World Briefs

Two 40-something drum queens stole the show at Rio de Janeiro's Sambadrome last Tuesday, dancing in little more than feathers and high heels in the annual Carnival parades where youth is usually king.

On the second and final night of parades that are both a huge tourist draw and serious competition between poor Rio communities, a drum queen making a comeback at the relatively ripe age of 44 captured Brazilians' imagination.

"This for me is a sacred place," said the buxom Luma de Oliveira (picture), a model, who danced Samba non-stop for 80 minutes in front of about 70,000 spectators for the Portela school.

A star performer for the school since the age of 16, Ms Oliveira's comeback after three years' absence has been followed hungrily by the Brazilian media always eager for a story line about the near-naked drum queens. The other "veteran" was Luiza Brunet, 46, who led the hundreds-strong drumming troupe for the Imperatriz Leopoldinense school.

While they win no points officially, the queens are in some ways the stars of the show, given large spaces in the parades to show off their rapid-fire Samba moves and stunning figures.(Reuters)

Giant fish washes ashore

A three-metre long oarfish has been discovered by a member of the public in Tynemouth.

The perfectly-preserved oarfish, the longest species of bony fish, is being taken to a nearby aquarium where scientists will try to determine how it died.

Oarfish can measure up to eight metres in length, though there have been reports of individual oarfish measuring up to twice that, Blue Reef Aquarium said in a press release. According to aquarium curator Zahra d'Aronville, The find was only the fourth such specimen to have been recorded since 1981.

Oarfish are found throughout the deep seas of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, usually at a depth of 180 metres. Their diet typically consists of plankton, small crustaceans and small squid. (AFP)

Woman finds $1.13bln windfall

A Swedish woman received the shock of a lifetime when she found $1.13 billion (€883 million) more than expected in her bank account, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Cornelia Johansson discovered the windfall on Monday, after she logged on to her internet bank to pay some bills, regional daily Goeteborgs-Posten said in its online edition.

"The balance was more than 10 billion kronor. It said the amount had been deposited as a correction for a credit card purchase," Johansson's boyfriend Daniel Hoeglund told the daily.

On Tuesday morning, the money was still credited to her account, but a few hours later it was gone, as mysteriously as it had arrived.

A press spokesman for Nordea bank, the largest bank in the Nordic region, later explained the mystery as "a technical mistake made by a company." (AFP)

Thief locks himself in vehicle

A bungling Australian car thief was nabbed after accidentally locking himself in the vehicle he was trying to steal, police said yesterday.

Police were called to a house in Adelaide after two thieves were heard trying to steal a car. On arrival they were surprised to find a 53-year old man hiding inside the vehicle.

"The man, while breaking into the car, had locked himself in the car and couldn't get out,"

South Australian police said, adding a second thief was found hiding in nearby bushes. (Reuters)

New gaming disease

A 12-year-old girl was ordered to stop playing video games for 10 days by her Swiss doctor after it was found that a serious hand infection she was suffering from was caused by excessive gaming.

The new infection has since been dubbed "Palmare PlayStation Hidradenitis" by professor Vincent Piguet from the University Hospital of Geneva, Swiss news agency ATS reported.

The girl was taken to her doctor after suffering from painful lesions on her palms for four weeks.

"They were huge red nodes which were very spectacular," Profs. Piguet said, adding that he later learnt that the girl had hidden from her parents the fact that she spent hours on her PlayStation.

Profs. Piguet and his team concluded that the tension of the hands on the console and frenetic pressing on the buttons had triggered minuscule cutaneous injuries which were aggravated by sweat.

After her 10-day ban from PlayStation, the lesions went away. (AFP)