World Briefs

Japan's All Nippon Airways, which has asked passengers to visit the toilet before boarding to help the environment, yesterday said it will fit its jets with a women-only lavatory.

ANA will introduce one female-only toilet per aircraft on international flights next month after a survey of women fliers identified it as the second most attractive service they wished for after being offered desserts.

The rest of the toilets on board will be for men and women as usual.

"We received many comments that having a women-only lavatory would be a factor in differentiating our airline from others," said an ANA spokesman.

"Many women said that they feel uncomfortable taking their time in the lavatory knowing that a male is waiting just behind them in line," he said. (AFP)

Watch this movie and win €8,000

A Bollywood film-maker has issued a lucrative challenge to horror movie fans: €8,000 reward for anyone who can watch his latest supernatural thriller, alone, in a cinema until the closing credits.

Ram Gopal Varma's Phoonk 2, a sequel to his 2008 film of the same name, is about an evil spirit that traumatises a family. "Anyone who says the movie cannot scare him is going to be put in a theatre by himself," Mr Varma told reporters in Mumbai at an event to promote the movie.

Mr Varma said the film fan who steps up to the challenge will be wired up to a heart monitoring machine as well as a camera that ensures they keep their eyes open during the whole movie.

Readings from the machines will be shown live on a screen outside the cinema, Mr Varma said, and if the contestant succeeds, they will win 500,000 rupees (approximately €8,000). (Reuters)

Naked truth

An Austrian art gallery is encouraging visitors to confront their sexual inhibitions by making them walk through a swingers club to reach one of Gustav Klimt's masterpieces.

The Secession in Vienna has temporarily incorporated a sex club named Element6 as part of a project by Swiss artist Christoph Buechel.

The swingers are not there during the day, but their mattresses, erotic pictures, bar and whirlpool are. (PA)

Crunch time

A man bulldozed his £230,000 home to keep a bank from foreclosing on it. Terry Hoskins said he has struggled with the RiverHills Bank over his home in Moscow, Ohio, for years.

He said he owed £100,000 on the house and after spending a lot of money on lawyers finally had enough. (PA)

The mummy returns

The US has agreed to return a 3,000-year-old wooden sarcophagus that was illegally taken from Egypt 40 years ago.

The brightly painted sarcophagus dated back to the 21st Dynasty (1070-945BC) and belonged to a private individual called Imesy.

Customs officials at Miami airport seized the coffin in 2008 when the importer could not present proper documents for it. (PA)

Poor 97-year-old wins big in lottery

A poverty-stricken 97-year-old man in Vietnam won up to $400,000 in a lottery, a report said yesterday, sparking a frenzy among relatives eager to get a piece of his new-found wealth.

A neighbour in southern Ho Chi Minh City and local officials had to step in to stop the elderly man from giving away the windfall to people who had swarmed to his home, Thanh Nien newspaper said.

What was left of the money has gone into a bank account, the newspaper reported.

Nguyen Van Het bagged the prize after spending 100,000 dong (just over $5) on lottery tickets from "lucky money" he received ahead of the Lunar New Year, Thanh Nien said.

Small packets of "lucky money" are a traditional Tet gift. (AFP)

Speeding deterrent

A retired police officer told how a bird box which resembles a speed camera has helped to stop traffic speeding through his village.

Bill Angus, 64, attached the yellow box to a pole at the front of his property on the Sunderland Road, near Houghton-le-Spring in Durham.

He said the speed limit along the Sunderland Road was 30mph but motorists regularly raced along it at 70mph because there were no cameras in place. (PA)

German given away by his own dog

A German man on the run from police was given away by his own Jack Russell terrier, faithfully wagging its tail outside the small cupboard he was cowering in, authorities said on Monday.

Police called at the 52-year-old man's flat in Euskirchen near Cologne and an acquaintance of his opened the door carrying the suspect's dog.

"The man claimed not to know where the wanted man was. When he put the dog down, it proceeded with a wagging tail to a small cupboard... and stood expectantly in front of it," police said in a statement.

This prompted the officers to investigate the cupboard, which was just a metre high and 80 centimetres wide, where they found the man "hunched up inside." (AFP)