Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. Two per cent of Europeans lack the genes for smelly armpits.
More details ()

2. It is possible to beam an image (the Mona Lisa, in this case) to the Moon using a high-powered laser.
More details ()

3. Russian soldiers don't wear socks.
More details ()

4. Horse-eating is called Hippophagy.
More details

5. You can make beer out of Sugar Puffs.
More details ()

6. Overbites didn't become standard until everyone started eating with a knife and fork.
)

7. The East Midlands has a history of small to moderate earthquakes.
More details

8. Swiss cheese plants suffer from stress.
More details

9. Inflatable space capsules are as safe as metal ones.
More details ()

10. Trees that are more than 100m tall cannot grow leaves.
More details ()

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

How to drive in 'frightful' weather, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú? What does that advice consist of - keeping lashings of ginger beer and mummy's fruit cake in the back of the Morris and sending Timmy to get help? Cripes!
Sue, London

Surely a "letter box" is a slot in your front door. Everyone I know calls those red things either post boxes or pillar boxes.
MJ Simpson, Leicester UK

Re the horsemeat story; When my (English) uncle, who lives in Hamburg, had English friends or rellies over to visit, he used to surprise them by serving a dish that resembled shepherd's pie, which he called jockey pie. Uncle John has always had a wicked sense of humour.
Phil Warne, Nelson, NZ

Ahh Angus and Polly (Thursday's letters) please keep exchanging messages. As an interested agony aunt I must say you seem to have what it takes. A mutual interest. A private language. This one could run and run.
Fran, Brill, UK

Emma (Thursday's letters) I believe you also have a coffee shop called Bean Around the World. Round my way, I don't think it's an intentional pun but the company that manufactured the lifts at work is called Schindler.
Martin, Luxembourg

Lesson in life: If you find yourself hanging on the phone for a call centre, start eating something. Someone's bound to answer your call as soon as your mouth is full.
Michael Hall, Croydon, UK

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Winning entries in the Caption Competition.

The competition is now closed. Full rules can be seen here

This week two people in costume stand by the side of a vintage train celebrating 150 years of London's Tube. Thanks to all who entered. There are six winners this week. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:

6. MorningGlories
Metro-spective.

5. topline123
"Now Sir, please return the chimney pipe to the engine driver and we'll say no more about it"
"Pleb"...

4. thehedgelayer
Oh yes, my head goes all the way to the top of my hat too.

3. Kudosless
But if it replaces the carriage, what will we do with all the horses? Eat them?

2. Mr Snoozy
Excuse me old chap, would you mind awfully minding the gap?

1. Gurney Nutting
It's parked on single yellow lines. Shift it.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Paper Monitor is inclined to talk about the snow again. After all, all the papers are. But Paper Monitor has a quota on snow. So instead it's decided to focus on a couple of other stories that seem rather strange.

First up, the Daily Telegraph has a couple of tales about how treacherous the seemingly innocuous walk can be. In Cornwall, it's about pigeon droppings. On one road, there are so many, postal workers are refusing to deliver post. Letters are being left at the Post Office with "too slippery" scrawled across them instead.

Meanwhile in Abergavenny, in South Wales, a saboteur has planted sausages stuffed with nails in a popular dog-walking area.

In happier news, the Daily Express has the . Number 10 is a sign of the times - simply getting a seat on the train into work will get our day off to a great start.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, over half are about saving, winning or finding money. The top slot? Discovering money you didn't know you had or finding a £20 in an old coat.

Paper Monitor is off to check its pockets.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

One of my favourite puns is on the back of a local breakdown truck - "We don't want an arm and a leg, we just want all your tows!" They just don't make them like that anymore.
Emma, Jersey

This story reminds me of the quotation attributed to Groucho Marx: "Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read."
Simon Robinson, Birmingham, UK

I don't think the British are really that disgusted at the thought of eating horsemeat. For me, the primary problem would seem to be that the packet said "BEEFBURGER", and not "NOW WITH 29% NOURISHING HORSEFLESH".
Alex, Bishop Auckland

Can I nominate this for smug headline of the week?
Brendan, London

Ah, Polly (Wednesday letters) - I would reciprocate your feelings but my conviction hav been that GURLS are uterly wet and weedstruck. Chiz chiz.
Angus Gafraidh, London UK

So the Oprah/Armstrong interview is two and a half hours long and is being shown over two days. Thanks goodness Peter Jackson wasn't directing it or it would have been padded out to six hours and turned into a trilogy.
MCK, Stevenage

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Predictions of snowmageddon are preoccupying Britain's evening newspapers.

The West Midlands is set to shiver under 14 hours of blizzards and a foot of snow,.

Manchester is braced for a severe weather, , adding that the Met Office has issued an amber warning.

The London Evening Standard repeats Met Office warnings to drivers to make essential journeys only, saying up to 5cm of snow could fall on the city.

But the paper leads on- also the splash in The Newcastle Evening Chronicle, which reveals that Mr Barnes was .

A spell of bad weather is normally followed by a bout of hand wringing about why the country can't seem to cope with it and calls for elected officials to take the blame.

But the recriminations have already started in Norwich, where local citizens have been to call for his resignation over roads chaos earlier in the week.

Strangely, given that Wales has received the sternest warning from the Met Office, and is expecting up to 25cm of snow in some parts, the South Wales Evening Post seems more interested in a story about.

Maybe they're hoping a Hard Rain's Going to Fall instead...

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Please pass on my Journalist of the Year Award to whoever thought it necessary to make the phrase "watching cat videos" on this article a link to a cat video on YouTube. Also, hand the editor who swiftly removed said link the Jonny Riches Scrooge of the Year Award.
Jonny Riches, Oxford

Angus Gafraidh (Tuesday's letters) - I adore you! Scrabble prowess notwithstanding, you have brought back sweet memories of N Molesworth and chums, St Custards, et al. You should be captane of everything and be winner of a Mrs joyful prize. Thank you. Cave!!!
PollySaxon, Lichfield

With reference to Mr Boultwood, who photographed the pothole graffiti on Shore Road, said: "If anyone on a motorbike hit one, they'd be a goner."" Wow, killer spray-paint!
Carl Crepy, France

Perhaps a candidate for things we didn't know last week - naming a sheep makes it immortal.
Ed Loach, Clacton, UK

Ray, Tuesday Letters, I'm in with an Exploding Buddha.
Bryan Poor, Oxford

I'm fairly sure I just have the one re "Extra Heart Check for Over 65s".
Mike, Cheltenham

So they finally found Shergar.
Claire, Leighton Buzzard

Re: thighs on parade (Tuesday's Paper Monitor). Leg us entertain you?
Candace, New Jersey, US

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Got a dog in your office? Today's lesson: When you offer to take it out for a lunchtime walk, avoid the revolving doors.

The papers rake over the sorry tale of Tatler's office puppy Alan, who died after becoming trapped in the revolving door at Vogue House in Mayfair, central London.

It really was a bad day at the office for all concerned, conveyed in this sub-headline in the Daily Telegraph - "Dachshund with online following dies after becoming trapped in office's revolving door while in trainee's care"

When interns blot their copybook it is usually through such mundane accidents as spilling coffee on the boss or turning up without a tie. So spare a thought for the trainee at Tatler magazine, whose task of taking the office's beloved pet for a walk came to a tragic end... The dachshund was being taken out on a lead by a member of staff, said to be a female intern, when it became distracted by a jogger returning from a lunchtime run and attempted to dash through the door in a "split second" before getting trapped.

Heart-rending enough? The Telegraph and others reprint photos of Alan in happier times - sleeping on a desk, drinking from a Tatler mug, gazing up with his limpid, brown eyes...

(Oh, it is too, too much. Tissues - stat!)

Unusually the Daily Mail , but does detail his family tree:

[Owner] Jennifer's partner is the son of George Plumptre, who was Princess Diana's first boyfriend

The Guardian, despite its own fashion writers being Alan fans (one of whom said in her Twitter tribute that she had had "half a toe sliced off in the Guardian revolving door"), finds no space for the story in today's paper.

Its G2 lead feature is about the demise of the High Street, and contains some very familiar quotes from Jonathan Coe, author of 1970s-set novel The Rotter's Club. Very familiar...

Having greater choice has taken us out of that comfort zone. It's like growing up and having to cook for yourself instead of having your mum put a plate of fish fingers and a bowl of Angel Delight in front of you every evening.

Now where has Paper Monitor ?

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

"We have only heard good things about her" - up until the part about crashing the train into the house, I'm guessing.
Jack, Manchester

Did no-one smell a rat (or anything else for that matter) when someone was importing the garlic claiming it to be apples?
Basil Long, Nottingham

Dec (Monday Letters), I'll see your puppy throwing and raise you a train theft and domicile impact. (Roll on the rest of the weeks news!)
Ray Lashley, Colchester, UK

I'm afraid your Scrabble score calculator is wrong. I input QUIZZES and was blithely informed that it was worth 34 under the old rules and 27 under the new rules, as Z has been demoted from 10 points to 6 and the U upgraded from 1 point to 2. However, the only way to make QUIZZES in Scrabble is to use a blank (there is only one Z), and as any fule kno a blank tile in Scrabble is worth no points at all. Thus the correct score is 24 under the old system and 17 under the new. I'll get me coat (6 points).
Angus Gafraidh, London UK

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Deadline and time differences put paid to Monday's newspapers having many photos from the Golden Globes, so today's deconstruct the event in full. Anyone who is interested already knows that walked off with the Best Hosts Of An Awards Ceremony Ever award, as well as the gongs for lesser mortals such as Daniel Day Lewis and Anne Hathaway.

So the papers devote much of their attention to who wore what and looked a fright. And there is rarely much agreement between the fashion editors called in to give their assessments - although their picks often prove revealing about their paper's character.

But soft! This year it is all about Angelina Jolie's right leg. And it wasn't even there! (And Jodie Foster's .)

"THIGHLENCE IS GOLDEN" - the Sun

After she "legbombed" the 2012 Oscars in a slashed-to-here-no-higher gown, it was , says the Times:

The new red carpet status symbol? Legs: you can't fake them, says Sarah Vine. Miranda Kerr's was so high that she had to use her clutch bag as a merkin... Halle Berry's exposed her right leg at a very uncomfortable angle... We're talking splits, of course. Specifically split skirts, of the kind pioneered at last year's Oscars by Angelina Jolie.

Style-wise, Jolie's look was not generally felt to be a success; indeed, she was mercilessly pilloried. It did, however, ensure that her picture was plastered across the front pages of the world. That, presumably, is the basis for the re-emergence of the Hollywood Leg at this year's Golden Globes.

But Vine thought the 35-plus actresses such as Julianne Moore looked best in their more covered-up gowns. The Daily Telegraph much preferred Adele. And the Sun, quelle surprise, gives centre stage to model Miranda Kerr's cutaway dress with plunging neckline and super-split skirt.

The Daily Star, however, went for lots of photos of leg-flashing, granting all equal weight and enthusiasm.

Well, they would, wouldn't they?

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

I nominate this for Bizarre Story of the Week. Yes I know you don't have any such category and yes I know it's only Monday.
Dec, Belfast

"Tiny machine apes production line" - Anyone else read this headline and think of miniature robotic chimps?
Rob, London, UK

Who else saw your headline "Pig is king," and thought it rudely referred to a change of power in some far-flung country?
Rob Falconer, Llandough, Wales

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

The papers have been previewing the impending snowfall for days. Now that it's actually snowed, some of them seem to be beside themselves with excitement.

has arrived, announces the Sun.

"Temperatures predicted to fall as low as MINUS 14° C," it emboldens, for extra dramatic effect.

It's , declares the Daily Mirror. The big chill will leave parts of Britain colder than Lapland, it says.

"Freezy does it," it adds on page five, clearly not content to leave it there. Driving chaos and school closures may be in the pipeline, it warns.

The Daily Mail agrees: "Commuters face chaos as snow and ice grip Britain."

The snow also brings the usual bombardment of photo opportunities. The Independent goes for a girl balanced on a snow-covered log, with the headline "Snow could bring Britain to a standstill."

The Daily Telegraph opts for two girls sledging. The Independent has a cartoon of a snowman in a onesie.

Meanwhile, plenty of papers are also warning that today is the most depressing day of the year.

According to the Daily Mail, by sitting by the window, or going for a stroll.

It also has a list of five reasons to be cheerful. Number five? "You are reading this, therefore alive."

Paper Monitor wonders how long they spent coming up with that.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?