Odd News

BEIJING (Reuters) - China warned its already tightly controlled media on Wednesday that the government would not tolerate "obscene, sexual, superstitious or base" advertisements over the Olympic period which may embarrass the country. "Advertising companies have a responsibility to society for propaganda and showing the country's image.

MILFORD, Mass. - Dozens of pairs of pantyhose have been left near a Milford school bus stop — causing sheer annoyance in the neighborhood. The pantyhose — sometimes new, sometimes used — has been left on Camp Street for more than two years. They're almost always black and queen sized.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Twisted carrots, warped leeks and bent cucumbers may soon appear -- officially -- on EU shop shelves as Europe's farm chief overrides opposition from leading producer countries to her marketing simplification plan.

OMAHA, Neb. - Humane society workers have found 117 cats, a raccoon and a rabbit in a north Omaha house. The discovery came Wednesday after Council Bluffs, Iowa, police caught the 54-year-old woman who lives at the house reportedly stealing cat food. Officials say she smelled like cat urine.

QUITO (Reuters) - After decades of solitude, "Lonesome George" may finally save his species of Galapagos giant tortoise from extinction, his keepers said on Monday.

NEWARK, N.J. - Prosecutors say a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that was stolen nearly 34 years ago in Rhode Island has surfaced in central New Jersey. The 1971 Sportster was purchased on eBay for $2,400 by Michael Meistrell of Cranford.

NEW YORK, July 21 (Reuters) - A New Jersey man trying to exterminate insects in his apartment blew it up instead, the New York Daily News reported on Monday.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. - A Minnesota high school teacher has lasted 20 hours on a carnival ride to win the Ride the Tide Challenge at the Mall of America.

PARIS (Reuters) - France's data protection authority has given permission for a nudist resort to keep a "black list" of guests barred from its facilities, the organisation said.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - State police say they arrested a man early Tuesday whose blood alcohol level was 0.491 percent — the highest ever recorded in Rhode Island for someone who wasn't dead.

ATHENS (Reuters) - A Greek court has dismissed a request by residents of the Aegean island of Lesbos to ban the use of the word lesbian to describe gay women, according to a court ruling made public on Tuesday.

NEW YORK - The bubble might have burst for off-Broadway's "Gazillion Bubbles Show." Someone has stolen the show's specialized soapy bubble solution, which takes two months to make.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto police are looking for the owners of some 1,500 bicycles they have recovered after raids on a shop, home and storage garages across Canada's biggest city.

LEWISTON, Maine - A man is having trouble sleeping since he found a python snake about 9 feet long under the engine of his pickup truck. Harley Burgess's shocking discovery Saturday is the second of its kind in less than a week in Maine.

HYRYNSALMI, Finland (Reuters) - Mud up to her waist and the yellow wig hanging sideways, swamp-soccer veteran Tuula Brocke reached for the ball just barely a metre in front of her, but her foot would not move an inch.

GENEVA (Reuters) - A week of world trade talks is no picnic for the European Union's negotiator who has been accused by France of giving too much in his haste to get a deal.

SOUTHPORT (Reuters) - Britain's Paul Casey recruited royalty to help find a lost ball during Saturday's wind-affected British Open third round ... to no avail.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco voters, never thrilled with George W. Bush, may give the U.S. president a parting shot in November by naming a sewage plant after him.

LONDON (Reuters) - Customers of bars that play loud music drink more quickly and in fewer gulps, French researchers said on Friday.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Thieves broke into a museum near Stockholm overnight and stole five works by American pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, the manager said on Friday.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch woman who accidentally flushed 900 euros (714 pounds) down the toilet got her money back after workers fished the bank notes from the drain.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some U.S. motorists sick of getting clobbered at the pump seem willing to do just about anything for free fuel, from giving up the right to name their children to stealing from day-care centres to donating blood.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Ninety years after Bolshevik revolutionaries shot dead the last tsar, Russians are fighting over who to lionise: Tsar Nicholas II or Josef Stalin.

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - An Indian man who took an impersonator to court to get a divorce faces legal action after his real wife found out, lawyers said on Friday.

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentine football is to use a quickly-vanishing spray in an attempt to stop defensive walls from creeping forward at free kicks.

LONDON (Reuters) - The dark clouds of the credit crisis may have an unexpected silver lining for the environment -- a smaller carbon footprint from investment bankers.

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Their chests rise and fall and you can hear a tiny heartbeat, but these babies for sale over the Internet are not alive.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian men admit to having sexually harassed women in the most populous Arab country, and a majority say women themselves are to blame for their maltreatment, a survey showed on Thursday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Firefighters have threatened to strike after bosses fired a 22-year veteran Scottish fireman for being overweight.

Cornish pasty makers get brand name boost

LONDON (Reuters) - Cornish pasty makers in Cornwall moved a step closer to securing branding and marketing rights for the traditional snack after the government backed their European bid for regional protection. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs will take the Cornish Pasty Association's (CPA) application for Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) to Brussels.