A German has handed in a package containing part of a Pharaonic carving to Egypt's embassy in Berlin, with a note saying his stepfather had suffered a "curse of the Pharaohs" for stealing it, Egypt said Wednesday.

The note said the man felt obliged to return the carving to make amends for his late stepfather and enable his soul to rest in peace, Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities said.

The stepfather had stolen the piece while on a visit to Egypt in 2004 and on his return to Germany suffered paralysis, nausea, unexplained fevers and cancer before dying recently, the anonymous man said in the note.

The Egyptian embassy in Berlin had sent the fragment back to Egypt by diplomatic pouch and it had been handed over to the Supreme Council for Antiquities, where a committee of experts was trying to ascertain its authenticity, the statement said.

The belief in a curse that strikes down anyone who disturbs the tombs or mummies of ancient Egypt's Pharaohs has been around since the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 and the subsequent death of the excavation's financier Lord Carnarvon.
(Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.)

Mattel sues porn website over use of Barbie name

Mattel Inc. sued a small company on Tuesday for using the toymaker's famed "Barbie" trademark as part of the name for a pornographic Web site it owned.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, said the Web site www.chinabarbie.com had used the Barbie trademark to capture the positive image Mattel had created through its "Barbie" products.

The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, said the company, Global China Networks LLC, was based in Florida with a postal address in New York and had sold memberships to the site to customers around the world.

Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler in 1959 created the Barbie doll after noticing her daughter preferred playing with paper cut-outs of adult female fashion dolls, the lawsuit said.

American girls aged between 3 and 11 own an average of eight Barbie dolls each, the lawsuit said.(Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. )

Machine breaks man in Japanese game

A Japanese game maker said Wednesday it would withdraw arm-wrestling machines from arcades after three players -- two of them foreigners -- broke their arms.

Players would choose a strength level from 10 characters, ranging from a maid to a professional wrestler, and face off with an artificial arm on the other side of the table.

A 25-year-old South Korean man broke his right arm while playing the game in Osaka, while a 19-year-old Frenchman and 24-year-old Japanese man also suffered arm fractures, the company said.

Atlus, a Tokyo-based arcade game maker, said it will remove the 155 machines of the game -- called "Udedamashii," which means Arms Spirits -- which were put into service just a month ago.

"We had done careful simulations on the possibility of injuries before putting it on sale, but unexpected accidents can happen with game machines when people are too excited or fail to follow instructions," a company spokeswoman said.

"But I'm afraid some foreign nationals couldn't understand the instructions well as it was written only in Japanese," she said.

By paying 100 yen, or just under one dollar, the player would have two battles of strength.(Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.)