football games there where we arrest hundreds of drunks over the weekend." Baudler said.

Burglar steals police car from station

2006-02-10T13:31:00.000+01:00

Detectives in Germany were dumbstruck after a man they had just booked for burglary walked out of the police station and drove off in one of their cars, authorities said Wednesday.

"It's not just unusual, it's embarrassing," said a spokesman for police in the central town of Eschwege.

Police said the 27-year-old must have pocketed the key of the car during his interrogation. After he was charged and released, officers were stunned to see the man easing out of the station in the unmarked vehicle and immediately gave chase.

Three cars, including the stolen vehicle, were damaged in the ensuing pursuit. It ended with the man's re-arrest.

Max the dog loves trams but has no ticket

2006-02-09T12:23:00.000+01:00

A Staffordshire bull terrier hopped onto the number 6 tram in
The Hague and traveled for 20 minutes before passengers saw he was alone and called police to make him get off.

The 7-year-old black and white dog has a penchant for traveling solo on the trundling trams, his owner Ben told a Dutch daily newspaper Wednesday.

"He got so used to traveling by tram, I always have to stop him from jumping in without me," Ben said. "I'll have to put him on the leash more often."

Police spokesman Leo Maat noted that Max, who did not want to get off the tram, had traveled several stops without a ticket.

Rails missing; it's hard to keep track...

2006-02-05T18:43:00.000+01:00

Thieves have dismantled and carted away some 5 kms (3 miles) of disused rail track close to the German town of Weimar, railway operator Deutsche Bahn said on Friday.

The railway operator said the thieves would probably sell the tracks as scrap metal with the damage amounting to at least 200,000 euros ($241,500).

Deutsche Bahn said it had noticed the missing track after the mayor of a town alongside the train line phoned in to check if the dismantling was planned.

"This was a major criminal operation, because you cannot simply take the tracks and carry them away," said a spokesman for the rail operator.

And the most important trait in a mate is...

2006-01-28T23:20:00.000+01:00

When it comes to romance, women prefer someone who tickles their funny bone while men opt for those who catch their eye, according to an international survey released on Wednesday.

The survey, conducted in 16 countries by Canadian romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises, asked men and women on six continents about traits they liked or disliked and how they went about trying to meet Mr. or Ms. Right.

The poll revealed differences between countries in the way people tried to impress the opposite sex.

Australians and British men frequently admitted drinking too much, while about half of German and Italian men said they had lied about their finances. Spaniards were the most likely to use sex to catch someone's attention.

Eighty percent of Brazilian and Mexican men said they had lied about their marital or relationship status, as did 70 percent of German women, the survey said.

When it came to meeting that special someone, a majority of respondents preferred to rely on friends for introductions. The Internet was not a popular hunting ground except in Portugal, where about half the surveyed men and women opted to find people online.

Both Spain and France suffered a gender gap. Thirty percent of Spanish men, but no Spanish women, looked for love online. In France, 40 percent of men but only 10 percent of women attended parties, bars and clubs to meet someone, but they did have one thing in common: both sexes rated looks as more important than their counterparts in other countries.

When it came to that first meeting, a majority of men polled said beauty was more important than brains, while women put a sense of humor at the top of their list.

Physical attraction was the top priority for men in France, Brazil, Greece, Japan and Britain. And while 40 percent of Portuguese men rated intelligence over looks in a first encounter, no Australian men did so.

In the United States and Canada, humor was considered the most important trait by both men and women, getting 63 and 73 percent of the vote respectively.

Man with 11-woman commune

2006-01-27T22:06:00.000+01:00

Police found a stun gun and tear gas Friday at the Tokyo home of a man who said he persuaded 11 younger women to live with him by chanting a spell, media reports said.

Police suspect he used the weapons to prevent the women, mainly in their 20s, from leaving, the reports said.

Hirohito Shibuya, 57, was arrested Thursday for allegedly threatening a 20-year-old woman who was reluctant to join the commune by telling her that if she left she would be turned to mincemeat, they said.

He denied threatening the woman, Kyodo news agency said, adding that he also allegedly told her he was a former senior officer in Japan's military with secret agents around him.

Shibuya, a bald, rotund man with bags under his eyes, has attracted heavy media attention this week after claiming he chanted a spell to attract the women.

He had married and divorced several of the women, who continued to live with him, the reports said.

Asked what the incantation was, he told a newspaper: "When you say it, even unattractive men become attractive. But I won't say it because if I do, I'll die."

Police confiscated several books on hypnosis from his home, Kyodo said.

Government support for mail-order brides

2006-01-25T12:52:00.000+01:00

A rural province in South Korea plans to give financial aid to help lonely male farmers pay for mail-order brides from overseas.

South Kyongsang province plans to start a trial program in which it will give 6 million won ($6,113) to male farmers who marry foreign women, an official said Tuesday.

South Korean farmers have been turning to brides from other parts of Asia in recent years after struggling to woo local women, who are often less than enthralled with the prospect of rural life.

"Young men in the countryside have a hard time finding brides and they started to look elsewhere," said Ryu Kum-ju, an agricultural policy official for the province, located in the southern part of the country.

"We decided to give financial support to those men for a trial period," Ryu said by telephone.

The province also plans to increase courses for foreign brides to help them adjust to life in South Korea.

The local government estimates it costs about 12 million won for a farmer to pay all the fees and travel required to find a bride overseas.

The number of South Korean men who have married foreign women has rocketed in recent years. It hit 25,594 in 2004, more than double the 11,017 in 2002, according to data from the Korea National Statistical Office.

China provides most of the brides, while Vietnam is second on the list.