The Netherlands will ban the sale and cultivation of all hallucinogenic "magic" mushrooms from next week, the latest target of a country seeking to shed its "anything goes" image.

The Dutch government proposed the ban in April, citing the dangerous behavioural effects of magic mushrooms following the death of a French teenager who jumped from an Amsterdam bridge in 2007 after consuming the hallucinogenic fungus.

"The use of magic mushrooms has hallucinogenic effects. It is proven that this can lead to unpredictable and therefore risky behaviour," the Dutch Health Ministry said in a statement.

A challenge to the ban was rejected by a court in the Hague yesterday. From Monday the production or sale of fresh magic mushrooms could lead to a maximum jail sentence of four years, a spokesman for the Dutch Justice Ministry said yesterday.

The active ingredient in magic mushrooms is psilocybin. The psychological consequences of psilocybin use include hallucinations and an inability to discern fantasy from reality.

French need big condoms

The French say they need the largest condoms in Europe while Greeks get by on smaller ones, according to a Europe-wide study by a German consultancy that provides advice on condoms.

The study by the Singen-based Institute of Condom Consultancy was done by asking 10,500 men in 25 countries to measure their male organ and enter the number into a database. The results show Frenchmen on average claim to need 15.48-centimetre-long condoms, about three centimetres longer than Greeks, whose condom-size requirement was the most modest.

Jan Vinzenz Krause, the institute's director, yesterday said the data was collected over a period of eight months. He did not want to comment on how honest he thought the Frenchmen had been in reporting the data.

The survey was aimed at educating youngsters about the importance of effective contraception.

Mexico aims to shrink coins

Mexico wants to shrink the size of some of its coins and use stainless steel to make them instead of copper, zinc and nickel alloys, which have hit record prices in recent months.

President Felipe Calderon sent a Bill to Congress this week proposing to slightly reduce the diameter of centavo coins and stop making them from the more expensive metals. Stainless steel also would be used in some peso coins.

Bulging wallets and pockets jangling with coins are common in Mexico where everyday purchases, from bus fares to tacos, are often paid for with small denominations like 10 pesos (€0.58) instead of larger bills.

Oldest person dies, aged 115

The world's oldest person, an Indiana woman, died this week at the age of 115, according to a gerontology expert.

"Ms Edna Parker of Indiana, the world's oldest person for a number of years, passed away today (Wednesday) at the age of 115 years, 220 days," Stephen Coles, a gerontologist at the University of California in Los Angeles, said on the website of the Gerontology Research Group.

Ms Parker, a former school teacher who was born on April 20, 1893, died peacefully at the Heritage House Convalescent Centre in Shelbyville, Indiana, the local newspaper reported.

Ms Parker and her husband, who died of a heart attack when she was 48, had two sons.

Ms Parker was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest person alive.

The oldest living person is now 115-year-old Maria de Jesus of Portugal, who was born on September 10, 1893, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

Learn Kazakh to do business

If you are a foreign company doing business in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, you might want to start taking some Kazakh lessons.

US oil group Chevron, developing Kazakhstan's biggest oil deposit, yesterday said it had received a note from the authorities accusing it of neglecting Kazakh as a language of business communication.

The accusation is part of a broader trend in the resource-rich nation to revive Kazakh - a Turkic language spoken in most parts of Central Asia - as a symbol of the country's independence from Moscow's rule. Chevron said it disagreed with the assertion.

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