Walk Small - High Heels For Babes

The latest accessory for the baby who has everything has just arrived in the UK - a pair of high heels.

The shoes originate in America but have been introduced to British shores by Julia Taylor, herself mother to a young daughter.

"When I first had my daughter, she was the only girl in the mother and baby group, so the other mums often looked out for things for girls," she told Sky News Online.

"One of them saw an article on the shoes and when I went onto their website, I realised they didn't have an agent in the

UK so I applied for the job.

They're just a bit of fun and they're very soft, like comfy slippers really - with a bit of an edge.Julia Taylor - Heelsforher.co.uk

"We set up the website in August and we've had a steady stream of interest."

With

Christmas coming up, they're hoping the "sassy" shoes - a red pair for the festive season - will make them a spur-of-the-minute stocking-filler, despite the High Street gloom.

And Julia insists they will not damage baby's feet.

"They're from 0-6 months, so they wouldn't be suitable for a toddler," she explains. "Besides, if you try to put any weight on them, the heel collapses immediately."

Podiatrist Richard Handford is very alarmed by the idea.

"Horror", was what came to mind when I heard of these," he said.

"It sends the wrong message to parents and it could well have an impact on child development.

"With children, you're saying: "at this age they should be doing such and such, and at this age, etc". If you're tampering at this early stage, how can anyone judge what's appropriate?

"Some children may be crawling by the age of six months and such a shoe would destabilise them - the fact that the heel collapses is bad news in itself.

"The child's nervous system is growing and it's developing proprioception - spatial awareness - and you don't want to interrupt that. This is not a good idea at all."

Cardboard cutout 'holds up bank'

A standoff at a bank in the U.S. state of New Jersey is over after police learned a "person" seen inside was actually a full-size cardboard figure.

Officers went to the PNC Bank in Montgomery Township on Thursday night after an alarm went off.

They saw what they thought was at least one person through the windows of the bank, which had its blinds drawn.

The area was sealed off and three nearby apartment buildings were evacuated as a precaution.

Authorities used bullhorns and made telephone calls in a bid to make contact with whoever might be in the bank. After getting no response, a SWAT team entered the building and discovered the cardboard figure.

It was not immediately clear what set off the bank alarm.

2,700 year-old cannabis stash is 'oldest ever'

The world's 'oldest' stash of cannabis has been unearthed inside a remote tomb in China.

The 789 grams of marijuana is thought to be about 2,700 years old and appears to have been buried next to a shaman, according to The Star.

Favourable conditions means the stash still has its green tint, although possibly disappointed researchers said its lack of odour told them immediately it was not still good to smoke.

According to an article in the Journal of Experimental Botany it's 'the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent'.

The tomb in north-west China also contained bridles, archery equipment and a harp, but no ancient cache of chocolates, crisps and biscuits.

Baby is born pregnant

A baby has had a bit of an irregular start to life - she's been born pregnant.

Doctors in Saudi Arabia discovered that when the mother was pregnant she had two foetuses inside her.

But one of the foetuses grew inside the other to create what has been described as a 'unique case in the world'.

Thieves steal house brick by brick

Thieves didn't try to steal from this house, they tried to pinch the whole thing.
Dressed as workmen, they attempted to take the building, brick by brick and slate by slate.

The pair even stopped for lunch during their audacious theft and a neighbour inadvertently helped them by collecting fallen tiles.

All the roof slates were taken and one of the walls of the three-bedroom semi was wrecked before the alarm was raised.

The owner, a property developer, said the damage would cost him £10,000 to repair.

'You've got to laugh at the cheek of it,' he said.

'They were literally stealing my house. They went there with hard hats and yellow jackets and took ladders. They even stopped for a lunch break.'

Dorset Police said two 38-year-old men had been arrested in connection with the incident in Parkstone, near Poole.

Facebook faux-pas snares fancy-dress thieves

Goldilocks turned out to be more of a wary tale than a fairy tale for two girls who stole fancy dress outfits.

The pair were arrested after pictures of them wearing the costumes - one of which was of the fair-haired character - appeared on Facebook.

A friend of the shop's owner, Ben Muir, had been to the same party as the teenagers and showed him photos from the event on the social networking website.

Mr Muir called police after spotting the stolen Goldilocks and sailor girl costumes. Officers then tracked down the two thieves and retrieved the outfits.

'Just after the costumes were stolen, a friend had gone to a costume party dressed as a Spice Girl,' said Mr Muir.

'I was looking at photos of the party on Facebook and, lo and behold, there were the girls wearing our costumes. We called the police and they couldn't believe it.'

Mr Muir's partner, Lee Cooper, said four girls had come into the shop - After Dark in Lancaster - and two of them distracted him while the others pinched the costumes.

'As well as the Goldilocks and sailor girl costumes, they tried on Little Bo Peep and a pirate queen,' he said.

'It just shocked me that someone would want to take the costumes.'

However, the thieves won't be doing porridge. Lancashire Police said two girls aged 17 and 16 were given fixed penalty fines for shoplifting.

Kangaroo T-shirt trio jailed

Three people have been jailed after being charged with contempt of court for showing up at Singapore's Supreme Court wearing T-shirts depicting kangaroos in judges robes.

Isrizal Bin Mohamed Isa and Muhammad Shafi'ie Syahmi Bin Sariman were sentenced to seven days' jail, while Tan Liang Joo John received 15 days imprisonment. They were each ordered to pay 5,000 Singapore dollars in costs.

Tan is the Assistant Secretary-General of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, led by Chee Soon Juan.

The three had worn the T-shirts at a court hearing in May to determine the damages that Chee Soon Juan and his sister Chee Siok Chin were to pay after being found guilty of defaming Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and former leader Lee Kuan Yew.

Singapore's attorney-general said in bringing the case to court the trio had "scandalised the Singapore judiciary".

Singapore bans gatherings and protests in all public areas without a permit except Speakers' Corner, the country's equivalent of the historic free-speech haven in London's Hyde Park.

Churches cross over chocolate Jesus

Germany's churches criticised a businessman on Tuesday for selling thousands of Jesus chocolates.

Frank Oynhausen set up his 'Sweet Lord' chocolate Jesus-making business saying he wanted to restore some traditional religious values to Christmas in Germany.

But the German Protestant Church criticised the idea as 'tasteless' and the Roman Catholic Church was not amused.

'I started thinking about how I could reintroduce traditional religious values into this commercial world,' said Oynhausen, who had been unemployed since losing a recycling business two years ago.

Together with a friend, a local chocolatier, Oynhausen, 54, developed the concept of 'Sweet Lord'.

It is terrible that Jesus is being wrapped up in gold foil and sold
It is growing fast in his home town of Duisburg and on the internet, at www.goldjesus.com.

Oynhausen said thousands of people have put in orders for the figures wrapped in gold foil. But church associations expressed dismay.

'It is terrible that Jesus is being wrapped up in gold foil and sold along with chocolate bunnies, edible penguins and lollipops,' said Aegidius Engel, a spokesman for the archbishopric of nearby Paderborn.

'This is ruining the symbol of Jesus himself,' he added.

Oynhausen is now custom-producing the chocolate Jesus figures, at a cost of 15 euros for 100 grams, but by Easter he hopes to have a partnership with a mass producer.

'We're hoping to be able to export them around the world one day,' Oynhausen said. He reckons there are parts of the United States where they will be especially popular.

In 2007, a life-size chocolate sculpture of a naked Jesus - similarly named My Sweet Lord - caused an outcry from Roman Catholics when an art gallery in New York wanted to exhibit it in a window.

Shooty surprise for sat nav tourists

Three Norwegian tourists came under fire and one was shot after the satellite navigation system in their car guided them straight into one of Rio de Janeiro's most dangerous slums.

The three men cut short their vacation in Brazil and headed home on Monday after Trygve Killingtveit, 24, was shot in the shoulder by suspected drug traffickers from one of the gangs that control hundreds of shantytowns in Rio.

The tourists were returning from the beach resort of Buzios about three hours north of Rio on Saturday when they got lost, Brazil's Globo TV and several newspapers reported.

They reportedly told police their Global Positioning System (GPS) system recommended they turn off a main highway as the quickest route back to the airport to drop off the rental car. But the suggested route took them deep into the Mare slum complex, where their rented car quickly came under fire.

No motive for the attack was given, and no arrests were made.

Killingtveit managed to drive the car to safety despite being wounded. He told family members in Norway that he probably went astray because of a fault in the GPS, Norwegian daily Dagbladet reported.

'As far as I understand, the GPS system in their car showed the wrong information,' his brother, Magne Killingtveit, told the paper.

The Norwegian consulate in Rio declined on Monday to comment on the incident, saying only that the three had returned to Norway.

Man banned from sleeping with gun

A German man who slept with a loaded revolver under his pillow has lost his gun licence after a court ruled it to be irresponsible behaviour.

The 56-year-old was stripped of his licence for failing to store the weapon properly, Braunschweig administrative court judge Torsten Baumgarten told Reuters Tuesday. The gun was only discovered by chance during a police inspection.

'His home was being checked because he had threatened to throw a hand grenade if the city council approved plans to build a high-voltage power line in his neighbourhood,' Baumgarten said.

'The decision to take his licence was made independently.'

Baumgarten said the ruling, which sets a legal precedent in Germany, in effect outlaws sleeping on top of a firearm - because the owner of the gun is not in control of the weapon and is therefore putting himself and others at risk.

'Anyone could come along and take the gun away from him, his wife for example,' Baumgarten said.

The man, who also owned several other weapons, said he kept the gun under his pillow because he feared burglars.

Drunk driver runs over himself

An American man accused of driving drunk lead police on a wild chase that finally ended with him somehow managing to run himself over.

The 21-year-old man was treated for minor injuries at a Santa Fe hospital and booked in to the Sandoval County detention center on charges of aggravated driving while intoxicated, fleeing a police officer, careless driving and two other outstanding traffic warrants.

A tip to the state's DrunkBuster hot line on Sunday afternoon alerted authorities to a possibly drunken driver.

State Police Officer Grace Romero spotted the man's pickup truck swerving across both lanes of a highway, driving slowly and then fast. He refused to stop.

After narrowly missing other vehicles, police said the suspect drove through a ditch and a barbed-wire fence before stopping. He tried to put the truck into park, but it ended up in reverse.

Police said the man fell from his open door and both of his legs were run over by the front driver's side tire.

Mother flushed baby down toilet

A mother has told an inquest hearing how she accidentally flushed her baby down a toilet before hiding his body in her car boot.

Claire Jones became pregnant after an affair with work colleague Marcus Bezerra, Cardiff Coroner's Court heard.

She hid her condition from friends and family, including partner of 11 years David Stoneman, by claiming a wheat allergy caused a hard mass to form in her stomach.

When she experienced pains in the early hours of December 28 last year, a week after her due date, she put it down to the diarrhoea from which she was suffering. Ms Jones said she did not realise she had given birth to son Daniel until she flushed the toilet at her partner's parents' home in Penarth, South Wales, where she had been celebrating Christmas.

Ms Jones, of Pontnewydd, Cwmbran, South Wales, told the inquest:

"While I was still on the toilet, I flushed it, and I felt something pull. I stood up slightly, and I could see a foot in the bowl of the toilet."

Sobbing, Ms Jones said: "I could see the baby's foot, so I pulled the baby out. I sat by the toilet. I put him on my lap. He wasn't crying. I was trying to feel for a pulse and there was nothing."

Ms Jones, who had her mobile phone with her, said she did not call for help because she panicked and tried to revive him on her own.

She said: "I just kept trying and trying, and it wasn't working. He was blue. I wrapped him in a towel. I don't remember how, but I must have put him in the boot of the car."

Daniel's body was found in his mother's Vauxhall Astra at the home she shared with Mr Stoneman in St Mellons, Cardiff, after she was arrested 10 days later. A post-mortem examination could not confirm if Daniel, who weighed seven-and-a-half pounds, died before or after birth. Pathologist Andrew Davison said if Daniel did survive birth, it was likely he drowned.

Cardiff Coroner Mary Hassell recorded a narrative verdict describing the circumstances of Daniel's death, saying Ms Jones built up a "web of deception" to conceal the pregnancy and subsequent birth.

The coroner said she did not know if Daniel had been stillborn or not, but dismissed his mother's account that she did not realise she had given birth.

Solar panel graveyard powers town

A cemetery near Barcelona is battling climate change by placing a series of solar panels above its graves to provide a town with energy.

Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a gritty, working-class town outside Barcelona, has placed a sea of solar panels atop mausoleums at its cemetery, transforming a place of perpetual rest into one buzzing with renewable energy.

Flat, open and sun-drenched land is so scarce in Santa Coloma that the graveyard was just about the only viable spot to move ahead with its solar energy programme.

The power the 462 panels produces - equivalent to the yearly use by 60 homes - flows into the local energy grid for normal consumption and is one community's odd nod to the fight against global warming.
"The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations.

That is our leitmotif," said Esteve Serret, director Conste-Live Energy, a Spanish company that runs the cemetery in Santa Coloma and also works in renewable energy.

In row after row of gleaming, blue-gray, the panels rest on mausoleums holding five layers of coffins, many of them marked with bouquets of fake flowers.

The panels face almost due south, which is good for soaking up sunshine, and started working last week - the culmination of a project that began three years ago.

The concept emerged as a way to utilize an ideal stretch of land in a town that wants solar energy but is so densely built-up - Santa Coloma's population of 124,000 is crammed into four square kilometers (1.5 square miles) - it had virtually no place to generate it.

At first, parking solar panels on coffins was a tough sell, said Antoni Fogue, a city council member who was a driving force behind the plan.

"Let's say we heard things like, 'they're crazy. Who do they think they are? What a lack of respect!' "Fogue said.

But town hall and cemetery officials waged a public-awareness campaign to explain the worthiness of the project, and the painstaking care with which it would be carried out. Eventually it worked, Fogue said.

The panels were erected at a low angle so as to be as unobtrusive as possible.

"There has not been any problem whatsoever because people who go to the cemetery see that nothing has changed," Fogue said. "This installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and for the families of the deceased."

The cemetery hold the remains of about 57,000 people and the solar panels cover less than 5 percent of the total surface area. They cost 720,000 euros to install and each year will keep about 62 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Serret said.

The community's leaders hope to erect more panels and triple the electricity output, Fogue said.

Before this, the town had four other solar parks - atop buildings and such - but the cemetery is by far the biggest.

Attention-seeking lizards 'do press-ups'

We might wave to get someone's attention in a noisy crowd but one lizard prefers to do a workout.

Anole lizards perform press-ups to turn a few scaly heads in the busy rainforests of Puerto Rico before beginning a display to show their status.

It is the first evidence of mute animals using visual displays to alert others to an imminent message.

The finding was made after Californian researchers built latex 'robo lizards' that could mimic the moves.

Mobiles used to listen in on koalas

Australian scientists are using mobile telephones to eavesdrop on koalas to understand what they are saying when they bellow and how this can help conserve the marsupial which is threatened by habitat destruction.

The researchers tagged koalas on St Bees Island off northeast Australia with satellite tracking devices to monitor movements and placed mobile telephones in the trees which are programmed to turn on every 30 minutes and record for two minutes.

The mobiles, charged by solar power and car batteries, record the koala bellows, then download the recordings to a computer at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.

"Koala bellows can go from really quite short, sharp, and quite agitated sounding bellows to long, slow, deep bellows that can last for over a minute," said researcher Bill Ellis.

"Interestingly most of the bellowing seems to occur around midnight, not around dawn or dusk when we thought it might've occurred," he said on Tuesday.

Ellis said he was studying whether male koalas communicate by bellowing to each other to mark out territory and whether bellowing was used to attract females during breeding season.

"Over the breeding season males are quiet active at the start but their movements die down and females have a spike in movement somewhere in the breeding season," Ellis said.

"After a male and female encounter, and we can't see what they are doing, the female lets out a high-pitched scream and immediately after the male emits a loud bellow," he said.

Ellis said results from his study could help manage koala populations by informing wildlife officials when is the best time to introduce new animals to a population and when is best time to allow changes to koala habitats such as urban development.

Prosthetic penis salesmen face jail

Two men whose company sold a prosthetic penis that helped men cheat on drug tests have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in court.

George Wills and Robert Catalano each pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts. They owned the California-based Internet company Puck Technology.

The device, called the Whizzinator, comes with a heating element and fake urine.

U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan's office says the goal of it and another device called Number 1 was to help people pass drug tests.

The devices were sold from 2005 to 2008. The men are scheduled to be sentenced in February and face up to eight years in prison, a half-million-dollar fine or both.

Billboard surprise for burglar

Rule number one of burglary is 'don't get yourself photographed'. Probably coming in somewhere around rule number 437, meanwhile, is 'don't make an enemy of someone who owns billboards all around your city'.

Unfortunately for one New Zealand thief, he just broke both those rules.



The thief was caught on camera stealing expensive equipment, but he'd picked the wrong target - because now the billboard company he was stealing from has plastered his image around New Zealand's largest city seeking his capture.

The unidentified thief was photographed by a suspicious onlooker as he uncoupled 15 electrical transformers used to boost the lighting on a billboard in Auckland.

The photographer knew the pillaged sign belonged to Mark Venter, who runs OTW Advertising, one of New Zealand's oldest billboard companies.

So when the photographer offered pictures of the thief in action it cost Venter nothing to mount the images on four city billboards with the inscription: 'Who is this Thief? Reward $500.'

The photo of 'the ratbag' was 'too good an opportunity to let go,' Venter told The Associated Press.

'We've all had stuff stolen ... but usually they don't leave this calling card.'

He said he had received more than 100 calls since the photograph was posted six days ago, though most were calls supporting his campaign rather than offering information on the crime.

Police Sgt. Roy Simpson said several calls to police and to Venter had named the same man as the possible thief, and he was now being sought by police.

Venter noted the thief had had one piece of good luck: If he had tried stealing the transformers at night 'when they have 50,000 volts going through them - he'd be dead.'

Jet pack man flies across canyon

Yesterday, we had a flying car. Today, it's a jetpack - with the news that a daredevil wearing a jet pack has flown across a 1,500-foot-wide canyon in southern Colorado.
We are living in the future, clearly.

Eric Scott took 21 seconds to cross the Royal Gorge at 75 mph on Monday, according to his sponsors, energy drink peddlers the Go Fast Sports & Beverage company.

They also say that he didn't use a parachute while flying across the 1,100-foot-deep canyon.

He was wearing a jet pack powered by hydrogen peroxide and developed by Jet Pack International.

The company developed the jet pack for stunts, promotions and other events for Go Fast - both companies are based in Denver, Colorado and were founded by entrepreneur Troy Widgery.

The jet pack design is based on one developed in the 1960s for the military.

A bridge spanning the Royal Gorge was the site of a deadly stunt in 2003 when a parachute jumper miscalculated and fell.

'Granny Robber' suspect arrested

Police in Ohio have arrested a 68-year-old woman on a bank robbery charge - and they want to know if she's the so-called 'Granny Robber' they've been seeking since last May.

Police in the south-west Ohio town of Franklin say a woman handed a note to a teller in a Huntington Bank branch on Friday and made off with an undisclosed amount of money.

Barbara Joly of Middletown was arrested soon afterwards, it was reported.

Investigators say Joly had sunglasses and a scarf with her. Those were items an older woman wore during four bank robberies in the area since May.

Bothered Much? 'Meh' Is A Word

It might be nothing to get excited about, but there is a new addition to the Collins English Dictionary.

The preferred response of the apathetic, "meh" is the newest word in the famous lexicon.

The word, defined as "an interjection expressing indifference or boredom", beat off hundreds of others to gain entry.

It has won its place between "megrim" (whose plural means "low spirits") and "meibomian" ("the large sebaceous glands of the human eyelid") thanks to generating a surprising amount of enthusiasm among lexicographers.

Cormac McKeown, head of content at Collins Dictionaries, said:

"This is a new interjection from the US that seems to have inveigled its way into common speech over here.

"It was actually spelled out in

The Simpsons when Homer is trying to prise the kids away from the TV with a suggestion for a day trip.

"They both just reply 'meh' and keep watching TV; he asks again and Lisa says 'We said MEH! - M-E-H, meh!'

Publisher HarperCollins said that the word had been chosen from terms suggested by the public for inclusion in the dictionary's 30th anniversary edition, to be published next year.

The dictionary will define "meh" as an expression of indifference or boredom, or an adjective meaning mediocre or boring.

Examples given by the dictionary include "I feel a bit meh about the whole thing" and "The Canadian election was so meh."

The dictionary's compilers said the word originated in North America and spread through the Internet.

Miracle Pup Survives Hit-And-Run

A miracle puppy has survived being hit at 70mph by an Italian motorist after clinging to the car's grille - for over 15 miles.

The one-year-old stray dog was hit by driver Marco Menozzi, who confessed he did not even stop when he clashed with the pooch.

But Mr Menozzi hit the dog at such speed that it became embedded in the grille under the bonnet of his car.

It lay trapped in the Peugeot 207 and managed to cling on until the car eventually stopped 15 miles further on.

Miraculously, the pup survived the ordeal, escaping with just a broken leg and bruising.

It is now in a police kennel looking for a new owner.

A police spokesman said: "He's a very lucky boy. He was saved because he was hit so hard.

"Any softer and he would have bounced off the car and been crushed under the wheels."

Mr Menozzi had been driving at 70mph on a side road in Cozze, southern Italy.

Docs Find Worm In Woman's Brain

Surgeons looking for a suspected tumour inside a woman's brain were shocked when they pulled out a worm instead.

Doctors in Arizona operated on Rosemary Alvarez after she started feeling numbness in her arm and blurred vision.

Ms Alvarez went to the emergency room twice and had an x-ray, but everything appeared normal.

It was only when doctors took a closer look at a scan that they discovered something very disturbing.

Neurosurgeon Dr Peter Nakaji said: "Once we saw the MRI we realised this is something not good. It's something down in her brain stem which is as deep in the brain as you can be."

Ms Alvarez was taken into the operating room where Dr Nakaji and his colleagues were expecting to remove a tumor.

Once we saw the MRI we realised this is something not good.Neurosurgeon Dr Peter Nakaji on finding a worm in a woman's brain.

On a video of the surgery, Dr Nakaji can be heard laughing after he discovered the worm.

He said: "I'm sure this is a very strange response for the people in the operating room.

"But it was because I was so pleased to know that it wasn't going to be something terrible."

Doctors removed the worm and believe Ms Alvarez will not have any long-lasting health problems.

It is not known where she picked up the worm.

Experts said worms can come from eating undercooked pork or spread by people who do not wash their hands after using the bathroom, according to reports.

"It only takes one person who is spreading it constantly to get a lot of people exposed and some of those people are going to go on to develop this problem," Dr Nakaji said.

Ms Alvarez, who is now healthy, said she hopes people learn lessons from her story.

"Wash your hands, wash your hands," she said.