KEY POINTS:
Forget about hiding the TV remote when the Rugby World Cup is on. This is what every man wants for Christmas. If only they could spell whingeing.
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Tina from Wairau Valley writes: "Being a new and young mum, I have discovered a few flaws with supermarkets and malls. At Glenfield Mall there are parent and pram carparks by most entrances. The one that intrigues me is the entrance that leads to the escalator that puts you in the main foodcourt. If you push a pram in that entrance, you have an escalator going up, and one going down. There are no lifts and the escalators have signs saying 'no prams'. At most supermarkets they now have parent and child parks also - except that the trolley bays are nowhere near them, making our job just a little more complicated. Put shopping in car, lock car, take trolley back, take out child from trolley, walk back to car and open then put in child. I appreciate the thought that us mums are trying to be cared for, however, can we put a little more thought into it?"
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The annual Ig Noble prizes for 2007, awarded by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research, have been presented at a ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Highlights included: "Chemistry" - Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Centre of Japan, for developing a way to extract vanillin, or vanilla fragrance and flavouring, from cow dung. "Linguistics" - Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, of Universitat de Barcelona, for a study showing rats sometimes fail to distinguish between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards. "Peace Prize" - The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon, the so-called "gay bomb", that "will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other". "Economics" - Kuo Cheng Hsieh, of Taichung, Taiwan, for patenting a device in 2001 that catches bank robbers by dropping a net over them, known as the "net trapping system for capturing a robber immediately". (Source: Reuters)
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Bug smugglers? Dutch customs officers have found 100 dead beetles stuffed with cocaine while examining a parcel from Peru, Dutch authorities say. The little drug couriers' bodies had been slit open and filled with a total of 300 grams of cocaine, with an estimated street value of €8000 ($14,900). "This is a very striking method of smuggling. We have never seen anything like this before," said government spokesman Kees Nanninga. (Source: Reuters)
