World Briefs

Italian animal rights campaigners are urging Pope Benedict to stop wearing ermine on his hats and robes, appealing to his reputation as a cat lover.

The Italian Association for Defence of Animals and the Environment, which has a white bunny logo, has started an online petition signed by nearly 1,900 people asking the German-born pontiff to stop wearing fur. Corriere della Sera newspaper had photos of Pope Benedict and one of his predecessors, Pope John XIII, wearing an ermine-trimmed hat and cape. It put the shots next to a picture of a live stoat.

Ermine is the white winter fur of the stoat, which has been used to trim the crowns, ceremonial hats and robes of European royalty, aristocrats, judges and popes for centuries.

The Pope wore the fur-trimmed hat and cape before pilgrims around Christmas in 2005, giving him the look of Santa Claus and delighting well-wishers and photographers alike.

Wanted: Girl to serve as goddess

Religious authorities in Nepal have begun the search for a girl who could be as young as three or four to serve as the new Kumari, or the virgin "living goddess", in a centuries-old tradition.

Astrologers were consulting horoscopes of candidates from Buddhist Shakya families to replace the current Kumari, Preeti Shakya, who is 11 and should retire during the annual Hindu festival of Dasain in October.

"If the girl starts menstruating while serving as Kumari, it is considered inauspicious," said Deepak Bahadur Pandey, a senior official of the Trust Corporation that oversees the country's cultural matters.

Under the Kumari tradition, a girl selected from a Buddhist Newar family goes through a rigorous cultural process and becomes the "living goddess". She is considered by many as an incarnation of the powerful deity Kali and is revered until she menstruates, after which she must return to the family and a new one is chosen.

The Kumari must have perfect eyes, teeth, hair and must not have even a small scratch to her skin.

Missile false alarm

A missile attack warning went off in local government offices in central Japan yesterday, but officials realised it was a false alarm before disaster teams were mobilised.

"This is information about a ballistic missile attack," a broadcast from the central government's Fire and Disaster Management Agency had said, with a red light blinking.

The warning turned out to be a test, accidentally broadcast to 20 government offices in Aichi prefecture because a volume switch had been left on.

Japan has been sensitive to missile attacks since neighbour North Korea fired a ballistic missile in 1998 that flew over the country.

Adultery evidence on eBay

An Australian woman has taken revenge on her cheating husband by putting a photograph of his lover's underpants up for sale on the auction site eBay.

In the listing the woman says she is selling a picture of a pair of lacy black knickers and an empty contraceptive wrapper "size small" found in her bed after her husband had an affair with another woman.

The seller - identified on eBay only as annastella007 - provides a rather unflattering description of the knickers: "They are so huge I thought they may make someone a nice shawl or, even better, something for Halloween perhaps."

Inessa Jackson, a spokesman for eBay said that the listing almost did not make the site because it originally included the actual panties for sale and had to be taken down due to eBay's policy against selling secondhand underwear.

World's tallest woman dies

Sandy Allen, the world's tallest woman at 2.32 metres, died yesterday in an Indiana nursing home.

Ms Allen, 53, who once appealed to Guinness World Records for help in finding a tall companion, had been ill with various ailments and confined to a wheelchair for some time at her home, the Heritage House in Shelbyville.

Ms Allen wrote in a 1974 letter to Guinness: "I would like to get to know someone that is approximately my height. It is needless to say my social life is practically nil and perhaps the publicity from your book may brighten my life."

On its website, Guinness said Ms Allen, a secretary, subsequently got a role in Federico Fellini's 1976 film "Casanova" and she had her first date.

Born in Chicago, Ms Allen's abnormal growth was due to a tumour on her pituitary gland. She had surgery on the gland when she was 22.