A judge known for giving unusual sentences has ordered three men who pleaded guilty to soliciting sex to take turns dressing in a bright yellow chicken costume.

Painesville Municipal Judge Michael Cicconetti agreed to suspend a 30-day jail sentence if they wear the costume between 4 and 7 p.m. Friday outside the court while carrying a sign that reads "No Chicken Ranch in Painesville."

The sign and costume refer to the "World Famous Chicken Ranch," a prostitution house in Nevada where sex-for-money is legal.

Daniel Chapdelaine, 40, of Perry Township; Martin Soto, 44, of Ashtabula; and Fabian Rodriguez-Ramirez, 29, of Painesville, solicited sex from an undercover Painesville police officer earlier this summer.

Cicconetti has used barnyard animals to dispense justice in the past.

He ordered a man who called a policeman a pig to stand next to a live pig in a pen and hold a sign that read "This Is Not a Police Officer." A couple who stole a baby Jesus statue from a manger were sentenced to dress as Mary and Joseph and walk with a donkey.

Information from: The Plain Dealer, - http://www.cleveland.com

McDonald's sued in China for not using Chinese
Fri Jul 27

A Chinese lawyer has sued McDonald's in China for using mostly English, not Chinese, on its receipts, violating his right to information, media reported on Friday.

The lawyer, identified only as Shan, decided to take legal action against the world's largest restaurant chain after he ate at two McDonald's restaurants in Beijing in May and June.

"McDonald's offers food service in China, but it does not use Chinese, which violates the consumers' right to know," the Beijing Youth Daily quoted Shan as saying.

Shan has asked McDonald's to apologise in newspapers and give him symbolic compensation of 1 yuan (6 pence), the newspaper said. The case began on Thursday.

The newspaper quoted McDonald's as saying it was not fair to accuse the company of not using Chinese as its advertisements and menus were all in Chinese and its staff all spoke Chinese.

The receipts had changed into Chinese since July, it said. The company was not immediately available for comment.

Cases of east-meets-west culture clashes have been widely reported in China since the country embraced economic reforms in the late 1970s.

Earlier this month, a controversial Starbucks coffee shop in the Forbidden City, the former imperial palace at the heart of Beijing, closed its doors after facing years of opposition.(Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.)

Controversy? Nepal's "goddess" prefers instant noodles By Gopal Sharma
Fri Jul 27

As goddesses go, this 10-year-old Nepali girl has modest ambitions.

"I want to become a photographer," said the shy Sajani Shakya as she jumped from the couch and grabbed an envelope with photographs of her recent visit to the United States.

Sajani hit world headlines this month as some religious authorities threatened to strip her of her "living goddess" title after she visited the United States to promote a British-made film about her life.

Nepali priests had enthroned Sajani as the Kumari or "living goddess" of Bhaktapur eight years ago -- a position worshipped by thousands of Hindus and Buddhists alike in a deeply religious nation.

But some religious leaders were unhappy over the girl's U.S. trip, saying she had defied time-honoured traditions. Authorities say they are yet to take a final decision on whether to strip the girl of her divinity.

In the meantime, Sajani enjoys the more everyday pleasures of many kids -- toys, dolls, and instant noodles for food.

Unaware of the controversy over her tour, the bright-eyed Sajani, wearing a white and blue dress, played with a toy camera on a sofa in her first-floor bedroom which can be reached only through a doorway so low one has to stoop to enter.

"This is the White House," she said showing a picture taken by her in the U.S. capital.

In Washington, Sajani visited the Capitol, met with Nepalis living in the United States, toured a school and met American children.

British film makers say the trip gave the girl an opportunity to share her culture with others.

Under the living goddess tradition followed for centuries in the three ancient cities in the Kathmandu valley, young girls are selected by priests to serve as incarnations of Kali, the Hindu goddess of power.

They remain in their "divine" role until menstruation when they must retire and rejoin the family. A new girl is then chosen.

In Bhaktapur, Sajani lives a normal life with her parents in the house a few paces from the historic Durbar Square among narrow streets paved with red bricks.

"I have been fortunate to have her selected as the Kumari," her 43-year-old father Nuchhe Ratna Shakya said, sitting on a bench in the inner courtyard of a two-storey brick-and-wood house in the old quarter of Bhaktapur, near Kathmandu.

"It has brought good fortune and luck to the family. We feel great about her," said Shakya, who says he managed to get a job in a biscuit factory after his daughter was selected.

There are other living goddesses in Nepal.

The main Kumari lives in an ancient temple in Kathmandu and sticks to tighter religious schedules than her counterparts in Bhaktapur and the neighbouring town of Patan, which also has its own virgin goddess.

"She lives like a normal child with us except for two weeks during Dasain," said Sajani's mother Rukumani, referring to the biggest Hindu festival which is normally celebrated in October.

"She likes to eat instant noodles and biscuits and loves playing with toys and dolls."

She must not eat chicken or eggs but goat meat is allowed.

At home she plays badminton with her siblings in the courtyard in front of her house.


During the festival, Sajani, her eyelids painted black, wears a red costume and sits on a painted wooden throne that rests on the back of the images of two lions.

Devotees bow their heads towards her feet and she blesses them from the throne, with the heads of Hindu deities and a serpent god carved in wood looming overhead.

Some human rights activists have challenged the practice of nominating goddesses in Nepal, telling the nation's Supreme Court it was an abuse of the girls' human rights.

A government appointed panel of cultural experts is looking into the charges.

But Rukumani said she felt "great" to see Sajani in her divine role.

Teachers at the Mount Valley Secondary School where Sajani is a grade four student said the "goddess" was an average student.

"She never picks any quarrel with other children. She is shy but is not particularly brilliant," science teacher Ratna Mallik said.(Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.)

Qatar sheikh delays plane over seating

A Qatar sheikh held up a British Airways flight at Milan's Linate airport for nearly three hours after discovering three of his female relatives had been seated next to men they did not know.

When none of the other business class passengers agreed to swap seats, the sheikh, a member of Qatar's ruling family, went to the pilot, who had already started the engine, to complain, an airport official said.

But the pilot ordered him and his travelling companions, the three women, two men, a cook and a servant, off the plane.

The London-bound flight took off nearly three hours behind schedule on Thursday evening and around 50 of the 115 passengers missed connecting flights.

Traditions in the conservative Gulf Arab region bar women from mixing with unrelated men. (Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. )

Bed and breakfast at Ikea by Gwladys Fouche

The hotel's bridal suit is free, but guests be warned! Oversleep, and you're likely to find yourself surrounded by several hundred shoppers checking out the bed linen and prodding the mattress.

Welcome to "Hostel Ikea" -- a startling if very temporary foray by the Swedish furniture giant into the hospitality sector.

All this week, the Ikea warehouse in the Norwegian capital Oslo is offering sleepovers in its showrooms, free of charge.

Choices include a bridal suite, complete with hanging chandelier and a round bed, and a luxury suite that includes breakfast in bed.

Other guests can opt for the "dormitory" which, while lacking the relative privacy and opulence of suites, has the advantage of allowing guests to choose their mattresses from the wide selection carried by the warehouse.

With their wedding just a few days away and their savings exhausted, Alexander Augst, 28, and his fiance Angelica Brockme, 23, managed to score a night in the bridal suite on Tuesday.

"We're getting married on Saturday and spent all our money on the wedding. We have nothing left for a hotel and a honeymoon, so we thought it would be fun to sleep at Ikea instead," Brockme said.

Fun maybe, but not overly romantic. Guests are advised to bring eye masks and earplugs as the overhead lights remain on, though dimmed, throughout the night, and Ikea staff start moving palettes laden with goods between the beds from 4:00am.

"The lights, the noise ... I think this is a once-only experience," was Augst's bleary-eyed judgement the next day.

One Norwegian family saw the event as an original way to round off the summer break. "Our three kids spotted the offer on the internet. We were going to spend our holidays around Oslo and thought staying at Ikea would be a fun thing to do as a family," said mother-of-three Vanya Olsen, 35, in a bedroom with fake en-suite bathroom.

"It's cool that we're sleeping in a shop," said 12-year-old Emmely as her little sister Emilie, 9, ran around excitedly around the showroom.

"It's cheap, it's different and we can shop before going home. I quite like that table in our room. Maybe I am going to buy it tomorrow," added their mother.

At 10:00pm, an hour before closing time, guests were welcomed by a bell-boy in red uniform as two chambermaids in black dresses and white aprons readied the mattresses. Bedsheets, bathrobes and slippers were also provided.

A free dinner of prawn sandwiches was served at 11:00pm before an employee read a bedtime story, which told the tale of a little girl who gets locked up in .... Ikea.

After a comfortable if brief night's sleep, the early wake-up time allowed guests, clad in bathrobes and slippers, to tour the inner workings of the warehouse as staff busied themselves restocking shelves.

That was followed by a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and cold cuts in the store's kitchen department, before the store opened again to the public.

Of the 1,200 people applied for the chance to stay at the Ikea Hostel, only 150 were selected.

Olsen and her family certainly appeared to have enjoyed their stay. "It was better than a hotel. I would do it again," said the paramedic.

"Or maybe we could do it if the event happens at the Ikea where we usually shop in Sweden. Now that would be really surreal."(Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse.)

Prankster dentist wins in court By DAVID AMMONS, Associated Press Writer

An oral surgeon who temporarily implanted fake boar tusks in his assistant's mouth as a practical joke and got sued for it has ended up with the last laugh.

Dr. Robert Woo of Auburn had put the phony tusks in while the woman was under anesthesia for a different procedure. He took them out before she awoke, but first he shot photos that eventually made it around the office.

The employee, Tina Alberts, felt so humiliated when she saw the pictures that she quit and sued her boss.

Woo's insurance company, Fireman's Fund, refused to cover the claim, saying the practical joke was intentional and not a normal business activity his insurance policy covered, so Woo settled out of court. He agreed to pay Alberts $250,000, then sued his insurers.

A King County Superior Court jury sided with Woo, ordering Fireman's Fund to pay him $750,000, plus the out-of-court settlement. The insurance company won the next round, with the state Court of Appeals saying the prank had nothing to do with Woo's practice of dentistry. On Thursday, the state Supreme Court restored Woo's award.

In a sprightly 5-4 decision, Supreme Court Justice Mary Fairhurst wrote that Woo's practical joke was an integral, if odd, part of the assistant's dental surgery and "conceivably" should trigger the professional liability coverage of his policy.

Dissenting Justice James Johnson said the prank wasn't a dental procedure at all and only "rewards Dr. Woo's obnoxious behavior and allows him to profit handsomely."

The backstory, the court wrote, is that Alberts' family raises potbellied pigs and that she frequently talked about them at the office where she worked for five years.

Woo said his jests about the pigs were part of "a friendly working environment" that he tried to foster.

The oral surgery on Alberts was intended to replace two of her teeth with implants, which Woo did. First, though, he installed temporary bridges that he had shaped to look like boar tusks, and while Alberts was still under anesthesia, he took photos, some with her eyes propped open. Before she woke up, he removed the "tusks" and put in the proper replacement teeth.

Woo says he didn't personally show her the pictures but staffers gave her copies at a birthday party.

Woo's lawyer, Richard Kilpatrick, described the surgeon as a kindhearted, fun-loving man who was chagrined that an office prank turned out so badly. He was delighted with the high court's decision, Kilpatrick said.

Attorneys for the insurance company did not immediately return calls for comment about the ruling.(Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. )

Accused grave robbers dodge sex charges By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jul 26

Three men who dug up a young woman's corpse to have sex with it after seeing her obituary photo cannot be charged with attempted sexual assault because Wisconsin has no law against necrophilia, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

A judge was correct to dismiss the charges against twin brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke, all 21, because lawmakers never intended to criminalize sex with a corpse, the District 4 Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 ruling.

The three men went to a cemetery in Cassville in southwestern Wisconsin on Sept. 2 to remove the body of Laura Tennessen, 20, who had been killed the week before in a motorcycle crash.

The men used shovels to reach her grave. They abandoned their plan and were eventually arrested after a vehicle drove into the cemetery and reported suspicious behavior, authorities said.

They said the men had seen an obituary of Tennessen with her photo and wanted to dig up her body to have sexual intercourse. Such an act is known as necrophilia.

The men were charged with attempted third-degree sexual assault and misdemeanor attempted theft charges. But Grant County Circuit Judge George Curry dismissed the sexual assault charges in September, saying no Wisconsin law addressed necrophilia. Prosecutors appealed his ruling.

At issue is a provision in the sexual assault law saying criminal penalties apply "whether a victim is dead or alive at the time of the sexual contact or sexual intercourse."

The appeals court said the law was ambiguous but the most reasonable interpretation was that it does not ban necrophilia. Instead, the court said, the law was meant to make sure prosecutors could bring sexual assault charges in rape-murder cases in which the victim ends up dead.

Outrage over the case might soon change the law.

Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, introduced legislation Wednesday that would make having sex with a corpse a felony with punishment of up to 6 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The bill would levy the same penalties against anyone who intentionally disturbs a burial site or a buried human corpse.(Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Toronto man offers "My Left Nut" as cancer potion By Naomi Kim
Thu Jul 26

On the premise that laughter is the best medicine for testicular cancer, a Toronto actor has developed a one-man show, "My Left Nut", that he hopes to tour across Canada later this year.

Daniel Schneiderman, 29, originally chronicled his experience with the disease from diagnosis, to surgery (his left testicle was removed), to treatment in candid and humorous e-mails sent to friends and family in late 2005. Urged by the several friends and his mother, he has now turned the material into a show.

"The e-mails, for me, were a great outlet to just think about it and also to deal with it," Schneiderman said. "And the way that I dealt with it is finding humour in the situation. And, you know, it's about balls, so there was a lot of material to find humour in."

Schneiderman said early detection and diagnosis were key to his treatment. Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in males aged 15 to 34.

"My Left Nut" is being performed as part of next week's Help Kick Cancer in the Balls! fund-raiser in Toronto. The event also features stand-up comedians and a giant testicle-shaped pinata.

Schneiderman hopes to take the show on tour, targeting high schools. Teenagers, he noted, are often a challenging audience because of embarrassment and fear of body-related issues.(Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.)

Virgin secret to good festival weather Thu Jul 26

Organizers think they've found the secret to good weather for this weekend's Quick Chek New Jersey Festival of Ballooning — a virgin.

According to an imported superstition, good weather can be assured through a ceremony involving a virgin, some knives and fresh, whole onions and peppers.

And, no, Victoria Brumfield won't be sacrificed.

Festival organizer Howard Freeman said a colleague heard about it in Singapore several years ago. For the past two years, it has worked in Readington. Partly because of the superstition, Freeman no longer buys weather insurance for the event, which is expected to draw 175,000 people.

Brumfield, 28, has worked with Freeman in the past and is a devout Mormon, proud of her adherence to the church's rules, including not drinking, smoking, gambling or cursing — and no sex before marriage.

She became the festival's official virgin last year after her younger sister, who had that role in 2005, moved to California.

It's a mixture of "fun and embarrassment," she told the Star-Ledger of Newark.

Here's how she does it: She drives a golf cart to the four corners of the festival site, picks up some grass, mumbles some random words, then penetrates the produce with a knife before jamming it and the knives into the ground. The ritual was scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

The pressure is on this weekend. The National Weather Service says there's a chance of rain each of the three days of the festival, which was scheduled to start Friday.(Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. )

Taxi commissioners give the Devil his due
By Jesse McKinley

Thursday, July 26, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO: It was a good day for the Devil here as the Taxicab Commission voted to keep the Dark Lord's favorite number - 666 - affixed to a cab that, according to its driver, is cursed.

The vote, which came Tuesday after an amused period of public comment and annoyed looks from the commissioners, extended the satanic reign of Taxi No. 666, which is driven by one Michael Byrne (pronounced burn).

Byrne, who did not appear at the hearing and was not reachable for comment, had lobbied to have his medallion number changed and had found an ally in Jordanna Thigpen, deputy director of the Taxicab Commission.

In a memorandum distributed last week, Thigpen wrote that Byrne believed the number to be responsible for a series of calamities he had endured in a streak of bad luck that had led him to have his taxi blessed at a local church, to no apparent avail.

"This medallion holder would prefer not to speak about the specific problems," Thigpen wrote, "but they are of great severity."

Adding to the cab's sinister mystique was the fact that Taxi No. 666 caught fire on a Good Friday some years ago in a blaze that, as local legend has it, wrecked the car but left the offending medallion untouched.

So it was that the commission had been asked to deep-six the number of the beast in the biblical Book of Revelation in favor of the less offensive 1307, a move that the commission president, Paul Gillespie, who is a cab driver himself, thought was only kind.

"This is a very simple thing we can do to make one person's life a little easier," Gillespie said, adding that he himself had driven Taxi No. 666 in the past. "People do bring a lot of bad energy in the cab, and if people want to talk about the number, then the driver has to talk about it."

But others saw the debate as a waste of time and money, two things the Great Deceiver would no doubt have approved.

"If we don't have 666, what's next?" said Tom Stanghellini, 59, a longtime cabby. "What about Medallion 13? Or 1313?"

Thigpen said she did not want to set a precedent but said the number in question had become increasingly difficult for her office to assign.

In the end, the vote was 5-1 against changing the number. (The commission's seventh member was absent.) But Gillespie, who sighed deeply before casting the only dissenting vote, said he doubted this would be the last time the commission would have to take up the issue.

"This guy," he said, "still has this problem."