World Briefs

Rockets can run on toffee, a scientist has proved.

Jem Stansfield demonstrated a hybrid rocket powered by the sweet on BBC1’s Bang Goes The Theory.

The rocket was made by filling a tube with toffee and firing nitrous oxide down a hole in the middle of the tube. (PA)

Very testing

A once-quiet street tried to ban learner drivers with a home-made sign after residents lost patience with students snarling up the route.

Householders in Churchward Avenue, Swindon, are sick of novice drivers practising their three-point turns and reverse parking on their doorsteps.

The road has been host to some 50 learners a day since being chosen as a Driving Standards Agency test route nearly a year ago. (PA)

Hero’s close shave?

Hero pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger is among 18 finalists for the American Mustache Institute’s top honours.

The tongue-in-cheek St Louis-based institute said the winner will be selected through an online vote and announced at the ’Stache Bash on October 30. Proceeds from the event benefit a baseball league for disabled people.

Mr Sullenberger, who sports a neatly groomed white moustache, gained fame after safely landing a disabled US Airways jet in New York’s Hudson River in January. (PA)

Scary ghost tour

A “ghost walk” in Ohio had a scary ending when the floor of a 164-year-old log cabin collapsed, injuring two people.

Fire officials said the first floor of the Toll House gave way as the local historical society was ending its tour in Germantown.

About 25 people were in the building at the time, and some needed to be rescued after becoming trapped on the second floor of the cabin, built in 1845. (PA)

Hunt for lioness in eastern Spain

Spanish police said yesterday they were looking for a lioness that had been sighted by several witnesses on the loose in the mountains of eastern Spain.

A group of youths notified municipal police after they spotted the beast on Saturday near the village of La Senia in the province of Tarragona. Since then several other witnesses in the area south of Barcelona have said they have also seen the lioness.

Police said they were taking the reports seriously and were concentrating their search in the mountains of Ports de Beseit on the border of the provinces of Tarragona, Teruel and Castellon.

It was not clear where the lioness came from although Spanish media reported that the animal may have escaped from a circus. (AFP)

Bra which doubles as gas mask wins whacky Ig Nobel

A woman’s bra which in an ­emergency can double as a pair of gas masks has won one of the awards handed out at the prestigious Harvard University for the year’s most eccentric research.

The Ig Nobels, a tongue-in-cheek homage to their ­Scan­dinavian counterparts, were announced just days before the Nobel committee in ­Stockholm began awarding its ­prestigious awards on Monday.

The bra that can be turned into two protective face masks – one for the wearer and the other for whoever else may need one – won its inventors Elena Bodnar, Raphael Lee and Sandra Marijan of Chicago the Public Health award.

The patent states that each of the bra’s cup sections is fitted with a filter device, meaning the wearer can whip it off, and detach each section to fit it over the face. (AFP)

Pupils to bring

own toilet roll Irish parents struggling to buy schoolbooks and uniforms in the face of a deep recession may now have to worry about sending their children to school with a toilet roll as well as a packed lunch.

Pupils at a primary school in the southern county of Cork are being asked to bring their own toilet paper to school to help save money, one of the starkest examples yet of the death of ­Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” economy.

“The letter was sent out just as a way of balancing books here in the school and not intended as a demand,” said Catherine O’Neill, principal at St John’s Girls National School.

Ms O’Neill said the request was made because of cuts to government grants for books and computers.

She added that parents were responding well.

“I’ve done a quick tour of the classrooms this morning and I’d say at least half the pupils have brought them (toilet rolls) in,” she told national broadcaster RTE.

“I have no doubt that there are an enormous number of schools out there that are doing the same thing.” (Reuters)

Lesbians lose ruling

A Moscow court yesterday ruled against two lesbians seeking to become Russia’s first legally married gay couple.

Russian law defines marriage as between a woman and a man, so Irina Fedotova-Fet and Irina Shipitko now plan to fly to Canada later this month to marry and then return to Russia, in an attempt to force authorities to recognise the marriage.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in the 1990s. (PA)