A Canadian filmmaker plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye to make documentaries and raise awareness about surveillance in society.
Rob Spence, 36, who lost an eye in an accident as a teenager, said his so-called Project Eyeborg is to have the camera, a battery and a wireless transmitter mounted on a tiny circuit board.
"Originally the whole idea was to do a documentary about surveillance. I thought I would become a sort of super hero... fighting for justice against surveillance," Mr Spence said.
Mr Spence said no part of the camera would be connected to his nerves or brain. He does not intend to create a reality TV show and the camera will be switched off when not needed.
Performers face drug charges
A fire-breathing performer from a dance troupe at Singapore Zoo was charged with drug offences after a series of arrests forced the suspension of part of the zoo's internationally famous night safari.
Singapore's Central Narcotics Bureau said yesterday the Malaysian contract worker was charged with drug importation and a Singaporean with trafficking. Each faces a minimum sentence of five years' jail and five strokes of the cane if found guilty.
Three members of the troupe of fire-breathing dancers who perform in the night safari were detained for possessing methamphetamine, or "ice," the hallucinogenic party drug ketamine and cannabis.
The zoo's night safari is one of Singapore's most popular tourist attractions and it includes tribal dancing, fire-breathing and blow-pipes.
Sudan's UN envoy invokes Macbeth
Sudan's UN ambassador invoked Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth on Wednesday when he condemned the International Criminal Court's decision to issue an arrest warrant for the Sudanese leader over Darfur.
Speaking to reporters at UN headquarters, Sudanese Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem dismissed the court's indictment of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir by recalling Lady Macbeth's famous speech toward the end of the play.
"All perfumes of Arabia will not clean this dirt," Mr Abdalhaleem said. "For us the ICC doesn't exist... and we are in no way going to cooperate with it."
Racked with guilt over her complicity in the murders that her husband Macbeth committed to become king, a sleepwalking Lady Macbeth tries to wash imaginary bloodstains from her hands. "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand," she says.
Mayor's deputy plays the hero
A deputy to New York's mayor wrestled a stolen cellphone from a street thief in midtown Manhattan after he heard a woman scream that she had been robbed.
Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler, 35, who is 193 cm tall, was able to grab the Blackberry phone from the thief's hands, but the mugger got away and no arrest was made.
In a teleconference set up by the mayor's press office, the woman, Victoria Kress, a 41-year-old talent agent, said she was standing on Sixth Avenue at about 8 p.m. writing an e-mail when someone grabbed the phone from her hands.
Ms Kress said she felt sorry for the thief, whom she described as a teenager wearing a hooded jacket. "I think this is what our economy has brought us to do," she said.
Britons lied about books they read
Two out of three Britons have lied about reading books they have not, according to a survey published yesterday.
Commissioned by organisers of World Book Day, an annual celebration of reading in Britain, the study also shows that the author people really enjoy reading is J.K. Rowling, of the Harry Potter wizard series.
According to the survey, 65 per cent of people have pretended to have read books, and of those, 42 per cent singled out George Orwell's 1984. Next on the list came War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and in third place was James Joyce's Ulysses.
The Bible was in fourth position.
Aside from a list of ten titles which respondents were asked to tick or leave blank, many admitted wrongly claiming they had read other "classics" including Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Herman Melville.
Asked why they had lied about reading a book, the main reason was to impress the person they were speaking to.