An "unhinged" Russian woman threw a teacup at the world's most famous painting, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, but it emerged unscathed due to its bullet-proof glass cover, the Louvre museum said yesterday.

"The young woman took a cup out of her bag and threw it over the heads of other people who were looking at the painting. The cup smashed on the bullet-proof glass which was slightly scratched," a spokesman said.

"It looks like it was done by someone who was unhinged and wanted to draw attention to herself," he said.

The woman put up no resistance when museum guards apprehended her after the incident on August 2.

She was handed over to police who said the woman "did not have all her mental faculties and has been transferred to the police psychiatric infirmary". The Louvre, the biggest art museum in the world, has thousands of paintings, but most of the millions of visitors a year make a bee-line for the Mona Lisa, known in France as La Joconde. (AFP)

Nude drunk loses way in hotel

An extremely drunk, naked man lost his way at a New Zealand hotel and ended up sleeping in the wrong room, forcing its female occupant to hide in the bathroom, local media reported.

The 29-year-old Australian man had gone back to the hotel in the resort town of Queenstown with a woman, but got up in the night and wandered into a bedroom where a couple were sleeping.

"He was a bit surprised that there were two people in his room and he was butt naked," Sergeant Steve Watt of Queenstown police told the Southland Times.

As the intruder slept, the startled woman took refuge in the bathroom as her husband summoned hotel staff. The man, who could not remember whom he had been with nor what room he had been in, and had no clothes or wallet.

Police gave him a ride home clad in a hotel bathrobe, but let him off after the guests and hotel decided not to press charges.

"It was far too funny," said Sgt Watt. (Reuters)

Rabbis pray against flu pandemic

Dozens of rabbis and Kabbalah mystics armed with ceremonial trumpets have taken to the skies over Israel to battle the H1N1 flu virus, Israeli media said yesterday.

About 50 Jewish holy men chanted prayers and blew ritual rams' horns known as shofars in an aircraft circling over the country in the hope of stopping the spread of the virus, some of those involved in Monday's venture were quoted as saying.

"The aim of the flight was to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it," rabbi Yitzhak Batzri told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, which carried a picture of the bearded men praying while airborne.

When the H1N1 virus hit Israel this year, the ultra-Orthodox deputy health minister made headlines by insisting that, in a country where many follow kosher dietary rules banning pork, the illness should not be referred to by the popular name "swine flu". Since then, over 2,000 Israelis have been infected with the virus, of whom five have died, according to official data. (Reuters)

World's first online opera

Britain's Royal Opera House wants Twitter users to help create the "world's first online opera".

The Covent Garden institution, which stages performances of ballet, opera and other classical music productions wants internet-savvy tweeters to write the words to an opera using 140 characters or less at a time.

"It's the people's opera and the perfect way for everyone to become involved with the inventiveness of opera as the ultimate form of storytelling," Alison Duthie, head of ROH2, the arm of the ROH in charge of developing original projects said in a statement.

Ms Duthie yesterday said that the most dramatic moments of the opera will be performed as part of the Deloitte Ignite festival in September and said the experiment aimed to debunk notions of opera as stuffy and traditional. (Reuters)

Drug lord hiding in meth lab?

Mexican troops have found what may be a hide-out of the country's No. 1 drug lord at a giant methamphetamine lab hidden in the northern Sierra among cabins equipped with caviar face cream and escort catalogues.

Mexican media published photos of a complex of 22 secluded mountain cabins, camouflaged to be invisible from the air. One was outfitted with a king-sized bed, luxury clothes, satellite television, pirated movies and high-speed internet.

The daily Reforma said army officials suspected the well-equipped cabin was used by top fugitive Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, or his associate Ismael Zambada, to oversee operations at the largest synthetic drug lab ever found in Mexico.

Guzman, who escaped from a high-security jail in 2001 hidden in a laundry van, has eluded all attempts to catch him since President Felipe Calderon launched an army-led war on drug gangs on taking power in December 2006. Drug experts say he changes his cell phone every day to avoid being tracked. (Reuters)