World Briefs

Attracting dust but few prospective buyers in a car lot on the outskirts of Kabul, three saloon cars, a crane and a dump truck sit abandoned due a numerical curse that has swept Afghanistan.

A bizarre phenomenon that equates the number 39 with prostitution has become a headache for the car industry, as buyers avoid car licence plates containing the dreaded number for fear of being ostracised.

“This is no longer just a social issue, it is becoming an economic issue for us,” said the car yard’s owner Said Mohammad Zaman.“It has been months and no one is buying them,” he said, pointing at the white, black and blue sedans and the construction vehicles cluttering up his lot.

According to many Afghans, “39” got its bad reputation through a well-known pimp who was often identified by the number on his car plates as he drove around Herat, the western city that lies close to the border with Iran. (AFP)

Royals suing

Monaco’s Prince Albert II and his new wife filed a suit on Monday against a French magazine they claim spread false rumours of discord before their wedding earlier this month, their lawyer said.

Summons were filed against L’Express magazine at a court in Nanterre, west of Paris, for invasion of privacy and publishing “incorrect facts about their private life”, lawyer Thierry Lacoste told AFP.

The magazine declined comment.

Rumours that Charlene Wittstock tried to leave the principality in a huff just days before the royal wedding have been rejected by the palace, the country’s premier, a lawyer for the royal pair, as well as by Prince Albert himself.

L’Express magazine had reported on its website that Ms Wittstock, now Princess Charlene, interrupted preparations for the lavish celebrations in early July and prepared to take a flight for her home country South Africa. (AFP)

Browned off

Youths taking part in a survival skills course in Alaska were attacked by a brown bear which badly injured two of them.

They were among seven pupils in a 30-day backcountry course 120 miles north of Anchorage.

The bear is thought to have been a female with cubs. (PA)

Fun fungi

Strange-looking pink and yellow mushrooms are livening up the vegetable aisle.

Supermarket giant Tesco hopes the Pink and Yellow Oyster mushrooms will further boost demand for gourmet mushrooms, which have become one of the fastest-growing areas of the UK’s fresh produce market. The mushrooms are produced by specialist grower Smithy Mushrooms, which is based in Ormskirk, Lancashire, and which has been growing exotic varieties for 20 years. (PA)

Bad apples

China has discovered five fake Apple stores in one city.

Only two were shut down because officials in Kunming said they did not find any fake products on sale.

The proliferation of the stores underlines the slow progress that China is making in countering a culture of a rampant piracy and widespread production of bogus goods. (PA)

Kangaroo attack

Australian police were forced to pepper-spray a giant kangaroo after it bounded into an elderly woman’s garden as she was hanging out the washing and attacked her.

The 94-year-old said she thought she was going to die as the red roo, which can grow up to two metres tall and jump more than nine metres in one leap, knocked her to the ground and kicked her several times.

“I thought it was going to kill me,” Phyllis Johnson told the Courier-Mail newspaper from her hospital bed following the attack in the outback Queensland town of Charleville on Sunday. “I happened to have a broom nearby and I just started swinging at it.”

Bruised and bleeding, she managed to crawl to her flat and alert her son, who called the police. (AFP)

Pub bid fails

Villagers who turned a redundant red telephone box into an alehouse for a night in the hope of claiming a world record for the UK have been dealt a bitter blow.

Record-keepers said The Dog and Bone – opened in Shepreth, Cambridgeshire, earlier this month – did not qualify as the world’s smallest pub.

Officials at Guinness World Records said the 3x3ft ex-phone box would have had to be licensed and open regular hours in order to be called a pub. (PA)