KEY POINTS:
A reader found this sign at a hotel where he stayed in China. 'Mind you the room was only $50 a night, and it was a great place,' he says. So they were being sincere, then.
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Diana Khan, after a visit to the Parent and Child show in Auckland, can identify with yesterday's story of The Warehouse skateboard "on special offer" for more than the original price: "I was offered the 'bargain show-only price' of $300 for a pram and car-seat system from babies.co.nz, with the patter that they are usually $500. I reserved one only to find the next day on their website that the same items are $288 online. Hmmm ... "
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One man's stink is another man's major art project, apparently. A piece by Belgian conceptual artist Jan Fabre at the Antwerp's MuHKA contemporary art museum, Spring Is On Its Way, consists of onions and potatoes hung from the ceiling in condoms. And the vegetables are, well, spoiling. "Like many of his works, it is about transformation and metamorphosis," MuHKA's Kathleen Weyts said of Fabre, who had a solo show at the Paris Louvre this year. Local media said plenty of visitors and museum guards were protesting. Already, the smelly, rotting onions and potatoes were the talk of the town. "Protest Against Fabre's Stink Art," headlined Het Nieuwsblad newspaper. "It smells of onions, but I would not call it a stink," said MuHKA director Bart De Baere. The museum has no plans to remove the installation, which runs until early next year.
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If you're feeling a little flush after some success on yesterday's Melbourne Cup: a French horse-racing fan has won a record ¬7.5 million ($16.6 million) from a ¬60 bet. The unnamed gambler scooped his winnings after he predicted the first five horses to romp home in a race in Paris. The bet, known as a quinte, automatically allocates the gambler a four-digit number in a lottery - and the man's four-digit number came up. The previous record win was ¬6.9 million in July last year.
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It may not help much as US voters go to the polls, but Barack Obama has won huge support ... in Kenya. Obama grew up mainly in Hawaii and Indonesia with his mother and her parents, but his father was born in the Nyanza Province, populated mainly by the Luo ethnic group, which traces lineage through the father's side of the family.
