Sideswipe: Wentworth College Supercollider

Please tell me this is an April Fool's joke, writes Dale Dobbs of Gulf Harbour. "It's a pity that David Lange is no longer with us; he could check the breath of those Wentworth students for traces of uranium."

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Stories That Could be April Fool's ... But Aren't:
1) A "magic torch" which detects drug use and costs 40. By shining the torch in the face of clubbers at night the UV light picks up the tiniest traces of cocaine or amphetamine on nasal hair. Police in Blackburn, England, are using it to stop drug-users from entering clubs.
2) Porsche has announced a four-fold rise in profits. Despite the recession hitting the car industry hard, the German car-maker's lucrative stake in Volkswagen has helped keep it afloat, even though sales are down 27 per cent.
3) School PE curriculum in the UK is embracing yoga, martial arts and cheerleading because pupils don't like being outside in the rain.
4) A pregnant woman was thrown out of a pub for ordering a second half-pint.
(Source: BBC.co.uk)

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Dave from Balmoral took this photo in Thailand. According to Stacy, the ring of light around the sun, spotted by a reader while on the golf course, is called a halo and is caused by ice crystals high in the atmosphere which refract the light - similar to how rainbows are formed by water droplets refracting light.

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A British anti-smoking advert could distress young children by preying on their fears by suggesting their parents might die, the advertising watchdog has ruled. In the ad, which begins in a darkened room, a child's voice says "I'm not scared of the dark", then "I'm not scared of spiders", and "I'm not scared of clowns". As a schoolgirl is shown scowling on a street corner, the voice-over continues: "I'm not scared of Becky Taylor." But as a woman is shown smoking while she talks to another woman in a school playground, the young girl's voice continues: "I'm scared of my mum smoking. I'm scared that my mum will die." The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the emotive ad should not be shown before 7.30pm, saying it would cause children stress or worry by suggesting their parents could die imminently if they smoked. (Source: Telegraph.co.uk)

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Sylvia responds to the proposed conversion of Taupo place names such as Three Mile Bay to metrics: "Accuracy of place names? Excellent! Maybe the NZ Geographic Board can correct another misnomer - "Ninety Mile Beach". I understand it's actually only about 55 miles long ... so we'd better call it "88 Kilometre Beach".

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See today's Herald cartoon