Welcome to one of the coolest hostels in the world where you can spend the night onboard a real jumbo jet - on the ground!

When a jumbo jet 'dies', it's usually sold for scrap or sent to bake in the desert until the end of time. But Swedish entrepreneur Oscar Dios has a better idea for the 30-year-old junker he bought - turn it into a hostel.

Jumbo Hostel is a Boeing 747-200 jumbo jet that has been converted into a twenty-five- room hotel and café and the cockpit has been converted into a deluxe suite.

'Drunk workers can't be fired'

Peru's top court has ruled that workers cannot be fired for being drunk on the job, a decision the government criticised yesterday for setting a dangerous precedent.

The Constitutional Tribunal ordered that Pablo Cayo Mendoza be given his job back as a janitor for the municipality of Chorrillos, which fired him for being intoxicated at work. According to justice Fernando Calle, the firing was excessive because even though Mr Cayo was drunk, he could still speak and write, and he did not hurt anybody.

Mr Calle said the court would not revise its decision, despite complaints from the labour ministry.

Celso Becerra, the administrative chief of Chorrillos, a suburb of Lima, denounced the ruling,"We've fired four workers for showing up drunk, and two of them were drivers," he said. "How can we allow a drunk to work who might run somebody over?"

Ancient dung gives clues

Researchers have managed to get a peek into pre-human New Zealand after finding faeces of giant extinct birds buried in caves and rock shelters in remote areas across southern New Zealand.

The scientists traced most of the 1,500 pieces of dung to the flightless and now extinct moa bird, which weighed as much as 250 kilos and measured up to three metres in height.

Some of the faeces recovered was up to 15 centimetres in length and dated from about 4,000 to a few hundred years ago, Alan Cooper, from the University of Adelaide, said.

Using modern DNA technology, researchers matched the faeces to specific moa species and also matched bits of leaves and seeds embedded in the dung to known plant species.

"We matched leaves, seeds to plants known to us, but where it involved leaves and seeds that have never been identified, they may involve plants that are already extinct," Mr Cooper said.

Police recover human skulls in Nepal

Nepali police have recovered a mysterious consignment of parts of human skulls packed in bags in southeast Nepal near the border with India, police said yesterday.

The seizure of 168 pieces of skulls carved like bowls was made late on Tuesday at Kakarvitta, 275 kilometres southeast of Kathmandu, on the border with India.

"During our regular border patrol we found three abandoned bags. They were full of human skulls," police official Yadav Dhakal said, adding the motive for collecting the human skulls was not clear.

In the past police have said skulls were sometimes made into decorative and curiosity items which fetched high prices.

Arrested for hitting plane with truck

Two British Airways ground staff were arrested on suspicion of damaging a plane with a baggage truck shortly before take-off and then failing to report the incident, the airline and police said yesterday.

The men, aged 54 and 49, were held last Friday morning at London's Heathrow Airport after damage was discovered to the fuselage of the plane which officials believe was caused by a small electric-powered baggage truck.

Media reports said the plane, an Airbus A321 bound for Aberdeen in Scotland with 80 passengers, had been left with a gash and that the workers responsible had failed to report the incident.

BA said two its members of staff had been put on a precautionary suspension while detectives carried out an investigation.

A spokesman declined to say how badly damaged the plane had been and how its safety might have been affected.