A Brazilian woman whose short, pink dress caused a near riot at a private college and led to her expulsion will be allowed to return to class.

The private Bandeirante University backed down Monday on its decision to expel 20-year-old Geisy Arruda following a flood of negative reaction in a nation where skimpy attire is common. Videos of students ridiculing her and making catcalls Oct. 22 made her an Internet sensation.

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JAKARTA (AFP) – – An Indonesian woman has given birth to an 8.7-kilogramme (19.2-pound) baby boy, the heaviest newborn ever recorded in the country, a doctor said Wednesday.

The baby, who is still unnamed and is 62 centimetres (24.4 inches) long, was born by caesarean section Monday at a public hospital in North Sumatra province, a gynaecologist who took part in the operation told AFP.

“This heavy baby made the surgery really tough, especially the process of taking him out of his mum’s womb. His legs were so big,” Binsar Sitanggang said.  Read more... (165 words, estimated 40 secs reading time)

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TAIPEI (AFP) – – A Taiwanese woman’s ambition to kiss 100 men in Paris has become an overnight web sensation after she provided details of the quest on her much-visited blog.

Yang Ya-ching, a 27-year-old music major living in the French capital, has so far notched up 54 smooches, she said on her blog, which features photos of some of the encounters.

Collaborators in her project included a factory worker, a model, an Italian tourist and even a soldier visiting the capital of romance for Bastille Day.

“I came up with the idea three years ago,” she said on her blog.  Read more... (156 words, estimated 37 secs reading time)

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CHENNAI, India – A leading French chess player turned up drunk and dozed off after just 11 moves in an international tournament in Kolkata, losing the round on technical grounds, domestic media reported Friday.

Grandmaster Vladislav Tkachiev arrived for Thursday’s match against India’s Praveen Kumar in such an inebriated state that he could hardly sit in his chair and soon fell asleep, resting his head on the table, Hindustan Times newspaper reported.

Indian papers carried pictures of the world number 58 sleeping and the organizers’ futile attempts to wake his up.  Read more... (128 words, estimated 31 secs reading time)

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WASHINGTON (AFP) – - US paper currency is roughed up and often soiled in circulation, but a study has found that some 90 percent of greenbacks contain traces of cocaine, giving new meaning to the term “dirty money.”

That is a nearly 20 percent jump over a similar study conducted two years earlier where 67 percent of dollar bills were shown to contain cocaine traces, according to researchers who presented the study Sunday at the annual National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

The startling discovery points to the continuing widespread use of cocaine in the United States, one of the world’s biggest consumers of the drug.  Read more... (204 words, estimated 49 secs reading time)

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MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (AFP) – – A US jury on Thursday ordered a 32-year-old woman to pay 1.92 million dollars in damages for illegally downloading 24 songs in a high-profile digital piracy case.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother of four from the US state of Minnesota, was found liable for using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing network to download the songs over the Internet.

The jury took just under five hours to reach its verdict.

It ordered Thomas-Rasset to pay 1.92 million dollars — or 80,000 dollars per song — to six record companies: Capitol Records, Sony BMG Music, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros. Records and UMG Recordings.  Read more... (181 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)

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TAIPEI – A jobless Taiwan man released from prison stole a box of cotton swabs just to get arrested again because he “could not forget the police department boxed lunches,” officers and local media said Tuesday.
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The homeless man in Taipei first stole a pair of shoes on Sunday, was detained and released, the Liberty Times said. He then resorted to stealing again the next day just to get back inside and be fed for free.

“If someone’s not doing well and comes in around meal time, we’ll definitely prepare food,” said an officer, surnamed Wang, at the Hsinyi District police station, which handled the case but again released the suspect, Tsou Hao-lan.  Read more... (119 words, estimated 29 secs reading time)

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MOSCOW (AFP) – - A five-year-old girl Russian who was shut away with dogs and cats is adapting to normal life after being rescued and transferred to a clinic, doctors said Thursday.

The girl had apparently not been allowed outside the filthy apartment in Eastern Siberia where she had been found living with the animals, sparking comparisons with the character Mowgli from the “Jungle Book”.

“Everything is fine. Other medical tests will be carried out but she is in good health,” the director of the rehabilitation centre Tatyana Missnik told the RIA Novosti news agency.  Read more... (179 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)

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The story SF Weekly broke on Friday is true: Assemblyman Tom Ammiano will announce legislation on Monday to legalize marijuana and earn perhaps $1 billion annually by taxing it.

Quintin Mecke, Ammiano’s press secretary, confirmed to SF Weekly that the assemblyman’s 10 a.m. Monday press conference regarding “new legislation related to the state’s fiscal crisis” will broach the subject of reaping untold — and much-needed — wealth from the state’s No. 1 cash crop.

Mecke said Ammiano’s proposed bill “would remove all penalties in California law on cultivation, transportation, sale, purchase, possession, or use of marijuana, natural THC, or paraphernalia for persons over the age of 21.”  Read more... (110 words, estimated 26 secs reading time)

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