Odd news summary

Following is a summary of current odd news briefs.

Let's just wave at each other, okay?

They may want votes, but some Japanese election candidates have been cutting back on handshakes on the campaign trail as the new flu virus reaches epidemic proportions in Japan. The country has confirmed three deaths from the H1N1 influenza virus, and the health minister said Wednesday a rise in cases meant the new flu had spread more than expected this summer.

Man's love runs deep in search for ring

A New Zealand man has been dubbed the Lord of the Ring after he searched and found his wedding ring more than a year after it slipped off his finger and sank to the sea floor. The ring was lost for 16 months in the harbor of the country's capital city, Wellington, before Aleki Taumoepeau found it shining on the sea floor, the DominionPost newspaper reported Thursday.

Simulated attack alarms residents

Brunei simulated a chemical attack, an embassy bombing and a mock hotel kidnapping in the capital Wednesday in a move that alarmed residents who thought it was a real attack. Police staged the exercise to test counter-terrorism readiness following last month's Indonesian hotel bombings.

Pack your trunk and leave the beach!

A French town has banned circus elephants from bathing at its beaches over concerns the animals' excrement could pollute the water and pose a health hazard to other swimmers. Last year, elephants from one of the circuses that tour many French towns in the summer months were allowed on to the beach at Granville, in Normandy, to exercise and paddle in the waves.

"Putpockets" give a little extra cash

Visitors to London always have to be on the look out for pickpockets, but now there's another, more positive phenomenon on the loose -- putpockets. Aware that people are suffering in the economic crisis, 20 former pickpockets have turned over a new leaf and are now trawling London's tourist sites slipping money back into unsuspecting pockets.

Baby boomers still getting high, agency says

Baby boomers, now well into middle age, are still turning on to illegal drugs, doubling the rates of illicit drug use for the older generation, according to U.S. government statistics released on Wednesday. The rates of people aged 50 to 59 who admit to using illicit drugs in the past year nearly doubled from 5.1 percent in 2002 to 9.4 percent in 2007 while rates among all other age groups are the same or decreasing, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported.

Russian government looks to buy golden bed

Russia's government has issued a tender for luxury furniture, including a gilded bed, triggering an outcry Wednesday in a country where the economy shrank 10.9 percent in the last quarter. The interior ministry said it wanted a cherry wood bed and that the "the decorative elements of the head and footboards must be covered with a thin layer of 24 carat gold."

Press sniffs fake shoppers at minister's visit

A French supermarket chain said Wednesday it arranged for some of its workers to be present at a visit by ministers to one of its shops which turned into a publicity nightmare for the politicians. Journalists accompanying Education Minister Luc Chatel and Commerce Minister Herve Novelli on a supermarket visit in a town southeast of Paris, accused the ministers of using fake shoppers when a group of well-dressed women suddenly flooded the empty aisles.