World briefs

Ireland should consider giving up driving on the left to reduce accidents by foreigners accustomed to right side motoring, a senior politician said yesterday. Donie Cassidy, the leader of Ireland's upper chamber Senate, cited Sweden - which moved to the right in 1967 - as an example of a country that switched decades after most of Europe did.

Ireland's economic growth over the past decade has attracted tens of thousands of workers especially from central and eastern European countries. It is also a popular tourist destination for visitors from the US.

"We have all of these people coming in from Europe and from America and (because of) the roads that they are used to driving on in their own countries it is a huge difficulty when they start driving here," Ms Cassidy told public broadcaster RTE. "I know when I go to America it takes me five or six days to adjust."

Besides Ireland, many former British colonies such as India, Australia and Malta, keep to the left as does Japan.

Funeral horses stampede

A hearse overturned when the horses pulling it to a south London cemetery stampeded, dragging the carriage and coffin past appalled relatives and sending floral tributes flying.

"It was dreadful," a mourner told the South London Press. "The horses dragged the carriage to the cemetery on its side, tossing the coffin all over the place and destroying all the flowers inside.

"Some people got very angry and had to be restrained by other mourners... It is understandable given the circumstances. I'm horrified that something like this could happen."

Police were called to calm angry mourners so that the funeral could go ahead. The carriage appeared to have clipped a mini-roundabout as it entered Lambeth Cemetery for the funeral, the local council, which administers the graveyard, said yesterday.

Cats rescued from Olympic site

More than 160 ferral cats and kittens have been rescued from the site of the London 2012 Olympics as demolition work continues at a pace.

A local animal charity has been allowed access to the site to ensure the safety of the cats that have taken refuge in the various industrial buildings that are being bulldozed.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) said yesterday that 168 animals had been discovered and were now in the care of the Celia Hammond Animal Trust.

The ODA, which has also re-housed newts, frogs and fish from the east London site, said demolition work was expected to be completed in March with construction on the main venues beginning later this year.

Beijing boasts less spitting

Less spitting, better queuing and cleaner streets show Beijing has become more "civilised", but the city still has to fine-tune its etiquette to attain Olympic standards, Xinhua news agency said yesterday, citing a new study.

China wants to leave nothing to chance when the eyes of the world turn its way for the Olympics in August and the Beijing government has waged a long campaign to hone manners.

Renmin University created an annual "civic index" three years ago to gauge progress, surveying thousands of residents and sending out teams of observers, Xinhua said.

The 2007 results all pointed in the right direction: 2.5 per cent of people spat in public, down from 4.9 per cent in 2006; instances of queue jumping dropped to 1.5 per cent from six per cent; and littering fell to 2.9 per cent from 5.3 per cent.

Paying police to lose weight

The central Mexican city of Aguascalientes is considering paying a cash bonus to local police who slim down, amid the increasingly common sight of overweight officers in Mexico.

Aguascalientes city hall plans to decide next week on whether to pay 100 pesos (€6.34) for every kilogram that officers lose, a police spokesman said. "We do have some fat officers. We have been encouraging them for a while to lose weight, to be more agile, to do sport," he added.

Obesity is one of the biggest health problems in Mexico, where diabetes is the biggest killer and where sugary soft drinks and fatty hamburgers are increasingly becoming part of the national diet.

Sending fish on rocket ride

Scientists plan to launch 60 tiny fish on a zero gravity rocket ride from above the Arctic Circle on Monday to try to plumb the secrets of motion sickness.

Tomas Hedqvist, project manager for Sweden's Esrange Space Centre, said the baby cichlid fish will head 260 kilometres into the air on an 11-metre two-stage rocket, where they will experience six minutes of weightlessness.

Experimenters Reinhard Hilbig and Ralf Anken of the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim in Germany will train six video cameras on the fish, each of which will be housed in its own aquarium, to see how they react.

After the flight, the scientists will examine the video camera recordings as well as small balance organs - called otoliths - which exist naturally in the heads of each fish to work out what makes some sick and others not.