A Swedish man broadcast music from his stomach for several hours via a mini audio system.

The sound was “bad, bad. It was a very bad sound. But that was not the important thing, I just wanted to show that it worked,” said Fredrik Hjelmqvist, 45, owner of a hi-fi equipment shop in Stockholm.

“It was a success, we were the first in the world to do this,” said Mr Hjelmqvist, who hopes to sell his invention for around €12,800.

The plastic capsule containing the device is about three centimetres long and 1.5 centimetres in diameter and contains a miniature battery-powered audio device. The music was heard by using a stethoscope connected to an amplifier.

After about three hours, however, the muted strains of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive and the Village People’s YMCA faded and could no longer be heard. (AFP)

Pope makes €5m from books

Pope Benedict XVI has made around €5 million from royalties on his books since he was elected Pope in 2005, Vatican officials said yesterday.

Some €2.4 million of the proceeds will finance research on the Pope’s own theological teachings through a Vatican foundation in his name.

The Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI foundation was set up earlier this year to “promote research and studies on the thinking of professor Joseph Ratzinger”.

The rest of the money will go to charity, officials said. (AFP)

Elephant gets root canal for tusk ache

Dentists in India have performed root canal surgery on a giant scale to rid a 27-year-old elephant of chronic tusk ache, officials said yesterday.

A team of dentists helped by a veterinary surgeon carried out the two-and-a-half-hour operation on the male pachyderm which developed a cavity in one of its tusks. The operation took place after the owner of the pet elephant brought the animal for an examination of the infection that had damaged the tusk.

“We decided to use the traditional root canal process as a remedy,” dentist Sunil Kumar said. He added the elephant was the perfect patient as dentists drilled and pumped resin into the huge cavity in the chipped tusk. (AFP)

Grave situation

Some people lay flowers or notes at gravesides. A woman in South Carolina left a .45-calibre handgun.

Police in Spartanburg said a 28-year-old woman who had not been feeling well consulted a spiritual adviser, who told her she needed to return something that was given to her to cleanse her soul. So the wo-man left the gun in a box at a man’s grave at Good Shepherd Memorial Gardens. She told police the man had given her the weapon 12 years ago and she hoped that by returning it she would feel better. (PA)

Woman claims ownership of the sun

After billions of years the sun finally has an owner – a woman from Spain’s soggy region of Galicia said yesterday she had registered the star at a local notary public as being her property. Angeles Duran, 49, said she took the step after reading about an American man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our solar system.

There is an international agreement which states that no country may claim ownership of a planet or star, but it says nothing about individuals, she added.

“There was no snag, I backed my claim legally, I am not stupid, I know the law. I did it but anyone else could have done it, it simply occurred to me first.”

Ms Duran said she now wants to slap a fee on everyone who uses the sun and give half of the proceeds to the Spanish government and 20 per cent to the nation’s pension fund. (AFP)

DIY enthusiast walls himself in cellar

A German DIY enthusiast accidentally walled himself into his own basement and only managed to escape by drilling his way through to his neighbours, police have said.

The 64-year-old pensioner in Gumperda had aimed to seal off the entrance to his cellar and went downstairs armed with bricks, mortar as well as food and drink.

The police station in nearby Kahla said in a statement, “He was on the wrong side of the wall when his work was finished.”

The pensioner spent the weekend trapped in the basement but on Monday decided to take action. Using a drill hammer, he went to work not on his own wall but on the firewall separating his home from his neighbours’.

The neighbours, with whom the pensioner had already been quarrelling for months, called the police when they heard the loud drilling. (AFP)