World Briefs

Whether you think it was wonderful or wacky, the flamboyant hat worn by Princess Beatrice at the British royal wedding last month could now be yours after she put it up for sale on eBay.

The princess, the elder daughter of Prince Andrew and a granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II, has put the Philip Treacy creation on the online auction site with a starting price of €5,700.

Proceeds of the sale will be split between two charities: the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, and British charity Children in Crisis. The 22-year-old princess is trying to cash in on the notoriety of her hat, which generated almost as much publicity as newlyweds Prince William and Catherine, although much of it highly critical.

Observers compared the creation to a toilet seat and a giant pretzel, and it has inspired its own Facebook page, “Princess Beatrice’s ridiculous royal wedding hat”, which has a following of 137,000 people. (AFP)

The four-week-old owls, looked after by falconer Martin Whitely, greet guests checking in and out, and entertain children staying at the country estate in the Dartmoor National Park. They have replaced Guinevere, a white-faced Scops owl which used to live at the hotel. (PA)

Cancer treatment

A man who was told he could not have treatment for his brain tumour has had the decision overturned – on the same day he received an MBE. Clive Stone, 63, from Witney, Oxfordshire in the UK, arrived home from collecting his award to find a message waiting for him from the Sheffield hospital where he will be treated. He rang back the next day to learn his funding had come through.

The treatment involves using stereotactic radiotherapy to try to shrink his tumour. Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust initially rejected his plea for treatment, saying there was a lack of evidence for the procedure’s effectiveness.

Mr Stone was one of those who helped the Government establish its £200 million cancer drugs fund. (PA)

Fishy fiddle

Officials at an Idaho lake thought there was something fishy when an angler turned in 443 rainbow trout heads under a bounty programme and collected $15 on each.

The programme aims to help preserve the struggling kokanee trout population in Lake Pend Oreille. But investigators examined the heads and determined that the rainbow trout belonged to a coastal variety, not the type found in the lake.

Christopher Pluntz, 44, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour theft charge as part of a plea deal with prosecutors. He was ordered to pay more than $6,800 for defrauding the bounty programme. (PA)

Dung rush

Czech gardeners are flocking to Prague Zoo after it started selling what look like ice cream containers but are actually full of elephant dung. The brains behind the project is zoo director Miroslav Bobek, whose surname literally means dung. Zoo officials estimate they sell around 200 of the one-kilo containers of dung each weekend, at 70 koruna (£2.50) each. But sales have been so brisk they decided to sell on weekdays as well. (PA)

Climate rap

Australian climate scientists have made an irreverent, expletive-laden rap defending their work against those who deny climate change is real and poking fun at politicians and sceptics.

Wearing white lab coats and sunglasses, scientists from universities and research units shelved their painstaking environmental work to make the video, hitting back at climate change deniers who are without a background in science.

“Yo! We’re climate scientists. And there’s no denying this: climate change is REEEEALL,” raps Dr Jason Evans from the Climate Change Research Centre at Sydney’s University of New South Wales.

The two-minute video, shown on the ABC’s edgy current affairs program “Hungry Beast”, has attracted more than 56,000 hits on YouTube since it was broadcast last Wednesday. YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiYZxOlCN10 (AFP)

Eurovision defeat

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko yesterday accused Western powers of rejecting the country’s entry to the Eurovision Song Contest – titled “I love Belarus” – for political reasons.

Belarus’s entry to the famously cheesy song contest was voted out by viewers of the second semi-final on Thursday, in which 19 contestants competed for 10 places in today’s final in Duesseldorf, Germany.

Mr Lukashenko accused unnamed forces of “suffocating” the country’s entry, apparently linking its failure to Europe’s cold-shouldering of Belarus after his government’s harsh crackdown on the opposition following disputed presidential polls.

The EU slapped travel bans on Belarussian officials after Mr Lukashenko won a fourth term in office in December polls that were questioned by Western observers. (AFP)