London mayor Boris Johnson was left hanging as he got stuck in mid-air on a zipwire at an Olympic event.

Mr Johnson tried out the 320-metre zipwire as he visited Victoria Park in the capital.

“Is it a bird? Is it a plane?” an announcer asked as the mayor waved to the crowds below, wearing a bright blue helmet, smart business suit and carrying two Union flags.

As he reached the end of the line it rebounded before running out of momentum about 10 metres above the ground.

The mayor was left dangling inelegantly from his harness for about five minutes above a crowd of onlookers who snapped photographs on their mobile phones.

Dead possums model bikinis

The New Zealand school that staged a morbid fashion show in which children were encouraged to dress possum corpses in colourful costumes has come under fire from animal lovers.

The contest, part of an annual fundraiser for the Uruti School in the North Island, was unacceptable and thoughtless, the New Zealand Royal Society for the Protection of Animals (RSPCA) said.

Children at the school fitted dead possums in a variety of costumes including wedding dresses and bikinis, then arranged them in comedy poses, such as riding a tricycle and painting pictures at an easel.

Italian insult is a low blow

Italy’s highest court on Tuesday ruled that telling a man he has “no balls” as an insult is a crime punishable with a fine because it hurts male pride, in a ruling on a curious row between two cousins.

The case was brought to the supreme court by a lawyer named only as Vittorio against his cousin Alberto, a justice of the peace, for the phrase uttered during a heated courtroom exchange in the southern Italian city of Potenza.

“Apart from the vulgarity of the term used, the expression definitely also has an injurious quality,” the male judge, Maurizio Fumo, said in his ruling as quoted by Italian news agency ANSA.

Olympic slowdown

The senior technology officer for Los Angeles has pleaded with city staff to stop watching the Olympics online at work, saying it could cause a municipal computer meltdown.

City officials said that employees watching women’s gymnastics and football competitions live on the internet caused a tremendous amount of bandwidth to be tied up.

That meant city computers might be operating at a snail’s pace under the strain.