In a Zone of their own

Venezuela creates its own unique time zone on Sunday, putting the clock back half-an-hour on a permanent basis.

President Hugo Chavez says that an earlier dawn means the performance of the country will improve, as more people will wake up in daylight.

"I don't care if they call me crazy, the new time will go ahead," he said.

But critics say the move is unnecessary and the president simply wants to be in a different time zone from his arch-rival, the United States.

The new time puts Venezuela four-and-a-half hours behind Greenwich Mean Time, and out of step with all its neighbours.

The move had first been announced in August, but it has been delayed twice because international bodies and Venezuela itself were not ready to implement the change.

Science and Technology Minister Hector Nacarro praised the measure.

"I see it as a very positive thing that while there is light we can be in it," he said.

Lennon's hair auction

A lock of John Lennon's hair is being put up for sale. Lennon gave Betty Glasow, the Beatles' hairdresser, the lock of hair in a copy of his book "A Spaniard in the Works." In the dedication he wrote, "To Betty, Lots of Love and Hair, John Lennon."

On Wednesday, fans will have the chance to bid on the hair and other autographed photos and Beatles memorabilia when they go up for auction in Worthing, in southern England.

The book -- with the hair still inside -- could fetch as much as $6,200, said Nick Muston, director of Gorringes auction house.

Glasow, who kept the Beatles' moptops trimmed on the set of the films "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!" decided to sell the items because she wanted fans to have them, Muston said.

"She feels that rather than these things being stuck in a drawer with nobody enjoying them, real enthusiasts [could] get their hands on these things," Muston said.

Other items in the sale include signed photographs of the Beatles dedicated to Glasow, including one where George Harrison signed the photo George "Dandruff" Harrison.

Another lot includes a program, ticket and screw from one of the seats at a 1965 Beatles Christmas Concert at Hammersmith Apollo in London, where fans ripped out seats so they could dance in the aisles.

Glasow has also worked with a number of actors. Her collection includes a photo album of signed photos and personal messages from Michael Caine, from "Educating Rita"; Peter Ustinov, from "Death on the Nile"; Steve McQueen, from "The War Lover"; Harrison Ford, from "Patriot Games"; and the cast of the Harry Potter films.

No Miracle Button

PLYMOUTH, England -- A British woman who believes prayer healed her damaged hip had trouble getting her benefits stopped because the government does not recognize miracles.

June Clarke told the Daily Mail she felt bad receiving disability benefits when she was no longer disabled. But officials told her she had received a permanent disability designation after she slipped on a wet floor in 2001, causing severe damage to her hip, spine and pelvis.

The computer apparently was not programmed for her stated manner of recovery.

"They said: 'We haven't got a button to push that says miracle,'" Clarke told the newspaper.

Eventually, Clarke was examined by a government doctor. He said he did not understand what had cured her -- but pronounced her cured.

Clarke lives in Plymouth where her husband, Stuart, is pastor of the Hooe Baptist Church. She said she regained the use of her legs in January while attending a Christian conference and after years of prayer from her husband.

Text Trick

NZ - It was a case of love's labour's lost, 21st-century style. The man thought he was in for an early Christmas present when he got an alluring text offering him the friendly company of two young women.

They invited him around for some close attention, helpfully suggesting he get his gear off to save time. So off he went, reached the house, and threw his clothes through the front window prior to entering.

Trouble is, it was all a joke and the householder wasn't two little lovelies pining for passion, but someone else altogether - who promptly called the police.

The constabulary duly arrested the 31-year-old for being unlawfully on a property and he was later offered diversion.

Some time later the police caught up with the 17-year-old text sender, who was also offered diversion, for misusing a phone, when she appeared in the Palmerston North District Court last week.

Santa Paws

While many art fans hang Van Gogh or Michelangelo prints on their walls, a local doggie daycare hopes Winnipeggers prefer the likes of Guiness and Mischa.

Canines at Woofs 'n Wags daycare and obedience centre are spending the week in "Santa Paw" workshops, creating "impressionist art" to be auctioned off next Monday through Friday.

Proceeds go to D'Arcy's Animal Rescue Centre, the shelter from which many of the dogs were adopted.

"We're a big family here and we really just want to give back to the community and back to dogs who don't have anything," said Woofs 'n Wags owner Nikki Sherwin.

"We're blessed that our dogs are spoiled rotten and loved, but we want to make sure we're doing as much as we can for dogs that need a little extra, especially during the holiday season."

Human Calculator

The world's fastest human calculator today broke his own record for working out a 200-digit number using nothing but brain power to produce the answer in just over 70 seconds.

Alexis Lemaire, a 27-year-old Frenchman, correctly calculated the 13th root of a random 200-digit number from a possible 393 trillion answers.

The so-called 'mathlete' produced the answer of 2,407,899,893,032,210 in 70.2 seconds, beating his previous record of 72.4 seconds, at London's Science Museum.

A computer was used to produce a random 200-digit number before he sat down to calculate the answer in his head.

The museum's curator of mathematics, Jane Wess, said: "He sat down and it was all very quiet - and all of a sudden he amazingly just cracked it. I believe that it is the highest sum calculated mentally. He seems to have a large memory and he's made this his life's ambition. It's quite remarkable to see it happen. A very small number of people have this extraordinary ability; nowadays there is only a handful."

Mr Lemaire, who attends the University of Reims in northern France, began demonstrating his prowess by finding the 13th root of a random 100-digit number but gave up trying to improve his performance when he calculated an answer in under four seconds in 2004.

Like an athlete, he trains his brain daily for the far harder task of finding the 13th root of 200-digit numbers.

97yr old arrested in crack raid

Portland, OR -- A 97-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday after police in Portland raided a suspected drug house located across the street from an elementary school, according to a Local 6 News report.

Agents arrested the woman and 18 others in the raid. Oregon police spokesman Brian Schmuatz said people were throwing crack out windows of the home during the raid. Some neighbors said the woman did not know what was going on inside the house but detectives don't believe it.

"She doesn't strike me as someone who doesn't have her full faculties," Portland police spokesman David Howe said. "She is a sharp lady. In this case, it is a matter of controlling your premise and not allowing family members or acquaintances to deal drugs, to use drugs in your home."

Police raided and seized the woman's home in 2003 because of illegal drugs. Police said the drug house has been a part of an ongoing problem in the area.

Icelandic prankster

A 16-year-old Icelandic prankster, Vífill Atlason, called the Presidential Office of the White House the first weekend in December and requested a telephone meeting with George W. Bush as Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, President of Iceland.

After having answered a number of questions about Grímsson’s persona with the aid of Wikipedia, and being sent from operator to operator, Atlason was given contact with Bush’s private secretary and granted a telephone meeting with the president at 7 pm on December 3, Fréttabladid reports.

But at the last minute, White House officials noticed there was something fishy about the caller, and Atlason was paid a visit by the police in Akranes, where he lives, instead. US authorities were keen to find out how an Icelandic teenager could have known the secret telephone number (1-800-WHITEHOUSE) of the White House Presidential Office.

Atlason claims not to remember where he got his hands on the telephone number. The teenage prankster does not expect to get into any legal trouble for his “light telephone prank.”

“I wasn’t rude and was addressed as ‘Mr. President’ by the White House staff over and over again. It was totally worth all the fuss,” Atlason said. He told Morgunbladid he did not want to get anyone upset, he just wanted to have a chat with Bush and invite him to Iceland.

Two Icelandic TV channels, RÚV and Channel 2, invited Atlason to an interview Thursday last week to ask him about his prank. He agreed to go to both interviews, which were at the same time, and it wasn’t until later that people realized that two different boys had been interviewed as Atlason.

Apparently, the true prankster had showed up at RÚV, but had sent one of his friends to impersonate him on Channel 2.

Atlason’s prank has also caught the attention of American media stations like NBC and ABC, the latter of which interviewed the teenager and his mother, Fréttabladid reports.

A White House representative told ABC that it is not particularly difficult to find the number Atlason had called; it is an unclassified number on the White House switchboard.

Loo ordeal

A man spent four days trapped in a toilet after the door handle broke. David Leggat, 55, was unable to raise the alarm after becoming stuck in the toilets at Kittybrewster and Woodside Bowling Club in Aberdeen.

Mr Leggat had no mobile phone or food, and used tap water for refreshment and for heat.
He was only released when cleaner Cathy Scollay arrived and heard his cries for help. She told BBC Scotland: "He said 'I have been locked in for four days'."

Mrs Scollay added: "I went in to work as normal and a voice shouted out. I could not take it in. The handle had broken. He was a bit shaky, and was as white as a sheet."

Mr Leggat was said to be none the worse, despite his ordeal.

Cracker-less

The "snaps" have had to be removed from more than 650 Christmas crackers being sent to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan because of regulations on the carriage of "explosives".

The original plan was for the troops to receive a cracker to pull with their turkey dinners. However, Maj Ian Dalzel-Job, a former Scots Guard from Rosyth, Dunfermline, who organised the festive packages, then discovered that Christmas cracker snaps are forbidden from being transported on RAF planes.

Under British Forces Post Office regulations, cracker snaps are classed as explosives along with nitroglycerine, fireworks, blasting caps, fuses and flares. Volunteers had to fish inside all 650 boxes to defuse each individual cracker.

Maj Dalzel-Job said: "It was quite tricky to get them out. It took us two hours to go through them all. The troops will just have to go 'bang' themselves when they pull them."

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "The safety of our aircraft and personnel is paramount. Large numbers of Christmas crackers are classified as dangerous air cargo and therefore require special handling."

The Scots Guards Association faced further problems with its plans to send alcohol miniatures to the troops. This has nothing to do with regulations, simply that alcohol is forbidden in Islamic countries.

Toronto Santa Speedo Run

Wrapped in teeny tiny Lycra suits, Santa's packages made a nippy jaunt through Yorkville yesterday.

A few dozen brave athletes took part in the third annual Toronto Santa Speedo Run, decorated in strategically placed tinsel and red ribbons to supplement their bathing suits.

"It's not really something you anticipate seeing -- people running around Yorkville in little red Speedos," said Matt Freeman, who organized the Sick Kids Foundation fundraiser. "Canadians are tough and party."

This was the third annual run for Freeman, who started the event as a way of giving back to The Hospital for Sick Children, where he was put back together time and time again during his "accident-prone" childhood.

Tying a wide red ribbon above her bathing suit bottoms, Shannon Sinclair explained before the run, "This is to hide from the jiggle. And it's festive. It's damn cold," she added, fitting retrofitted red slippers over her runners.

As of yesterday, the runners had raised more than $30,000, with every dollar going to the Foundation.

That's up from last year's nearly $20,000 raised, and way up from the year before, when $7,500 was brought in.

It's not so hard to hassle people for donations when you have a plan like this, said Laura Branson.

"You're doing something not so fun -- running in the cold. They say, 'That's crazy,' and they donate," Branson said, holding a Christmas-clad dog named Rex, who also took part in the run. "I'm not scared, but I hate the cold, so I just want it to be over."

"It's a great cause and hey, we're Canadian -- we should be doing this kind of thing," said two-time Speedo runner Bruce Lewis-Watts, an Ironman competitor.

With "Streakin' Speedsters" painted on their abs, Natalie Patterson and four other women led the way out of Hemingway's restaurant for the start of the 30-minute run.

"I'm excited and nervous," Patterson said. "We're bearing ourselves to the public."

On torontosantaspeedorun.com, where donations are still being accepted, the event was summed up with this: "It's a fun run with the only objective being to raise as much money as possible, while making complete and utter spectacles of ourselves."

Eel Christmas tree

KAKAMIGAHARA, Gifu -- An aquarium filled with exotic fish in Japan is using an electric eel to power lights on a Christmas tree.

Each time the electric eel at the Aqua Toto Gifu aquarium touches a copper wire in its tank, it sends power that lights up globes decking a Christmas tree.

Officials expect the "eel Christmas tree" to be a popular attraction for dating couples in the lead-up to Christmas Day, when the tree will be removed.

Electric eels are capable of generating electricity in their bodies. They have notoriously poor eyesight and use electric shocks to stun prey so they can catch and eat them

Magna Carta for sale

It is a single parchment sheet, filled with handwritten medieval Latin and dotted with a fragmentary royal seal resembling a chewed toffee. But it is one of the most important documents in the world — a 13th-century copy of the Magna Carta, the English legal document enshrining the rights of the individual against the state.

The hallowed parchment goes on view Friday at Sotheby's and will be auctioned on December 18. Estimated to sell for between $20 million and $30 million, it is the only privately owned copy of the Magna Carta, and its owner is the one-time presidential candidate Ross Perot. The other 16 copies in existence are in public collections in Britain and Australia. As a result, this is likely to be the only time the Magna Carta will ever be on the market.

"When looking at when our rights began, it's back to the Magna Carta," Sotheby's vice chairman, David Redden, said. "It makes the ideas of freedom and democracy much more tangible because you can point to the document where they started."

In June 1215, King John assented to the Magna Carta — Latin for "Great Charter"— in Runnymede, a meadow on the banks of the River Thames outside London, in order to pacify his rebellious barons. The charter's declaration that "No free man shall be taken or imprisoned ... except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land" set lasting precedents for the right to trial, trial by jury, and the presumption of innocence. King John died three months after he signed the Magna Carta but the charter was confirmed in revised versions in 1216, 1217, and 1225.

Copies of the Magna Carta were widely distributed throughout England but few have survived. Four of the original 1215 issue remain; two are kept in the British Library and one each in Salisbury and Lincoln cathedrals. The Magna Carta entered the British statute book in 1297, and it is this issue of the charter that Sotheby's is selling. "This is the most important version, the one that entered English law," Mr. Redden said.

Violin playing robot

Toyota unveiled on Thursday the latest two creations from its robot project, including one that can play the violin, and said it is targeting the early 2010s for the development of a viable human-assistance robot.

The two new machines are the Mobiro, a sort-of motorized wheel chair that can scoot people around their neighborhood and is able to cope with uneven surfaces, and the Violin-Playing Robot. Toyota has already developed a robot capable of playing the trumpet, so with a little extra effort the company could soon have an entire band.

Most expensive perfume

Can't decide on a present for someone who has everything? If money is no object a British company may have the answer - a $215,000 bottle of the world's most expensive perfume.

A limited edition of the Imperial Majesty version of the fragrance called No. 1, which comes in a 500 ml (17 fl oz) Baccarat crystal container adorned with a 5-carat diamond set in an 18-carat gold collar, are available for the holiday season.

Created by British luxury company Clive Christian, it has been named the world's most expensive perfume by Guinness World Records.

"The price included delivery in a Bentley," Madalyn Bielfeld, a spokesperson for Guinness World Records, said referring to the luxury car.

Only 10 of the Imperial Majesty bottles have been produced and must be ordered in advance, according to the company.

"We designed it with the concept that price didn't matter, just put in the very best that you can," said Clive Christian, the creator of the fragrance who will be presented with the Guinness Record when the perfume is displayed in New York this weekend.

For shoppers whose budgets don't stretch that far, a cheaper version of the scent, a mix of exotic ingredients including Tahitian vanilla and aged Indian sandalwood, is also available for $2,350 for a one-ounce bottle at Saks Fifth Avenue. The upscale department store will also sell a less concentrated spray for $865.

"For me, perfume is the absolute ultimate luxury," Christian said.

Drunken theft

MADISON, Wis. - A man accused of stealing several blow-up dolls from an adult novelty store says the burglary was a "drunken, stupid thing."

A criminal complaint filed in Dane County says Jose Sandoval, 26, of DeForest, smashed through the front door at Naughty Novelties in Burke last month and stole a talking love doll with a $270 price tag, along with other dolls and items.

Video surveillance tape gave investigators a look at the car outside the novelty shop, which they pulled over about ten days later.

The complaint says Sandoval denied committing the burglary, then began to cry and led detectives to an abandoned semi behind a motel where the stolen items were recovered.

Christmas letters lost for a year

Thousands of Christmas letters lay undelivered in a Royal Mail depot for a year, it has emerged. About 4,000 items were found in an area of the Aberdeen Mail Centre that has not been used since last Christmas, following a relocation of equipment.

A Royal Mail spokesperson said: "We would like to offer our sincere apologies to our customers." The mail will now be delivered. Customers with concerns about missing mail can call 08457 740 740.

The spokesperson said: "This appears to have been an unfortunate human error and no individual has been identified as being responsible. However, strong measures have been put in place to ensure this does not happen again. The safety and security of mail is of paramount importance to this business and Royal Mail takes every step to ensure that mail reaches customers correctly. Incidents such as this are a rare occurrence."

Golf marathon

GOLD COAST, Australia - After playing 650 holes of golf over 40 hours, Adam Engel didn't expect his marathon charity round to end with a bang: a chip-in birdie from about 45 yards.

Playing off a handicap of two, Engel teed off with a glow-in-the-dark golf ball just after nightfall Tuesday and finished at midday Thursday on the ninth hole at Hope Island, a course designed by five-time British Open champion Peter Thomson.

"I couldn't explain it, I was just speechless," Engel, 25, said of the chip-in. "It couldn't have finished any better."

Engel said he was inspired to take on the challenge to raise money for the Leukemia Foundation after his best friend, Shane Burn, was stricken with the disease. The money donated was sponsored per hole, so he was reluctant to quit early.

Engel took only three shower and meal breaks during the 40-hour period, loading up on caffeine to help fight fatigue. At the end, he had sore wrists and blisters on his hands despite wearing gloves.

Police chief banned

A top British policeman who was the country's chief officer in charge of traffic has been banned from driving after pleading guilty to speeding.

Meredydd Hughes, the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police and until recently the Association of Chief Police Officers' (ACPO) lead on road policing, was banned from driving for 42 days and fined £350 after he pleaded guilty to exceeding the speed limit while on a family holiday.

"Mr Hughes' hypocrisy is absolutely breathtaking," said Paul Smith, founder of safespeed.co.uk a group that campaigns for speed enforcement cameras to be scrapped.

"He has been promoting speed enforcement as a means of improving road safety, but clearly did not believe that his safety was compromised by speeding." Hughes appeared in a DVD titled How to avoid speeding fines and points legally in which he backed the use of cameras and firm action against speeding motorists.

In a clip made available by the DVD's producers, Hughes says: "Speed limits in a democracy are set for a purpose and we are expected to abide by the law. You can't pick and choose which laws you want to abide by."

1-800-OOPS

US homeowners who could face crippling mortgage payments will have a hard time getting help if they call a telephone number President George W Bush recommended - because he gave them the wrong number.

"I have a message for every homeowner worried about rising mortgage payments: The best you can do for your family is to call 1-800-995-HOPE," Bush said after a White House meeting with administration officials and lenders on a new plan to help.

Unfortunately he was a couple digits off, it is actually 1-888-995-HOPE (4673).

Moments after Bush completed his remarks, a White House aide told reporters the president misspoke and gave the correct number. Calls to the number Bush gave out contacted the Freedom Christian Academy — a Texas-based group that provides Christian education home schooling material.