Electrically charged knives hum and crackle as two fighters circle each other, slashing and kicking out.

Closing in they throw punches and swing elbows before crashing to the mat to grapple as the crowd cheers them on.

One slips a hand free and sends a several thousand volt jolt into his opponents ribs to end the fight.

This is the world of the Dog Brothers, a Los Angeles area fight club that draws combatants for twice-yearly, no-holds-barred brawls with fists and assorted weapons that often end in welts, bumps, bruises, if not blood.

The self-styled tribal brotherhood emerged out of the martial arts community in Southern California in the 1980s. They held their first series of fights in a city park - during which they took their name from a Conan the Barbarian comic book - and have continued to meet regularly ever since, with first aid help always on hand. Their meetings have no referees, no prizes and few rules, and the fighters' only protection are gloves and a fencing mask.

Judge backs hackers

Three students from the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology who found a way to hack into Boston's transit system to get free rides can talk publicly about the security flaw.

The students raised the ire of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority with a paper demonstrating how someone could work around flaws in Boston's Charlie Card automated fare system. They had planned to present the paper, which showed how anyone could take thousands of free rides on subways and buses, at a hackers conference in Las Vegas this month but the MBTA sued to block that presentation, stating it would violate US laws on computer fraud.

However, US District Court Judge George O'Toole in Boston federal court found that presenting an academic paper would not violate computer fraud laws.

Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said "The marketplace of ideas does not work when we have gag orders imposed on our scientists."

The three undergraduates received top marks for their paper exposing the security flaw.

61-year-old surrogate mum gives birth

A 61-year-old Japanese woman has given birth to a surrogate child, an obstetrician said yesterday. She is believed to be the oldest surrogate mother yet recorded in Japan.

The woman became pregnant with an embryo created from the egg of her daughter, who has no uterus, and sperm from the daughter's husband.

Prior to this case, the oldest surrogate motherhood case known in Japan was a 60-year-old woman who became pregnant in the US last year with an embryo created from donated egg and sperm.

'Bigfoot' was rubber costume

Researchers have said the hairy heap claimed by two men to be the corpse of the mythical half-ape, half-human creature was actually a full-body rubber gorilla costume.

The pair said they discovered the Bigfoot corpse while hiking in the woods of northern Georgia, with a dubious photo - and the commercial interests of the alleged discoverers - drawing interest from Australia to Europe and even The New York Times. However, the discovery adds another dimension to what appears to be an elaborate hoax by Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the owners of a company that offers Bigfoot merchandise, that sparked an internet frenzy last week.

The men held a news conference last Friday which revealed the results of tests on genetic material from the alleged remains, did not prove the creature's existence. The rubber suit was discovered after the researchers thawed the "corpse."

Monkey gives the slip

A rogue monkey holed up at a Tokyo train station for more than two hours yesterday before giving dozens of net-wielding police officers the slip among crowds of excited children and passersby.

The monkey was spotted hopping around by the automatic ticket gates at a train line in Shibuya Station in Tokyo. It then ran downstairs to the entrance to another line, climbed up and down a pillar and ran around the ticketing machines before taking refuge on top of a train information board for two hours.

TV footage showed the 60-cm-tall brown monkey sitting calmly on top of the board down at the crowd.

Around 30 police officers and officials cleared the area and surrounded the animal with green netting, but at noon it jumped off the information board and escaped through the crowd.