Attention die-hard golfers! The world's longest golf course, spanning 848 miles, is now open!
Nullarbor Links, an 18-hole, 72-par golf course, stretches through several towns situated along the desolate Eyre Highway. Golfers play a hole in one town, then drive to the next tee which could be as far as 62 miles away.
To give golfers the "quintessential Australian experience," the course features a "somewhat rugged, outback-style, natural terrain fairway," which means there are very few manicured greens, or pristine fairways. The course could take as long as 4 days to complete.
”I think people are looking for an adventure, and an experience,” Alfie Caputo, the course's project manager, told News.com.au. ”This is the real Australia, it really is. They'll never play anything like this anywhere in the world.”
Irish police have received an international award for their search for the country's worst motorist.
Earlier this year it emerged that officers had issued 50 driving tickets to a Mr Prawo Jazdy, which is Polish for "driving licence".
At the Ig Nobel ceremony in the US the force topped the literature category.
The prize was accepted by Karolina Lewestam, "a Polish citizen and holder of a Polish driver's licence", who is a graduate student at Boston University.
She "expressed her good wishes to the Irish police service".
The aim of the Ig Nobel awards is to honour achievements that "first make people laugh and then make them think". It is organised by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
Designers of a bra that turns into gas masks and a team who found that named cows produce more milk were among the other award winners.
Irish police had to send out a memo to officers in the force explaining what was behind the repeat offender.
"Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence and not the first and surname on the licence," read a letter from June 2007 from an officer working within the Garda's traffic division.
"Having noticed this, I decided to check and see how many times officers have made this mistake.
"It is quite embarrassing to see that the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities."
The officer added that the "mistake" needed to be rectified immediately and asked that a memo be circulated throughout the force.
Germany is traditionally tolerant of nudity, but a plan to give naked ramblers their own wilderness path is still some way from the sunny uplands. A campsite manager, Heinz Ludwig, aims to establish Germany's first official naked ramblers' footpath - an 18km (11-mile) route in the Harz Mountains.
"But some people are against - it is not directly supported by the community," he told BBC News. "I want people to calm down, then we'll try again next year."
But he says fans of Freikoerperkultur - Free Body Culture, or FKK for short - have expressed support for the scheme. It would attract naturists to the Wippra and Dankerode areas, in the central German mountain range. Fully-clothed walkers would be free to use the path, too.
"It's a secluded area, away from traffic," Mr Ludwig said. "In the GDR [former communist East Germany] people used to bathe there, too."
He says some keen naturists have already tested the trail. The plan is to open it officially next May.
A sign has been put up warning those averse to naturism that they might prefer to go elsewhere.
"If you don't want to see people with nothing on then you should refrain from moving on," it reads.
There has been traffic chaos in two Paris suburbs after their feuding mayors declared the same busy road one-way, but in opposite directions.
Patrick Balkany, the conservative mayor of Levallois-Perret, initially made the D909 one-way to reduce the amount of commuter traffic through his district.
But Gilles Catoire, the Socialist mayor of neighbouring Clichy-la-Garenne, said this increased congestion in his area.
He made his section of the road one-way in the opposite direction.
With the contradictory road-signs in place, the unsurprising result was gridlock, prompting the deployment of municipal and national police to direct traffic away from the area.
"What Clichy has done is not a long-term solution, but it is a response to a unilateral decision by the town of Levallois," Clichy's deputy mayor, Alain Fournier, was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.
But Mr Balkany insisted: "The mayor of Clichy has taken a position that is unreasonable and is hurting his own constituents."
Thousands of motorists pass between the two suburbs each day on their way into and out of the French capital.
Two bloggers from Azerbaijan are facing up to five years in jail after posting a video of a donkey giving a news conference on YouTube.
Shortly after the video was released, Andnan Hajizade and Emin Milli were held on hooliganism charges following a scuffle in a restaurant. Their lawyer says the arrests were politically motivated.
But authorities insist they are investigating a simple criminal case.
In the video, the donkey extols the benefits of living in Azerbaijan and praises the government for its positive attitude towards donkeys. The video was seen by many as a send-up of government news conferences, which critics say are often little more than propaganda events.
"This incident is definitely politically motivated," said the bloggers' lawyer, Isakhan Ashurov. My clients did not beat anybody, quite the opposite."
The Azerbaijani government denies that the bloggers' arrest was politically motivated.
"People are not arrested in Azerbaijan because of political activity," said Ali Hasnov, a senior adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, in a statement. There was a scuffle between some young people and some of them were injured. Law enforcement agencies are investigating the case and will give an impartial assessment," he added.
The French army were branded 'imbeciles' after a shelling exercise set fire to a suburb of Marseille. The government spoke of its fury as hundreds of residents were evacuated from one of the worst wildfires in recent years.
The Foreign Legion conducted the artillery practice depsite scorching summer temperatures - meaning virtually every shell that landed on a hillside started a fire. Dozens of buildings were destroyed in the blazes hit the eastern Trois-Ponts suburb including a retirement home housing 120 pensioners .
No serious injuries were reported but residents had to be evacuated to nearby gyms and public buildings. The National Forestry Office reportedly said 400 to 500 houses were threatened by the fire over an five-mile front.
Thousands of acres of tinder dry scrub have already been ravaged for the flames. regional government prefect Michel Sappin branded the army "imbeciles" and demanded court martials for officers who ordered the exercise
In such weather conditions, with high winds, the army should refrain from carrying out shelling practice, he said.
French tourists are the worst in the world, coming across as penny-pinching, rude and terrible at languages, according to a new survey.
The study by travel company Expedia asked 4,500 hotels worldwide to rank tourists on their behaviour.
Japanese tourists - seen as clean and tidy, polite, quiet and uncomplaining - came top for the third year running.
French travellers made amends on elegance - classed third - as well as for their discretion and cleanliness.
But the French were the least ready to try a new language, unlike US tourists who were most likely to swallow their pride and order a pizza, baguette or a paella in the local lingo.
The mystery of crop circles in poppy fields in Australia's southern island state of Tasmania has been solved -- stoned wallabies are eating the poppy heads and hopping around in circles.
"We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," the state's top lawmaker Lara Giddings told local media on Thursday.
"Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high," she said.
Many people believe crop circles that mysteriously appear in fields around the world are created by aliens.
Poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids said livestock which ate the poppies were known to "act weird" -- including deer and sheep in the state's highlands.
"There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles," said field operations manager Rick Rockliff.
Australia produces about 50 percent of the world's raw material for morphine and related opiates.
MOSCOW — Brad Pitt is accustomed to stopping passersby in their tracks. The Hollywood heartthrob's next job is slowing traffic in Siberia — or so Russian traffic police hope.
A Russian newspaper reports that cardboard cutouts of Pitt dressed as a traffic cop have been placed by the most dangerous intersections in the city of Omsk.
It's the latest move by authorities in their endless battle against speeding. Traffic accidents in Russia are among the highest in Europe.
The campaign seems to be working. Omsk officials say accidents are down as star-struck drivers ease off the gas to gaze at the unusual image.
The paper, Argumenty i Fakty, quotes Dmitry Ziryanov, a local official who came up with the idea as saying Pitt is "kind of like a colleague for us."
If home is where the heart is, a new survey suggests that most people aren't sure exactly where they live. More than half of people cannot pinpoint the exact location of the human heart on a diagram, and nearly 70 percent can't correctly identify the shape of the lungs, according to the survey.
This lack of knowledge isn't just embarrassing -- it could lead to a poorer quality of health care, some experts say.
In the study, published in the journal BMC Family Practice, a research team surveyed 722 Britons -- 589 hospital outpatients and 133 people in the general population. They gave the volunteers four diagrams of human figures and asked them to choose the one that showed the correct size and location of a specific organ. (For example, the heart diagrams showed various size organs on the far left side of the chest, directly in the center, anchored on the center/left chest, and on the right side of the chest.)
Overall, people knew less basic anatomy than the researchers expected -- even those patients being treated for a specific condition involving that organ. Participants generally answered half the questions correctly, including 46.5 percent who knew which drawing represented their heart. In all, 31.4 percent correctly identified the lungs, 38.4 percent the stomach, 41.8 percent the thyroid, and 42.5 percent the kidneys.
The intestines and bladder were the most easily identified, with 85.9 percent and 80.7 percent, respectively, answering the question correctly.
A 250m-long (825 ft) crop circle of a jellyfish has appeared on farmland. The owners of the land in Oxfordshire have urged visitors to stay away from the circle, which is also 60m (197ft) wide, to avoid further crop damage.
Sally Ann Spence and husband Bill, who own Berry Croft Farm near Ashbury, said hundreds of visitors have been trampling over their field.
They said it was "beautiful" but the flattened crops were now "useless" and the damage would cost about £600.
"We have not given permission for people to walk on our land," Mrs Spence said. The pattern has already cost a great deal of damage - possibly about £600. People can get a better view from the air."
She said she was not concerned about tracking down the culprits and the incident has not been reported to the police. It is not the first time crop circles have appeared on their land, they said, but the jellyfish is one of the most spectacular.
Nearly 200 French prisoners are preparing to take to their bikes in the first ever penal Tour de France. The 194 inmates, escorted by 124 prison guards and sports instructors, will set off from Lille and cycle about 2,400km (1,500 miles), ending up in Paris.
They will have to cycle in a pack, will not be ranked and, for obvious reasons, breakaway sprints will not be allowed.
Prison authorities say they hope the race will help the inmates learn values such as team work and self esteem. The prisoners, all serving jail terms of between five and 10 years, will make stopovers in 17 different towns, each of which has a jail.
Seven bulls exploded and caught fire after power lines fell on a dairy farm in New Zealand. The incident happened north of Auckland at Wilks Road farm.
Dave Taylor, who leases the farm, said he got a phone call from his father who was driving along the motorway, telling him his cows were exploding.
'I found seven dead and on fire in the paddock,' he said.
Three bulls were electrocuted after the power lines fell and four were killed when they walked into the live area.
The Australian government has admitted that cash hand-outs aimed at stimulating the economy have been sent to thousands of people who are dead. The money was part of a multi-billion dollar package under which every tax-payer was entitled to a payment of up to A$900 ($700, £440).
About A$14m of the money went to dead people, ministers said, and A$25m to Australians living overseas. Local media have dubbed the deceased recipients "the grateful dead".
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner said that the money would still help Australia's economy.
"Even where they go to people who are dead, of course they go to the estate," he told local media. The estate typically is going to consist of ordinary Australians who will in turn get the payments, and on balance over time, will spend those payments."
Authorities say a North Carolina teen who was thwarted as he tried to rob a store with a banana ate it before they could arrive.
Winston-Salem authorities say 17-year-old John Szwalla held the banana under his shirt when he entered the store Thursday, saying he had a gun and demanded money.
Owner Bobby Ray Mabe says he and a customer jumped Szwalla, holding him until deputies arrived. While they waited, Mabe says the teen ate the banana. Mabe says deputies took pictures of the banana peel. Forsyth County Sheriff’s office spokesman Maj. Brad Stanley says deputies joked about charging Szwalla with destroying evidence.
Szwalla faces a charge of attempted armed robbery. Jail officials say he doesn’t have an attorney.
Barnsley, UK - Enforcement action was expected today against a pub landlady who tried to sidestep the smoking ban by exploiting a legal loophole. Kerry Fenton, landlady at the Cutting Edge in Worsbrough, Barnsley, turned the pub's tap room into a "smoking research centre", where people could smoke if they filled in a questionnaire.
It included questions such as how many cigarettes people smoke, and whether they like a smoky atmosphere in pubs.
The idea was dreamed up by pub regular James Martin, a 40-year-old Sheffield printer, who saw that part two, item nine of the Smoke-free (Exemptions and Vehicles) Regulation 2007 sets out conditions for research into smoking. The regulations state that a "designated room in a research or testing facility" does not have to be smoke-free "whilst it is being used for any research or tests".
But Barnsley Council officials have pointed out that the Cutting Edge is "clearly not a research or test facility" and therefore not exempt from the smoking ban.
Enforcement officers were expected to visit the premises in Bank End Road today and take action, which could lead to a maximum penalty of £2,500.
The ruling will be a blow for non-smoker Ms Fenton, who claims trade has doubled since the "centre" was set up on Friday, May 8. She said: "Before Friday we were lucky to get 10 people in at a weekend. On Friday we had 29, on Saturday 31 and on Sunday 46."
Signs on the door of the tap room, which has its own bar and is completely separate from the rest of the pub, indicate the place is a "Designated Smoking Room."
Ms Fenton, 36, also asks smokers to put 50p in a charity box and part of the money goes to a cancer research fund. The landlady says she has not taken legal advice on the scheme - instead relying on Mr Martin's interpretation of the rules - but she believes that she has complied with the regulations by making sure the smoking room is entirely separate from the lounge.
The "research centre", however, has not found favour with the pub's owners Punch Taverns. A spokesman for the company said: "Punch does not endorse this activity and will not be rolling it out across any of our other sites. Our licensee will be advised against undertaking this activity."
Customers at the Cutting Edge, however, say they are all in favour of the smoking room. Regular Christopher Pick said: "I think it's brilliant. Before this I was standing outside no matter what the weather was like. I don't know whether they can get away with it but there you are."
Non-smoker Rob Hudson, who has been coming to the Cutting Edge for 35 years, said: "I would rather come into a full pub than an empty room. I have the choice of the tap room and the lounge and I come in here."
