Ladies, take your battle for the environment a little closer to your heart with a solar-powered bra that can generate enough electric energy to charge a mobile phone or an iPod.
Lingerie maker Triumph International Japan Ltd unveiled its environmentally friendly - and green coloured - Solar Power Bra this week in Tokyo, featuring a solar panel worn around the stomach.
The panel requires light to generate electricity and the concept bra will not be in stores anytime soon, said Triumph spokesman Yoshiko Masuda, as "people usually cannot go outside without wearing clothes over it". But it does send the message of how lingerie could possibly save the planet, Ms Masuda said, adding that the bra should not be washed or sunned on a rainy day to avoid damaging it.
Artwork drops at Pompidou Centre
A plexiglass piece by US artist Corey McCorkle fell to the ground and broke into several pieces at the Pompidou Centre in Paris for unknown reasons, the gallery said yesterday. The Pompidou Centre, a favourite with tourists thanks to its unusual façade criss-crossed by giant, colourful tubes, said Mr McCorkle's 14-kg piece had been suspended from a device that was designed to take a load of up to 160 kg.
The work - entitled Scale Model of Three-Part Blind Passage, Showing the Intertwining, Spiral Staircases in the Tallest Minaret in the World, Selimiye, Turkey - was part of an exhibition at the Pompidou called Traces of the Sacred. It fell on Saturday, breaking into two big pieces and one small splinter, the Pompidou Centre said, adding that prior to the incident the device used to hang the work had been approved by specialists.
In 2006, two works by US artists Peter Alexander and Craig Kauffman fell off the wall and shattered during an exhibition dedicated to art from Los Angeles in the 1955-85 period.
Museum offers male organs
Sigurdur Hjartarson is missing a human penis. But he's not worried: Four men have promised to donate theirs to him when they die.
Mr Hjartarson is founder and owner of the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which offers visitors from around the world a close-up look at the long and the short of the male reproductive organ. His collection, which began in 1974 with a single bull's penis that looked something like a riding crop, now boasts 261 preserved members from 90 species. The largest, from a sperm whale, is 70 kilogrammes and 1.7 metres long. The smallest, a hamster penis bone, is just two millimetres and must be viewed through a magnifying glass.
One species conspicuous by its absence is homo sapiens, but that may soon be rectified since a German, an American, an Icelander and a Briton have promised to donate their organs after death, according to certificates on display.
Millionaire jailed for a millennium
An Egyptian man was sentenced to 1,000 years behind bars yesterday after scamming hundreds of people out of £280 million (around €33.6 million), a court official said. The Giza criminal court sentenced Abdullah Kamel Mohammed, 42, for cheating 480 people out of their money over several years.
"He would promise people that he would invest their money for them and bring them good profits, but he would take the money and disappear," the source said. "Over the years, he made about £280 million."
Mr Mohammed was arrested in Cairo in November after a neighbour who had been conned recognised him and called the police.
Zoo investigates stingray deaths
Officials at the Calgary Zoo remained baffled yesterday as they tried to puzzle out just why 34 of their stingrays suddenly died. The juvenile cow-nose stingrays, about the size of a dinner plate, were kept in a "petting" tank where visitors were able to touch them, a common feature in a number of North American zoos and aquariums, according to the zoo officials in the Western Canadian city.
On Sunday, within a few hours of opening, the normally voracious fish lost their appetites, became discoloured and started dying, with 34 of the 43 rays quickly succumbing to an ailment or cause that has yet to be diagnosed.
Girl crime surges
Crime committed by girls in Britain has increased by more than a quarter over the past three years, government figures revealed yesterday. The Youth Justice Board (YJB), which oversees juvenile offenders in England and Wales, said it has commissioned a study to investigate the reasons.
Commentators ascribed the increase partly to a rise in the total number of girls aged under 17 and partly to the police being more willing to take action against girls accused of crimes such as school fights.