Park officials in China have found a way to stop people from hogging their benches for too long – by fitting steel spikes on a coin-operated timer. If visitors at the Yantai Park in Shangdong province, eastern China, linger too long without feeding the meter, dozens of sharp spikes shoot through the seat. The spikes are too short to cause any serious harm – but long enough to prevent people from sitting on them comfortably. Park bosses got the idea from an art installation in Germany where sculptor Fabian Brunsing created a similar bench as a protest against the commercialisation of...

An Italian businessman missed his ex-girlfriend so much after she dumped him that he paid £12,000 to recreate her as a realistic sex doll. The 50-year-old man put together a collection of photos of his ex for Italian adult toymaker Diego Bortolin to work on, reports Il Messaggero. “I want it just like her but with bigger boobs,” he reportedly requested. Mr Bortolin, who hasn’t named the man, creates silicone sex dolls at the factory behind his shop in Treviso, Italy. “She was a smiling blonde girl but he wanted bigger boobs and a curvier backside,” Mr Bortolin said....

A state of emergency has been declared in New Zealand’s second largest city after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake collapsed walls and cut off power. No tsunami alert was issued and there appeared to be only two serious injuries, but looters broke into some damaged shops in Christchurch, police said. The powerful tremor hit 19 miles (30km) west of the city. Christchurch mayor Bob Parker declared a state of emergency after receiving reports of widespread damage. He said the “sharp, vicious earthquake has caused significant damage in parts of the city… with walls collapsed that have fallen...

A mother who nursed her premature baby back from the dead has been describing how she refused to give up even though doctors had told her he would not survive. Kate Ogg gave birth to twins in a hospital in Sydney, Australia. They were delivered at 27 weeks, weighing just 2lb, and though Mrs Ogg’s little girl Emily was healthy, her brother Jamie was not breathing. After battling to save him for 20 minutes, medical staff told her he had not survived. “The doctor asked me had we chosen a name for our son,” said Mrs Ogg. “I said ‘Jamie’ and he turned around with...

By Corey Binns Since last April, 19 cancer patients whose liver tumors hadn’t responded to chemotherapy have taken an experimental drug. Within weeks of the first dose, it appeared to work, by preventing tumors from making proteins they need to survive. The results are preliminary yet encouraging. With a slight redesign, the drug might work for hundreds of diseases, fulfilling the promise that wonder cures like stem cells and gene therapy have failed to deliver. The biotech company Alnylam announced in June that its drug ALN-VSP cut off blood flow to 62 percent of liver-cancer tumors in those...

You will be able to “grow your own transplant liver in a lab within just five years,” says the Daily Mail. This news story is based on research that demonstrated a method to develop skin cells into stem cells, which were then matured into liver cells. The researchers used this technique to develop lab-grown liver cells from patients with inherited liver diseases, which they hope might aid future research into diseases. They found that the new liver cells shared a number of characteristics with the patients’ liver cells. The method developed in this research looks likely to be an invaluable...

The lives of 10,000 patients could be saved each year by a “breakthrough pill”, according to the Daily Express. The news story comes from a study that looked at whether a drug called ivabradine could help prevent deaths or hospital admissions due to chronic heart failure. This relatively common condition occurs when the heart is no longer able to pump enough blood to meet the demands of the body. The study found that over an average of 23 months, patients taking the drug experienced fewer cardiovascular deaths or hospital admissions with worsening heart failure than people taking an inactive...

If you are worried about garlic breath, drink a glass of milk, say scientists who claim it can stop the lingering odour. In tests with raw and cooked cloves, milk “significantly reduced” levels of the sulphur compounds that give garlic its flavour and pungent smell. The authors told the Journal of Food Science it is the water and fat in milk that deodorises the breath. For optimum effect, sip the milk as you eat the garlic, they say. Mixing milk with garlic in the mouth before swallowing had a higher odour neutralising effect than drinking milk after eating the garlic in the trial. And...

For years, the myth has been spread that chocolate is a diet buster and absolutely has to be removed from your diet to lose weight. Whether you’re a chocoholic or just indulge from time to time, you should know that today’s research into chocolate is now connecting its consumption to lower weight. While moderation is still key, eating dark chocolate on a daily basis is more likely to result in weight loss than weight gain. Those conducting the studies still don’t have conclusive answers for “why” chocolate helps, but here are three theories that might explain. People Have a Sweet...

LOS ANGELES – Michael Douglas said Tuesday he felt optimistic about recovering from throat cancer but drew gasps when he told a television audience he had the most advanced stage. The 65-year-old “Wall Street” actor told TV talk-show host David Letterman that a biopsy indicated that his cancer was at stage 4, which he described as “intense, and so they’ve got to go at it …” Letterman asked whether stage 4 was a good diagnosis. “Um no,” Douglas replied, according to a transcript provided by CBS’ “Late Show with David Letterman.” Read more…