The oddest blog on the web

A Chinese zoo is running a Big Brother style competition with a difference -- the contestants have to live in a monkey enclosure.

Six people will live with the monkeys in the zoo in the northwestern province of Shaanxi "to experience the lack of freedom the animals have," the China Daily said on Thursday.

The last person remaining will win 11,888 yuan ($1,534) and title of honorary animal lover, the newspaper said.

"It is the first such activity in China, and any Chinese from 18 to 60 years old, in good psychological condition with wild animal protection and survival knowledge may participate," the report added, without elaborating.

(c) Reuters

A man in Germany was put off his Italian chocolate treat when he noticed that a bump in the bar was not a nut but part of a human finger.

"He found a fingertip, complete with fingernail, right in the middle of the bar," said a police spokesman in the town of Mainz, close to Frankfurt.

"I suppose it went unnoticed because there were nuts in the chocolate and it was hard to tell the difference," the police spokesman said, adding the fingertip was being examined by forensic experts.

The 28-year-old man was in shock when he took the bar to police after a family doctor confirmed its contents.

Police declined to name the brand of the chocolate.

(c) Reuters

A Pakistani man has committed suicide outside his fiancee's home after he thought he accidentally killed her while trying to persuade her to get married early, police said Saturday.

The man, Ahmed Ashraf, was shooting a gun in the air outside his fiancee's home in the southern city of Karachi on Friday as part of his efforts to persuade her to get married two months early when a stray bullet accidently hit her, police said.

"He was so eager to get married he stood in front of his fiancee's house and started firing shots in the air to catch her attention," said investigating officer Ghulam Hussain.

The young woman was coming downstairs when a bullet ricocheted off a wall and hit her. She fell down screaming "I have been shot," Hussain said.

"He thought he had killed her and within seconds shot himself. The girl is fine," Hussain said.

(c) Reuters

Two people were killed and seven seriously wounded in Uganda when an artillery round blew up as a man tried to melt it down for scrap metal, police said on Saturday.

Police cordoned off the area where the shell was found, searching for other munitions after the incident, which happened on Thursday in Amuria, a remote part of the once war-ravaged eastern Teso region.

"We understand this man picked up a shell and tried to melt it for scrap. He put it in the fire and it exploded," Francis Agwoka, acting police chief for the region, told Reuters by telephone.

"Two people were killed and seven others rushed to hospital critically injured. We are sealing off the area to look for more bombs."

The Teso region was attacked by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in 2003, spreading a war that had hitherto affected only northern Uganda. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled to refugee camps.

(c) Reuters

A Japanese woman in her 50s gave birth to a child she had carried for her daughter, who was unable to conceive as she had her womb removed due to cancer, an obstetrician said on Sunday.

The case is likely to further stir debate in Japan about births by surrogate mothers, which both the government and a key medical association oppose.

Yahiro Netsu, the head of a maternity clinic in the central prefecture of Nagano, told a news conference that the woman gave birth in the first half of 2005 using an egg from her daughter and sperm from the daughter's husband, both in their 30s.

Kyodo news agency said it was the first time in Japan that a woman has acted as a surrogate mother for the child of her daughter -- effectively delivering her grandchild.

Netsu said the baby -- whose gender has not been revealed -- was first registered as a child of the surrogate mother and later adopted by the daughter and her husband.

The Japanese Justice Ministry takes a position that the woman who gives birth, not the biological mother, is the mother of the child, which critics say is a stance that ignores the interest of the child.

Netsu, who has defied an obstetrician association and has helped other couples have children through surrogate mothers, urged the medical community and the government to review their policies.

"I want them to debate the issue. Birth by surrogate mothers, it could turn out to be an issue for anybody," he told the news conference in Tokyo.

The issue came into the spotlight after a Japanese celebrity couple had twins through a surrogate mother and was denied their request to register the children as their own. They are fighting their case in court.

There have been cases of women acting as surrogate mothers and giving birth to their grandchildren, in both the United States and Britain, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily said.

(c) Kyodo

The Walt Disney Co. on Thursday said it took "appropriate action" against employees at its Paris theme park who were caught simulating sex while dressed as Disney characters in a digital video that has received wide attention on the Internet.

Disney would not say whether it had dismissed any of the costumed employees featured in the grainy video, which appears to have been shot with a hidden camera at a backstage dressing room at Disneyland Resort Paris.

"The behavior shown on the video is unacceptable and inexcusable," Disney said in a statement.

"The video was taken in the backstage area not accessible to guests. Appropriate action has been taken to deal with the cast members involved."

The video shows Minnie Mouse struggling to free herself as she is grabbed from behind by Goofy and then a giant snowman.

(c) Reuters

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy -- almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet-high marijuana plants.

General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said on Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.

"We tried burning them with white phosphorous -- it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel -- it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now ... that we simply couldn't burn them," he said.

Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.

(c) Reuters