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The true beauty of Lady Jane Grey



©Telegraph
The miniature that Dr Starkey believes is of Lady Jane Grey

Bizarro Earth

13-year-old girl is rotten sneakers queen

Thirteen-year-old Katharine Tuck's sneakers smell as bad as they look. Now, at least, the Utah seventh-grader can afford some new ones.

On Tuesday, she out-ranked six other children to win $2,500 in the 32nd annual National Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest, stinking up the joint with a pair of well-worn 1½-year-old Nikes so noxious they had the judges wincing.

"I'm so proud of the little stinker," said her mother, Paula Tuck.

Ah, the foul smell of success.

Katharine has used the sneakers to play soccer and basketball, hiked in them, even waded into the Great Salt Lake, where they were infiltrated by brine shrimp.

The contest, founded in 1975 as a sporting goods store promotion and now sponsored by the manufacturer of anti-foot odor products, pits children from around the United States who have won state-level competitions for the generally cruddy condition of their footwear.

Bizarro Earth

'Spiderman' arrested climbing Malaysia's Petronas Twin Towers again

Police arrested a French urban climber who calls himself "Spiderman" as he attempted to scale Malaysia's 88-storey Petronas Twin Towers with his bare hands Tuesday for the second time in 10 years.

Alain Robert was detained as he made it to the 60th floor of Tower 2, where he unfurled a Malaysian flag to a cheering crowd below before being led away by authorities, Fire Department spokesman Christopher Chong said.

"We asked him to stop, he said OK," Chong said. "He tried to climb further, but we told him no."

A decade ago, Robert was also stopped on the same floor, where there is a ledge for officials to climb onto, and was charged with trespassing.

It was not immediately clear whether he will be charged this time, and police were not immediately available for comment.

Bizarro Earth

McDonald's seeks to redefine 'McJob'

McDonald's, home to the McMuffin and the McNugget, is fed up with being home to the McJob.

The UK arm of the fast food chain is starting a campaign to get British dictionary publishers to revise their definitions of the word "McJob", a term the Oxford English Dictionary describes as "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector".

Ambulance

The Final Upgrade: Airline Moves Dead Body to 1st Class

LONDON - A first-class passenger on a flight from Delhi to London awoke find the corpse of a woman who had died in the economy cabin being placed in a seat next to him, British Airways said Monday.

The economy section of the flight was full, and the cabin crew needed to move the woman and her grieving family out of that compartment to give them some privacy, the airline said.

Heart

Explicit Love Letters of Russian czar on sale in Germany

Cologne- Seven hand-written letters in which Czar Alexander II of Russia and his mistress, Princess Ekaterina Dolgorukaya, explicitly describe sex are to be auctioned this Friday in the German city of Cologne.

Bizarro Earth

BA apologises for First Class corpse

British Airways has apologised after First Class passengers on a flight from Delhi awoke to find crew had placed a corpse in their cabin.

Businessman Paul Trinder, 54, had dozed off in his £3000 First Class seat on the flight from Delhi to Heathrow, but awoke to a "commotion" in the darkened cabin.

He told how crew were moving what he later established was a person "like a sack of potatoes", positioning her in a seat on the other side of the cabin and seatbelting her in.

Wine

Drunk posted himself

A German man has been arrested after he climbed into an emergency postbox for unwanted babies while drunk.

Heinrich Mueller, 28, slid down the chute and ended up in an emergency incubator, triggering alarms among medical staff.

But instead of another unwanted newborn baby, they found Mueller smoking a cigarette.

He then fell asleep as staff worked out how to get him out of the incubator at the hospital in Dortmund.

Eagle

Fly-by poo shocker

New research has shown that bird poo costs car sellers £6.5 million a year, and causes British motorists a staggering £24 billion in annual damage to paintwork.

It might be our feathered friends way of jumping on the global-warming band wagon - but nearly 60 % of us suffer from the dreaded droppings at least once a month, with nearly half of cars in Britain pelted with poo at least once a fortnight, and an unlucky one in six splattered every single day.

And bird poo is more than just an unsightly nuisance for British drivers; it can also cost us dearly. A quarter of used car buyers expect a discount of at least £100 if a vehicle has been used as a dumping ground by our feathered friends.

Bizarro Earth

Study: More Men Than Women Sleep With Teddy Bears

According to a survey by hotel chain Travelodge, more men said they take teddy bears to bed. The survey found 20% of respondents that were male were teddy bear cuddlers, while only 15% of women admitted to the practice.

The study was commissioned so Travelodge could determine whether or not promotion for their new pillow with arms, called a Cuddilow, is worth the effort. 63% of the 2,000 participants said a bedtime cuddle was necessary for them in order to sleep.