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Kung Fu bear is an online smash
A video of an Asian black bear seemingly practising Kung Fu moves with a stick has become a big hit on the internet.
The clip, which was uploaded to YouTube a few days ago, shows the bear first playing with the 5ft stick with a paw.
The bear then appears to start twirling the stick rapidly around its head, reports the Daily Telegraph.
At one point the bear - said to be named Cloud - even throws the spinning stick above its head and then catches it again.
The unedited version of the film plus a previous edited version have so far clocked up more than 1.2m hits.
The three-minute clip of the bear was filmed by Canadian YouTube user alexbuzzkentaroguy at the Asa Zoo in Hiroshima, Japan.
Animal behaviour expert Professor Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado said the footage appeared to be genuine.
He said: "This is an amazing example of animal object control. This goes beyond normal animal usage of complex tools but then again you can train seals to balance balls on their noses and train elephants to paint with their trunks, so why not this.
I would guess this is the result of extreme training and would find it hard to believe the animal taught itself this spontaneously."
Film car collector to sell Batmobile
A Berkshire man who collects cars from classic films and TV shows is to sell off his Batmobile - so somebody else can have a turn at driving it.
Mark Perkins, 47, also owns the Flintstones' car, Mr Bean's Mini, James Bond's Aston Martin, Starsky and Hutch's Ford Torino and Del Boy's Reliant Regal van.
But he has taken the decision to sell his Batmobile, which he bought in 1988, at an auction on June 2 in Surrey, where it is expected to fetch £40,000, reports the Daily Telegraph.
He said: "It is sitting in my garage collecting dust. I don't really want to sell it. But classic cars, and this one in particular, should be driven to be enjoyed.
I've loved taking it on the road over the years. However, I will have little time to do so in the future, and so sadly it's time someone else derived pleasure of ownership."
The property developer has spent 25 years building up his collection, which he says is worth £500,000, at his Ascot home.
It also includes replicas of Batman's Batbike, the Ghostbusters' Ectomobile, Noddy's Toyland car, and he has just agreed a deal to buy The Monkees' 1967 Pontiac GTO.
"It's all right to have a Ferrari or a Bentley but it's not my cup of tea. Classic cars from films and unusual things are my hobby," he added.
The world's most tattooed woman
A Californian woman with ink over 95 per cent of her body has been recognised as the most tattooed in the world.
Julia Gnuse, 55, got her first tattoo to cover up an unpleasant skin condition on her legs, reports The Sun.
But she carried on until she covered her entire body and has been handed a Guinness World Record for having the most tattoos.
The pictures range from jungle scenes and cartoons to the cast of Bewitched on her buttocks.
The skin condition which kicked off her project when she was 35 is called porphyria. It causes the skin to blister when exposed to sunlight.
Having the tattoos does not combat the blistering but it means none of her scars show.
Ms Gnuse, nicknamed the Illustrated Lady, said: "I did this for the reason of covering scarring from the blisters. They get as deep as three degree burn.
"I had a friend, who is a plastic surgeon, who suggested tattooing my skin the same colour to the scarring that I had, seeing if we can match my just pale-looking skin that I had.
"That didn't work. We tried it. It was very difficult to match that. So I had the idea of a colorful tattoo, then I got hooked. I got addicted."
Dutiful daughter tops class
A Chinese woman has taken her partially paralysed father to university with her so she can look after him and study at the same time.
Xu Dahui, 22, is studying mechanical and electrical engineering at Wuhan Bioengineering Institute, reports Changjiang Daily.
Amazingly, she is top of her class - despite the demands of studying, caring for her father and working part-time to make ends meet.
"I don't think the life is harsh to me. I am the only child in the family. If I quit, who would take care of him?" she asked.
Xu's father, Xu Changru, 68, suffered an acute cerebral haemorrhage, which paralysed the left side of his body, earlier this year.
She decided to take him to university with her as her mother is also unwell, and can barely look after herself.
The university, touched by her story, offered the pair a rent-free university apartment.
Xu works in the canteen during her lunchbreak and sells bottled water and telephone cards for three hours after her afternoon lectures.
She gets up at 5am each day to shop for food, then gets her father up and the pair make their way to class - a journey which takes them an hour.
After going back home in the evening, she cooks a meal and then gives her father a 30-minute massage to help him sleep. Only then, can she begin her own home study time.
Artist completes 700 hour stare
A Serbian artist has completed the world's longest ever piece of performance art by staring at members of the public for 700 hours.
Marina Abramovic sat for seven hours a day, six days a week, on a chair for her installation, entitled The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Visitors were invited to sit in a chair facing her and simply return her silent gaze.
Celebrities including Bjork, Lou Reed, Marisa Tomei and Isabella Rossellini were among the 1,400 people who came and sat opposite the artist, who always dressed in a long cassock.
Some spent an entire day sitting opposite Abramovic while others managed just a couple of minutes.
Other parts of her retrospective at the museum proved similarly controversial, particularly Imponderabilia, in which visitors must squeeze past a naked man and woman who stand facing each other in a narrow doorway.
Abramovic's more challenging solo work has also included stabbing herself, playing with fire and standing motionless for six hours, having invited visitors to do anything they liked to her. At one point, a man held a gun to her neck but she remained still.
School to toughen up 'sissy' boys
A Chinese elementary school is teaching its boys to be more masculine as it's worried they are turning into sissies.
Qinlinglu Elementary School in Zhengzhou, Henan province, has launched an initiative called 'Looking for a Real Man' to encourage boys to act more like boys.
As part of this the youngsters are taught how to act more masculine and must take an oath swearing to act like 'real men', reports the Dahe Daily.
Wang Jianhua, who has been teaching at the school for 14 years, says he has noticed that boys have become "more and more girly".
He said: "During class breaks their favorite game is elastic band skipping, which is a typical girl's game.
And the boys are very fragile. If we just scold them a bit they will cry out loudly."
In contrast, he says the girls at the school are becoming wilder and wilder.
"They not only like physical fighting, but also are quite straight-forward and have strong characters," he added.
Headmaster Cao Jianping said the school planned to hire more male teachers to give the boys stronger role models.
"In the home, mothers tend to be in charge of childcare. Also, China's one child policy makes parents overly protective and inclined to spoil their child," he said.
Bagpipes scare off sewer rats
Tour bosses have come up with a way of frightening off rats on their trips round the historic drains of the Austrian capital Vienna - bagpipes.
The Third Man tours - which walk the sewers made famous in Orson Welles' cult film - were closed down after health and safety chiefs said the risk of rat bites was too great.
Now they're back on after organisers proved how the squeal of Scottish bagpipes from a kilted piper send the rats scurrying for cover.
Tour boss Peter Ryborz explained: "We get rid of the rats by taking a bagpipe player down with us, and they sound really great in the catacombs that tunnel all under the city.
You can hear them coming out of drains as the tours walk around under the city."
'Fastest pensioner' took short cut
A runner who was thought to have recorded the fastest time for a pensioner in the London Marathon took a ten-mile short cut.
Anthony Gaskell, 69, crossed the finishing line this year in just three hours and five minutes, reports the Daily Mail.
Observers questioned, however, how a previously unknown veteran could have performed so well.
Plans to award Mr Gaskell a plaque to mark his record time were abandoned after analysis of the second half of his race.
Officials worked out he would have had to have run the last 13 miles in under an hour - a time that world record holder, Haile Gebrselassie, could not match.
He appears to have used a part of the course just after Tower Bridge - where the marathon doubles back on itself - to cut from the outward leg to the home leg, taking around ten miles off the course.
Mr Gaskell, a grandfather from the Wirral, Merseyside, insists he never claimed to have run the last part of the course.
"I simply walked through a short cut to the end of the course where my belongings were waiting for me. I had no idea that anyone thought I'd won."
Colin Rathbone, 66, who finished 38 seconds behind Mr Gaskell after completing the full 26 miles and 385 yards will now receive the fastest pensioner's plaque.
Mr Rathbone, from Northwich in Cheshire, said: "It was the best time in ten years. When I was told I had been beaten I thought, 'What the heck do you have to do to win this thing?'."
eBay's mini skirt meteorology
The length of women's mini skirts being sold online can predict changes in the weather ahead of the Met Office, according to eBay.
Analysts at the company said the length of skirts sold on the website becomes shorter several days before the weather changes for the better, and lengthens when colder conditions are due.
On occasions, the trend is said to have predicted a shift in the weather before any advice has been issued by the Met Office using more traditional meteorological methods.
Demand for skirts on the internet auction site reportedly rose by 200 per cent a week before the recent hot weather began, several days before forecasters had announced it.
Ruth Szyszkowski, of eBay, told the Daily Mail: "We're calling it mini skirt meteorology. If you want to know what the weather is going to be like in three days, just take a look at hemlines."
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