KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – A Malaysian woman is claiming to have seen the names of Allah and Mohammed spelled out in the entrails of a cow she was butchering, state media reported Tuesday.

Salmah Nayan told Bernama news agency she could decipher the words written in Arabic script among the intestines of the cow, which had been slaughtered ahead of a wedding party.

“I cut those intestines twice. At first I didn’t notice it but after I turned it around a few times it became clear the words ‘Allah’ and ‘Mohammed’ were there,” she said.

Nayan said the divine discovery had attracted more attention than the newlyweds.

The bride’s mother said her family would keep the intestines as a reminder of God’s greatness.

WAUKESHA, Wis. – Police seized more than 1,500 pairs of girls’ shoes from the home and storage unit of a man arrested for breaking into a high school, police said Tuesday. “He liked to smell them,” said Lt. William H. Graham.

Police said the recovered shoes may be related to the burglaries of three Waukesha public high schools and a middle school over the past two years.

The 27-year-old Kenosha man, who was not identified because had yet to be formally charged, worked for a cable company and collected keys to the schools as he responded to calls, Graham said. The same man was convicted in 2005 for stealing shoes from Kenosha Tremper High School.

Police arrested him after a security video showed him entering North High School on May 20 and leaving with some items, authorities said.

Officers searched the man’s home and a rented storage unit on Thursday, recovering the shoes along with school yearbooks, keys, a bolt cutter and other items.

The man was expected to be charged in Waukesha County Circuit Court Tuesday, Capt. Mike Babe said.

TUESDAY, May 22 (HealthDay News) — Worried about jet lag? Researchers think they might have just the ticket to perk you up: Viagra.

While it’s too early to know if it will work in humans, Argentinean researchers are reporting that the drug sildenafil — better known by the brand name Viagra — appears to reduce symptoms of jet lag in hamsters.

Viagra does come with potential side effects, and some men might not appreciate experiencing a temporary respite from erectile dysfunction at 30,000 feet. Still, a sleep specialist called the research promising.

“We do need more effective therapies for jet lag and for sleep difficulties that occur as a consequence of shift work,” said Dr. Robert Vorona, an associate professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School who’s familiar with the study findings.

In the study, researchers administered small doses of sildenafil to hamsters before adjusting the cycles of light and dark they lived in. This reset their body clocks as if they’d taken a six-hour plane trip to the east.

The hamsters recovered 25 percent to 50 percent more quickly from the equivalent of human jet lag, needing less time to synchronize themselves to the new schedule, said Dr. Diego Golombek, a researcher with the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes in Buenos Aires. He said sildenafil worked at least as well as melatonin, a jet-lag treatment.

But the drug didn’t help hamsters who underwent a simulation of westward jet travel.

The findings were published in this week’s Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.

The drug, originally developed to treat high blood pressure and angina, might alleviate jet lag by interfering with a molecule that sends signals to the hamster brain’s body clock mechanism, Golombek said.

But the potential impact on humans isn’t clear, and Golombek said people shouldn’t rush out to prevent jet lag with doses of Viagra. For one thing, Viagra can cause side effects such as low blood pressure.

As for the next step, Golombek said “a full-scale clinical trial has to be performed in humans, which is indeed quite expensive and time-consuming. Jet-lag trials might involve laboratory simulations, but we also need ‘the real thing,’ which means testing pharmacological treatments on long-haul air travel.”

And that, he added, will take even more time.

ROME (Reuters) – A man who took his mistress to the beach made the mistake of waving to a film crew on a helicopter covering Italy’s bicycle race and was discovered by his wife.

According to media reports, the man was with his younger mistress on a beach in northern Italy when the helicopter passed overhead with a crew covering the Giro d’Italia cycling classic.

The man waved, the camera zoomed in, and the couple ended up on live television.

The brother of the man’s wife thought it was his sister he was seeing on television and called her on her mobile phone, sure that it was she on the beach with her husband.

Instead, she was at home by herself and when her husband returned with a sun tan, he had some explaining to do.

LONDON (Reuters) – Rising numbers of women are asking the NHS to provide cosmetic surgery on their genitals, doctors said on Friday.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, they said the number of “labial reductions” carried out in NHS hospitals had doubled to 800 a year over five years.

“More and more women are said to be troubled by the shape, size or proportions of their vulvas”, wrote Lih Mei Liao and Sarah Creighton from London’s UCL Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health.

Articles in women’s magazines about “designer vaginas”, the rising popularity of cosmetic surgery and Internet promotion by private health clinics were all fuelling demand.

The authors said women seeking surgery were being influenced by idealised images of genitalia shown in pornography and on private genitoplasty Web sites.

Liao said research was needed into whether surgery was bringing long-term benefits to patients, before the NHS started routinely offering the cosmetic procedure.

CAIRO (Reuters) – Cairo’s al-Azhar Islamic University on Monday suspended a lecturer who suggested that men and women work colleagues could use symbolic breastfeeding to get around a religious ban on being alone together.

The lecturer, Ezzat Atiya, had drawn on Islamic traditions which forbid sexual relations between a man and a woman who has breastfed him to suggest that symbolic breastfeeding could be a way around strict segregation of males and females.

But after controversy in the Egyptian and Middle East media, university president Ahmed el-Tayeb suspended Atiya pending an urgent investigation into his opinions, the Egyptian state news agency MENA reported.

Atiya is the head of the department which deals with sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and the university is part of the al-Azhar institute, one of the most prestigious in Sunni Islam.

Atiya’s unusual opinion was widely publicized by Arabic-language satellite television channels and featured in a discussion in the Egyptian parliament.

The Dubai-based channel Al Arabiya quoted him as saying that after five breastfeedings the man and woman could be alone together without violating Islamic law and the woman could remove her headscarf to reveal her hair.

But a committee from al-Azhar said his proposal contradicted the principles of Islam and of morality.

Atiya had said he had drawn on medieval scholarship to justify his position. The opposition party newspaper al-Ahrar on Monday quoted him as saying he retracted his views because they were based on the opinions of a minority of scholars.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The male impotence drug Viagra may be useful for treating jet lag as well, according to Argentine researchers who gave it to hamsters made to feel like rodent globe-trotters.

The researchers manipulated the schedule of turning lights on and off to induce jet lag in the laboratory animals, they reported Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Adult male hamsters given Viagra, also called sildenafil, recovered from jet lag up to 50 percent faster than hamsters that were not given it, the researchers said.

The scientists stopped giving the hamsters the highest dose they had been using in the experiment due to a certain side effect.

“However, we used the intermediate dose for the rest of the experiments because at that dose animals did not manifest the effects of sildenafil-induced penile erections,” they wrote.

Flying across multiple time zones can confuse one’s sleep-wake cycle, resulting in the condition called jet lag, marked by insomnia, sleepiness and difficulty concentrating.

Researchers Patricia Agostino, Santiago Plano and Diego Golombek of the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes in Buenos Aires gave doses of Viagra to the hamsters at night, then switched on bright lights six hours early to simulate eastbound flight.

They judged how well the hamsters adjusted to the changes by observing when they began running on exercise wheels.

The drug helped the rodents cope with jet lag only when given before the equivalent of an eastbound flight, not the reverse when they delayed turning on lights to simulate westbound travel, the study found.

The researchers said the findings suggested that Viagra could be useful to help people cope with jet lag or shift work. They said the dose needed for such uses could be lower than the one used for treatment of erectile dysfunction.

Viagra interferes with an enzyme that lowers levels of a naturally occurring compound that plays a role in the regulation of the circadian cycle, the body’s internal clock, the researchers said.

Viagra is marketed by Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker. The U.S.
Food and Drug Administration approved it to treat erectile dysfunction in 1998

BERLIN (Reuters) – German tax revenues could rise by about 1.4 billion euros (705 million pounds) a year if there were a more efficient system of taxing prostitutes, whose work is mostly legal, according to an economist.

Richard Reichel estimates sex workers generate about 7 billion euros each year in Germany’s “red-light sector” and that most of that goes untaxed.

“About 1.4 billion euros could be expected,” Reichel told Friday’s Die Welt newspaper about his study “Prostitution — The Unrecognised Economic Factor”.

Many prostitutes working outside brothels under-report or do not report income. Few pay taxes.

Reichel, an economist at the university of Erlangen-Nuremberg, said the income tax rate on prostitutes should be on average about 20 percent. He assumes two-thirds of the prostitutes in Germany have income under 2,000 euros per month.

When the cities of Cologne and Berlin introduced flat daily tax rates on prostitutes revenues soared and German Finance Minster Peer Steinbrueck recently floated the idea of a nationwide daily flat rate tax for prostitutes.

BERLIN – A 41-year-old American tourist on a sightseeing tour of Germany streaked through a historic city’s center, apparently just to see what it was like to be naked in Nuremberg.

People who were treated to the Monday afternoon spectacle were less than impressed and pointed the streaking sprinter out to nearby traffic police, who took the man into custody, authorities said Tuesday.

The man, whose name was not released, was told to put his clothes back on and was ordered to pay a fine of euro200 ($270), police said.

The tourist was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and told officers that he had not known streaking was illegal in Germany and that he just wanted to see what it was like, police said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A topless Britney Spears has posted a new message on her Web site to thank her fans for their prayers “during this trying time.”

Alongside a photograph of herself in a blonde wig, posed topless with white-gloved arms crossed over her chest, the pop singer said she was “blessed” to be so cared about.

“The reason for this letter is to let everyone know that their prayers have helped me,” Spears wrote.

“I am so blessed that you care enough about me to be concerned and will continue to live in this brighter state with all of you by my side during this trying time.

“We are all lights of the world and we all need to continuously inspire others and look to the higher power. You are all in my prayers. Godspeed. Love Britney.”

Spears’ professional achievements have been overshadowed by her personal crises in the past year.

The pop singer split up from her second husband, aspiring rapper Kevin Federline, with whom she has two children, and entered rehab for undisclosed problems after a spree of high-profile partying and erratic behaviour such as shaving off her hair.

Spears, 25, has not released an album since 2003.

But she is now trying to stage a comeback, performing for the first time in more than three years this month with a series of 15-minute shows at various nightclubs.

She is reportedly recording her fifth album, which she started working on last year with red-hot hitmakers like R&B singer Ne-Yo and Swedish producer Max Martin.

CANBERRA (Reuters) – A nude car wash offering an X-rated sideshow and topless cleaning in Australia’s tropical Queensland state has been given the all-clear after police and officials said they were powerless to scrub it.

The Bubbles ‘n’ Babes car wash in Brisbane prompted a flood of complaints with a topless car wash for A$55 ($45) and a nude car wash with X-rated lap-dance service for A$100. “If it was approved for a car wash then I can’t imagine how we can stop them,” Lord Mayor Campbell Newman told a council meeting with worried local lawmakers.

Professional car washes have boomed in most cities with drought-stricken Australians banned from washing their own cars due to tough water restrictions.

Queensland police denied any cover-up in a state where their image has been dented by past accusations of police corruption and involvement with organized crime.

The raunchy wash, set up by a strip-club owner, was screened from the public and used recycled water to avoid breaching water use restrictions, they said.

“We don’t want any traffic accidents caused by people looking at the girls instead of looking at the road,” Superintendent Colin Campbell told local media.

OSLO (AFP) – Tickets to striptease shows in Norway, until now exempt from value-added tax (VAT) because they were considered to be an art, will be subjected to a 25 percent levy, the government said Tuesday.

In the 2007 revised budget bill, Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen proposed changing the law to make striptease shows a commercial activity liable to VAT.

The move is seen as a way of circumventing two court decisions in 2005 and 2006 which ruled that striptease was an art.

In both cases, the judges found in favour of the owner of the Diamond Go Go Bar in Oslo, who argued that striptease was an art like opera or ballet and therefore refused to add VAT to ticket prices.

“Striptease will refer clearly to traditional shows in strip clubs as well as performances of a similar nature, such as the Chippendales,” the group of male dancers, the finance ministry said in a statement.

“The term ‘striptease’ will not refer to plays or other similar artistic expressions which contain nude scenes as part of the storyline,” the ministry added.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – More than 800 Hong Kong residents have called on authorities to reclassify the Bible as “indecent” due to its sexual and violent content, following an uproar over a sex column in a university student journal.

A spokesperson for Hong Kong’s Television and Entertainment Licensing authority (TELA) said it had received 838 complaints about the Bible by noon on Wednesday.

The complaints follow the launch of an anonymous Web site — www.truthbible.net — which said the holy book “made one tremble” given its sexual and violent content, including rape and incest.

The Web site said the Bible’s sexual content “far exceeds” that of a recent sex column published in the Chinese University’s “Student Press” magazine, which had asked readers whether they’d ever fantasised about incest or bestiality.

That column was later deemed “indecent” by the Obscene Articles Tribunal, sparking a storm of debate about social morality and freedom of speech. Student editors of the journal defended it, saying open sexual debate was a basic right.

If the Bible is similarly classified as “indecent” by authorities, only those over 18 could buy the holy book and it would need to be sealed in a wrapper with a statutory warning notice.

TELA said it was still undecided on whether the Bible had violated Hong Kong’s obscene and indecent articles laws.

But a local protestant minister shrugged off this possibility.

“If there is rape mentioned in the Bible, it doesn’t mean it encourages those activities,” said Reverend Wu Chi-wai. “It’s just common sense … I don’t think that criticism will have strong support from the public,” he added.

LIMA (Reuters) – Peruvian officials launched an investigation on Tuesday into a Mother’s Day striptease performance by a dance troupe in a Lima auditorium owned by the national judiciary.

Peru’s Superior Court, just one step below the Supreme Court in the judicial hierarchy, issued a statement condemning what it described as a “shameful incident.”

The striptease took place last week during an event organized by a trade union which represents judicial workers.

Local media reports said that when the dancers peeled off their clothes to the sound of Mexican music they were heckled and whistled at by spectators, most of whom were women.

Peru, along with many other countries, celebrated Mother’s Day on Sunday.

MILAN (Reuters) – A striptease by 72-year-old actress Sofia Loren could be one of the more outrageous ways that Napoli fans will celebrate if the team are promoted to the Italian top flight this season.

Loren, a movie sex siren from the 1950s and 1960s, is a big fan of the Naples club who have fallen on hard times since winning their first Italian championship 20 years ago.

“I hope that Napoli win these last few games. You watch if we go up I will do a striptease,” she told Gazzetta dello Sport in an interview Tuesday. “The fans have a total passion, the city deserves promotion.”

Napoli are third in Serie B, Italy’s second division, and have five games left to force their way into the top two or face a promotion playoff.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Plans to urge Japanese mothers to breast-feed and sing lullabies to their babies and for families to turn off the TV during meals have been scrapped, Kyodo news agency reported.

Mothers were urged to look into their baby’s eyes while breast-feeding in a draft of a report by a government panel that was due out this week.

It had also warned that the Internet and mobile phones give children a “direct connection with the evils of the world.”

But the release of the report by an education reform panel was called off at the last minute in an apparent response to criticism that it went too far in meddling with people’s private lives, Kyodo reported.

Improving education has also been a priority in efforts to boost Japan’s faltering birthrate. The fertility rate — the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime — hit a record low of 1.26 in 2005.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged when he took office last year to reform Japan’s education system by reviving patriotism in the nation’s classrooms.

The education system came under fire earlier this year after a series of student suicides linked to bullying, and parliament enacted a law in December aimed at encouraging schools to teach patriotism.

ELDERON, Wis. – Around here, it may be tough to pass up anything deep-fried.

Wisconsinites have deep-fried cheese curds, candy bars and Twinkies. They now have deep-fried livestock testicles, too.

More than 300 people paid $5 for all-you-can-eat goat, lamb and bull testicles Saturday at the ninth annual Testicle Festival at Mama’s Place Bar and Grill in Elderon in central Wisconsin.

“Once you get over the mental (aspect) of what you’re eating, it’s just like eating any other food, and it tastes good,” Buster Hoffman said.

Festival founder Nancy Fenske said the festival grew out of her late husband Roger’s birthday party 12 years ago. They decided to have “a nut fry” at Mama’s Place after bringing back lamb fries from a trip to Montana.

The event grew every year and now they fry up to 100 pounds of testicles, she said.

“What else can you do in a small town?” Fenske said.

Butch Joubert, 58, likes the parts sandwiched between bread with tartar sauce. They’re not so different from regular meatballs also served at the festival, he said.

“After a few beers, you can’t really tell the difference,” Joubert said.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – A Wyoming County man who says he found a condom in his iced tea glass last Mother’s Day and lives in fear that he contracted a disease from it is suing the Shoney’s restaurant in Logan and the company that operates it.

The lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of James and Selena Bledsoe says that upon discovering the condom James Bledsoe “immediately became horribly ill, dry heaving and nearly vomiting at the table. He then ran for the nearest restroom to vomit.”

Named as defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed in circuit court in Kanawha County, where restaurant franchisee ShoRest LLC is located, are the restaurant manager, assistant manager and the server who waited on the Bledsoes.

The lawsuit alleges that the Bledsoes, their two children and several other family members were eating at the Logan restaurant last May 14 when James Bledsoe, 30, saw the unwrapped condom in his half-finished drink.

When he returned from the bathroom, Bledsoe allegedly saw the restaurant’s assistant manager and several other employees, including his server, laughing.

A call to ShoRest Chief Operating Officer Rory Smith was not immediately returned on Friday.

The lawsuit alleges that the restaurant manager promised to comply with Bledsoe’s request to keep the glass and its contents so it could be tested, but didn’t.

“It’s caused him (Bledsoe) a great deal of stress,” Bledsoe’s Beckley lawyer, Stephen New, said Friday.

Initial tests for communicable diseases were negative, but Bledsoe expects to be tested for the next seven years. He’s been so worried, the lawsuit says, that it’s affected his relationships with his family and caused him trouble sleeping and concentrating.

The lawsuit, which requests a jury trial, seeks an unspecified amount in both punitive and compensatory damages.

NEW YORK (AFP) – A man who as a child was cared for by 1920s Paris pin-up queen Josephine Baker has claimed a moral victory after forcing the US postal service to accept postcards featuring the bare-breasted “Black Venus.”

The trouble started last year when Jean-Claude Baker, a New York restaurateur who Josephine apparently described as the 13th of her 12 adopted children, decided to mail out 15,000 postcards promoting his business.

The picture he chose dated from 1926 and showed the legendary African-American dancer, singer and cultural icon posing topless in her feather costume from the Folies-Bergeres music hall in Paris.

“I found this very pretty picture, it was very sweet,” Jean-Claude told AFP, explaining how before printing the postcards, a friend suggested he clear the watercolor with the US postal service.

“When I went there, the teller said ‘This is not at all acceptable. This is pornographic advertising!’ The other tellers and people started to gather around. It was humiliating,” Jean-Claude said.

Not to be beaten, Baker asked his printers to superimpose a banner stamped with the word “censored” over the offending breasts, but again the post office refused to accept the cards.

“The banner still allowed a bit of the breast to be seen,” he said.

He went ahead and posted the cards with a larger “censored” banner, but not before contacting a leading civil liberties organization.

Talks between New York Civil Liberties Union and the US postal service established that the tellers were wrong and the mail carrier eventually agreed to accept the cards.

He is now planning to resend the cards next week in their full, uncensored, original splendor.

“It’s just one tear in a river of freedom,” he said. “It’s the spirit of Josephine, my dear mother. She was a fighter, but she liked freedom.”

Jean-Claude was born in France and met Josephine Baker when he was working in a Paris hotel. The US-born dancer and singer, who took Paris by storm in the 1920s and 30s with her exotic displays, later took him under her wing.

Josephine Baker took French citizenship in 1937, fought in the resistance during World War II and formally adopted 12 children of various races, who she described as her “Rainbow Tribe.” She died in 1975.

PATTAYA, Thailand (AFP) – Thailand’s most beautiful transsexuals take the stage late Friday to compete for the Miss Tiffany Universe crown, which is just as prestigious as traditional pageants here.

The 30 finalists will compete in evening gowns and cocktail dresses in the pageant, which is broadcast live on national television from the beach resort town of Pattaya, 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Bangkok.

There were 60 entrants this year, but half were eliminated during preliminary rounds, organisers said.

“The number of applicants was higher than any year in the past,” Chantana Petchprom, Tiffany’s spokeswoman said.

“It shows how successful we are,” she added.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the contest, which has evolved from a cabaret sideshow to a major national competition whose winner is often showered with television or music contracts.

In addition to a tiara, the winner will walk off with 100,000 baht (2,900 dollars) in cash and a new Mercedes Benz.

She will also compete in October for the Miss International Queen crown, in which contestants from around the world vie for what is believed to be the world’s largest transsexual beauty pageant.

In a nation obsessed with beauty pageants and famous for its sexual tolerance, local media often compare Miss Tiffany favourably to the winner of the traditional Miss Thailand contest.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German man failed his driving test after attempting the examination while three times over the legal alcohol limit, police said Tuesday.

When the man arrived for the test Tuesday morning, both his driving instructor and the examiner detected the smell of alcohol on him, though the 27-year-old assured them he had not been drinking, police in the western town of Bendorf said.

“But his driving was rather bad, so the examiner directed him to toward the police station without him noticing,” the spokesman said. “Once there, he had to get out and take an alcohol test, which revealed he was well over the limit.”

The man will now have to wait “a long time” before he can take another driving test, the spokesman said.

MUMBAI (Reuters) – A leading Indian painter is losing his home and other properties after failing to appear before a court trying him for hurting religious sentiments by painting “Mother India” as a naked woman.

Maqbool Fida Husain’s paintings have often depicted revered Hindu gods and goddesses in the nude, sparking criticism from nationalist parties and activists. A decade ago, radicals even attacked his Mumbai home.

The painting at issue in the latest controversy shows a naked woman in front of a wheel resembling the one used in India’s national flag. The names of some of India’s states are written across her body.

A similar composition of a sari-clad woman with a wheel — a Buddhist symbol known in Hindi as the dharma chakra — in the background is used to portray “Mother India” in many patriotic publications.

Husain’s work drew protests and several court cases were filed against the 91-year-old painter who lives in self-imposed exile in Dubai and London.

“He did not answer repeated summons from one of the courts which has now issued a proclamation to attach his properties,” Mumbai police official Brijesh Singh told Reuters.

“We have pasted the attachment proclamation notice on his home and are checking if he owns any more properties.”

Akhil Sibal, Husain’s lawyer, told Reuters: “My client was unaware of any summons from court. Now that we have come to know we are moving to the supreme court,”

“This is a politically motivated case.”

Rightwing groups have called for the arrest of Husain, whose flowing white locks and beard, and habit of walking barefoot, have become iconic in Indian art circles.

In the past Husain, a Muslim, has received support from moderate, progressive Hindus, and on one occasion a former prime minister intervened to ensure no action was taken against him.

VIENNA, Austria – This isn’t the typical whispering you might expect to hear at a library. Vienna’s City Hall has launched a “sex hotline” to raise money for the capital’s main public library, officials said Tuesday.

It’s unusual, but it’s not particularly raunchy: Callers pay 53 cents a minute to listen to an actress read breathless passages from erotica dating to the Victorian era.

City Hall set up the hotline earlier this month to help the library raise cash for planned remodeling and expansion, Austrian media reported.

Anne Bennent, a famous Austrian stage and film star, reads passages from the Vienna library’s collection of 1,200 works of erotic fiction from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the library said.

Officials said the hotline would be operational through May 31.

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia’s worst drought in memory has had many weird side-effects — but a nude carwash has to be one of the oddest.

The “big dry” has driven snakes into towns in search of water and sent thirst-crazed wild camels rampaging through outback camps.

In Brisbane, capital of the “Sunshine State” of Queensland on the east coast, it led to water restrictions, including a ban on residents washing their own cars.

The result was a boom in professional carwash services, a phenomenon which caught the eye of strip club entrepreneur Warren Armstrong.

He set up “Bubbles ‘n Babes”, where customers can have their cars washed by a topless woman for 55 dollars (45 US), or a nude woman for 100 dollars.

Armstrong told the City News newspaper this week the operation was above board.

“I’m just trying to make an honest dollar — simple as that,” he said.

Police said no complaints had been received and, as the washing took place out of public view, no criminal offence was being committed.

Acting State Premier Anna Bligh said the operation was running on recycled water and therefore did not break water restrictions — but neither she nor the government fleet would be using it.

“It seems to me a pretty weird and wacky way to get your car washed,” she said.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – A gang stripped a South African man before super gluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report on Thursday.

SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg.

“The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut,” SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying.

The man was rescued about three hours later when his partner arrived home, SAPA said.

South Africa is battling one of the world’s highest crime rates which has prompted concerns that violence might mar the 2010 soccer World Cup, which the country is due to host.

A police spokesman could not immediately comment on the report. No one at Netcare 911 could be reached.

SEOUL (AFP) – A South Korean woman’s former boss has been ordered to pay her 30 million won (32,300 dollars) for forcing her to go drinking with the rest of the staff after work, court officials said Monday.

They said the Seoul High Court ruled last week in favour of the 28-year-old employee of a software games developer who sued her ex-employer.

“Forcing drinking against (an employee’s) limit and willingness infringes on personal rights,” the court said in a statement.

“If he or she suffered mental stress through forced drinking, it constitutes an illegal act,” Judge Kang Yong-Ho said.

The judge also ruled that the boss violated the woman’s rights by forcing her to stay at drinking parties after work.

South Korean employees in the past often felt obliged to go out drinking with their boss after office hours, but the custom is becoming less common.

The unidentified woman said she had been forced to attend at least two after-work drinking sessions a week, sometimes lasting until 4 am, after joining the company in April 2004.

After two months she quit and filed her lawsuit. A lower court ruled in her favour and awarded her seven million won in compensation but the high court in its ruling last week increased the compensation to 30 million.

The woman also filed a separate suit accusing the boss of sexual harassment. He was fined two million won and fired from the company.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – A gang stripped a South African man before supergluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report on Thursday.

SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg.

“The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut,” SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying.

The man was rescued about three hours later when his partner arrived home, SAPA said.

South Africa is battling one of the world’s highest crime rates which has prompted concerns that violence might mar the 2010 soccer World Cup, which the country is due to host.

A police spokesman could not immediately comment on the report. No one at Netcare 911 could be reached.

MANILA (Reuters) – About 10,000 mothers gathered on Wednesday in nearly 300 state and private hospitals, day-care centres and parks across the Philippines to raise awareness of breastfeeding and try to set a Guinness record for the event.

Only 16 percent of mothers in the Philippines were practising breastfeeding, an extraordinarily low rate for a poor country, said the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which warned of serious health risks for infants.

“Breastfeeding is on the decline in the Philippines,” Dale Rutstein, UNICEF’s chief of communications, told Reuters at an open-air basketball court in Manila, where more than 1,000 mothers took part in the simultaneous breastfeeding.

Nearly 9,000 women were taking part in the event elsewhere across the archipelago, aiming to set a Guinness record for the most number of mothers simultaneously breastfeeding their children. Guinness were to rule on the record attempt in three weeks.

UNICEF said breastfeeding provided the required nutrition for babies, and also reduced the risks of exposing them to diseases arising from unhygienic preparation of infant formula.

“It’s a beautiful way to relate to my child,” Elvira Henares Esguerra, a dermatologist and mother of a five-year-old boy, told Reuters.

“It’s not only food, it’s not only the perfect food for any infant from zero to six months, but the perfect milk for any child.

EVANSVILLE, Ind. – A 57-year-old man is accused of passing out sexually explicit fliers that included images of two ex-wives.

Gordon Wayne Wright was arrested Thursday and faces preliminary charges of distributing obscene matter and invasion of privacy, both misdemeanors, Evansville police said.

Police believe Wright distributed at least 1,000 copies of the fliers, which show two nude women in sexually explicit poses. Both women were identified as ex-wives of Wright.

Wright, contacted before his release through a jail representative, declined to comment to the Evansville Courier and Press newspaper.

He told police he was having a nervous breakdown and wanted to get back at one of the ex-wives pictured, according to a police affidavit. He also stated that he only placed a box of the fliers in a roadside ditch.

Vanderburgh County 911 dispatchers received about 30 complaints from people who found the fliers, while dispatchers in Posey County received at least a dozen calls. According to the affidavit, complaints were so numerous that police began advising people to destroy the fliers rather than sending an officer to retrieve them.