Manchester United have signed a gifted nine-year-old after his grandfather sent the Premier League champions a DVD showcasing the boy's talents which has become a YouTube sensation.
Rhain Davis, who was born in England but has lived in Australia since the age of four, was hailed by the press on Thursday as the next Wayne Rooney after the United striker.
The boy's dribbling and goalscoring prowess for an Under-10 side in Brisbane, Australia, feature in a four-minute YouTube clip, already viewed more than 800,000 times.
United confirmed the signing but played down the hype around Davis, who has moved back to Cheshire with his father, near the club's training ground.
"He's a member of our academy and we don't comment on individual members," a United spokesman told Reuters.
He added that the club sign about 40 players of Davis's age every year and, as is standard, will decide annually whether to renew his contract or release him.
What was so unusual in Davis's case was that his skills were brought to the attention of United's youth scouts by the DVD submission, which could inspire other hopefuls, the spokesman said.
"We're bracing ourselves for a whole series of DVDs," he added.
Davis has been thrilled at the chance to rub shoulders with some of his idols.
Chinese go online to torture, kill corrupt officials
An online game in which players can torture and kill corrupt officials that a Chinese local government set up to teach people about the perils of graft is proving a roaring success, state media said Thursday.
"Incorruptible Fighter", developed by the government of east China's Zhejiang province, was launched just over a week ago and is already so popular that it is being redesigned to accommodate more players, the China Daily said.
"I feel a great sense of achievement when I punish lots of evil officials," one gamer surnamed Sun was quoted as saying.
The game, which lets players get ahead by killing officials by means of "weapons, magic or torture," has been downloaded more than 100,000 times, the Southern Metropolitan Daily said.
The different game scenarios are based on well-known incidents taken from Chinese history, but the parallels in modern China of people struggling against seemingly insurmountable corruption are clear.
In order to advance to a new level, the player must enter into an "Anti-Corruption College" to be lectured in more detail about ancient cases, the Southeast Business newspaper said.
Along the way Internet vigilantes are rewarded for the capture, torture and killing of not just corrupt officials, but also their sons and daughters.
Once the player has punished enough corrupt officials, graduating through successive layers of vice, he or she enters into a graft-free paradise.
"We want game players to have fun but also to learn about fighting corruption, folklore and history," said Qiu Yi, a local official in Ningbo, one of Zhejiang's most prosperous cities.
Some experts have questioned, however, if the game is targetted at the right people.
"Government officials should be the ones getting anti-corruption education, not local youngsters," Peking University professor Wang Xiongjun told the China Daily.
Corruption is a source of immense and growing anger among ordinary Chinese.
President Hu Jintao has identified corruption within the Communist Party as one the greatest threats to its legitimacy as rulers of the country, and the government regularly authorises the real-life killing of people for graft.
Earrings for marauding Indian monkeys Thu Aug 2, 3:25 AM ET
Marauding monkeys in the summer capital of the British raj in India may sport earrings soon under a population control drive, wildlife officials said Thursday.
The monkey population in Shimla, capital of the mountain state of Himachal Pradesh state, has ballooned and wildlife officials say they harasss tourists and need to be brought under control.
But earlier efforts using collars and dyes to mark monkeys who have already been sterilised so they are not picked up twice have failed.
Earrings are now plan B, a state wildlife officer said.
"We are considering putting on earrings on sterilised monkeys. So far 1,600 monkeys have been sterilised in Shimla," said Nagesh Guleria, a Shimla District forest officer.
He said the simian population was in the thousands in the hill city where homes are stacked tightly along steep hills.
The monkeys, which are a revered animal in the majority Hindu nation, are sterilised with the latest technique which takes only few minutes to complete, say veterinarians.
Brazil players had all night drinking sessions at the 2006 World Cup finals and Ronaldo was vastly overweight, Brazilian federation (CBF) president Ricardo Teixeira was quoted as saying by a local newspaper.
The Estado de Sao Paulo daily reported extracts from a conversation in Zurich between Teixeira and a representative of the company which is promoting Brazil's bid to host the 2014 World Cup finals for which they are the sole candidates.
Brazil were favourites to win the 2006 edition but lost 1-0 to France in the quarter-finals.
Teixeira criticised AC Milan striker Ronaldo, who weighed 98kg at the start of the competition.
"How can an athlete weigh 98kg during a major finals," Texeira said. "I am not a sportsman and I don't weigh as much as that.
"Certain (unnamed) players returned to their hotel drunk between 4:00am and 6:00am. How could no one have seen that."
The head of the Brazilian delegation in Germany last year, Marco Paulo del Nero, replied, in comments published by O Estado de Sao Paulo, that he had not seen such scenes.
They say you are what you eat, and growing numbers of vegans are shunning sex with meat-eaters because they see them as "a graveyard for animals", a New Zealand researcher says.
These vegans not only refuse to eat meat or animal products but refuse to have sexual contact with meat-eaters because their bodies are made up of dead animals, the researcher was reported saying in The Press newspaper on Tuesday.
Annie Potts, co-director of the New Zealand Centre of Human and Animal Studies at New Zealand's Canterbury University, said she coined the term vegansexuals during her research.
She discovered the vegansexuals while interviewing 157 vegetarians and ethical consumers for a study.
"It's a whole new thing -- I have not come across it before," said Potts.
One vegan said while she found non-vegans attractive, but would not want to be physically close to them.
Taiwanese collector serves up rock hard banquet by Rachel Lim
You may fancy a sumptuous banquet of such delicacies as shark's fin soup, foie gras or Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.
But try biting into these delectable platters prepared by Taiwan's Hsu Chun-I and you could chip a tooth, as they are made of cold, hard stones.
"A Banquet In Stone," Hsu's visual feast of 52 rare and expensive dishes assembled from stones and minerals, is on show at the National Museum of Singapore until August 12. It is the collection's first showing outside Taiwan.
On the menu, valued at more than 650,000 US dollars (475,000 euros), are stone exhibits that bear an uncanny resemblance to a mixture of Eastern and Western dishes, from Yangzhou fried rice and a variety of dim sum to caviar.
The stones used to create the banquet are neither cut, tampered with nor dyed, said 60-year-old Hsu, a retired engineer. He only selects stones that bear an extremely close resemblance to the dishes.
"When you carve or dye the stones, you can always create a replica of the dish. But when you use rare stones, they are one-of-a-kind. The immense value of the stones comes from this," Hsu told AFP.
Stone collecting is an age-old Chinese hobby and appreciation of stones can be found in Chinese literature over the centuries.
Hsu began collecting 21 years ago. About a decade later, he started to concentrate on stones that resemble food after he saw how two exhibits captivated visitors at The National Palace Museum in Taipei. One was shaped like a baby Chinese cabbage. The other resembled a piece of meat.
"I realised I could put stones together to resemble something like food that is very close to people's lives. That is my goal," said Hsu, who has amassed a collection of 276 dishes made from rare stones and valued at more than 1.31 million US dollars.
He said he does not accept exhibition fees and relies on his retirement pension and other savings for income.
"The reason why I am exhibiting my collection is to share my creations with the whole world and for everyone to have a great visual feast. That's my biggest hope," Hsu said.
His most expensive exhibit is "Pig's Trotters and Eggs Stewed in Dark Soya Sauce," worth almost 85,000 US dollars.
Stones from China, including the Gobi Desert and Inner Mongolia, make up 70 percent of his collection. The rest come from elsewhere in Asia and other parts of the world.
Each laborious creation is based on press clippings and photographs, Hsu said.
A plate of shimuyu fish, made of five separate agate stones from the Gobi Desert, took him three years to assemble. Hsu painstakingly searched for five stones which shared the same texture and proportion, and which resembled five cut pieces of fish, from head to tail.
He also pays attention to the presentation of each dish, using minute translucent crystals to form the "soup base," and garnishing dishes with plastic replicas of vegetables.
"I use my imagination to come up with an idea, then I'll go to a few stone merchants to look for the stone that I need. But to get the stones that I want really quickly, I have to grow a friendship and rapport with them," said Hsu.
The piece that has amazed many visitors is a slab of Jinxiang stone, from Yunnan in southwestern China, measuring 4.5 by 11 centimetres (1.8 by 4.4 inches). It resembles a large block of chocolate and even gives off a milky chocolate scent.
"Since it was exhibited more than a year ago, the scent still remains and never evaporates, unlike fakes that are soaked in chocolate essence and the smell wears off over time," said Hsu, who found the stone "by chance" and says its authenticity has been verified.
To cater his "banquet" to the Singaporean palate, Hsu took six months to make a new menu offering Bak Kut Teh, a local favourite of pork ribs cooked in a broth of herbs and spices.
He plans to add more Western dishes to the collection and bring his "banquet in stone" to Europe and the United States.
Ironically, Hsu said he is no food lover, though he said he has probably tasted 99 percent of the dishes in his collection.
The centrepiece of his exhibition is a table full of exquisite and rare dishes including "Bear's Paw" and "Dragon and Phoenix Steamboat" from an imperial banquet served during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).
"I have tried most of the dishes in my collection, except for the bear's paw because bear is an endangered animal now," said the cheerful Hsu, laughing.
The Japanese love technology so much that now even sex toys are on the cutting edge.
The "gPod," a phallic-shaped vibrator, is designed to respond automatically to sounds picked up by an accompanying handset, which can plug into anything from a telephone to a music player to a television.
The 25,000-yen (200-dollar) gPod was one of a number of toys that went on public view Friday at Japan's first-ever sex toy expo in suburban Tokyo.
"You can use it in many ways, for example hooking it up to your mobile phone," said Ichiro Kameda, the machine's inventor.
"The dildo vibrates through the same waves as a voice. So one of the ideas is that you can use it here in Tokyo when your boyfriend in New York is talking to you on the phone."
Kameda said he had spent four years trying to design a product when he hit upon the concept. He declined to say how the idea came to him.
New York to sell foreign coins found in parking meters
New York officials are to sell off more than 220 kilos (500 pounds) of foreign coins found in the city's parking meters, the most common of them being Greek drachmas, according to a report on Monday.
"We have pretty much every denomination from every continent," Anthony Alfano, deputy chief of meter collections, told the New York Daily News. He said that drachma coins, replaced by the euro in 2002, were the most common.
Buyers in the past have paid up to 8.80 dollars a kilo for the coins, with the proviso that they take the lot.
Smarter parking meters, however, are making it harder for cheats. Nearly three times as many non-US coins were found in the city's parking meters as recently as 2001.
Sixty-year-old collector Jim Corliss, who bought the 330-kilo lot last year, was again bidding for the more than eight sacks of coins.
"Every once in a while I find something of value," he told the Daily News. He found a 1835 British shilling in one of his previous purchases. "It sounds exciting, but it was worth five dollars," he said.
Sicilian mother cuts off 61-yr-old son's allowance
A Sicilian mother took away her 61-year-old son's house keys, cut off his allowance and hauled him to the police station because he stayed out late.
Tired of her son's misbehaviour, the pensioner in the central Sicilian city of Caltagirone turned to the police to "convince this blockhead" to behave properly, La Sicilia, one of Sicily's leading newspapers, reported on Thursday.
The son responded by saying his mother did not give him a big enough weekly allowance and did not know how to cook.
"My son does not respect me, he doesn't tell me where he's going in the evenings and returns home late," the woman was quoted as saying. "He is never happy with the food I make and always complains. This can't go on."
Police helped the squabbling duo make up and the two returned home together, with the son's house keys and daily allowance restored.
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