Cocoa

One in 10 children thinks the Queen invented the telephone, a survey of children’s science knowledge suggests.

Others gave credit for the invention to Charles Darwin and Noel Edmonds.

A fifth of the 1,000 primary and secondary pupils polled thought Star Wars character Luke Skywalker or Richard Branson was first on the moon.

Some 60% of nine and 10-year-olds thought Sir Isaac Newton discovered fire, the survey for science campaign Birmingham Science City found.

Despite these misconceptions, more children want to win a Nobel prize for science than the X Factor.

The survey of primary and secondary school children in the UK suggests there is some confusion about key scientific achievements.

Just under a half of boys (49%) correctly pinned down gravity as Newton’s ground-breaking discovery, compared with 76% of girls.

Just over a third of boys said Newton discovered fire, while the remaining 16% either said he invented the internet, or discovered the solar system or America.

Eight out of 10 boys correctly identified Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone, compared with 69% of girls.

Dr Pam Waddell from Birmingham Science City said: “While some of these findings will raise a smile, it suggests that school children aren’t tuned into our scientific heroes in the same way that they might be to sporting or music legends.”

She suggested it was clear that primary school children had a real interest in science.

“In fact, nearly 70% of nine and 10-year-olds would like to be famous for winning a Nobel Prize in science, yet this drops to only 33% among 11 to 15-year-olds.

“It appears children are losing an interest in science at secondary school, so more needs to be done to excite teenagers about the subject and rekindle some of their early childhood aspirations,” she added.

The poll was carried out online with a panel of 1,000 UK children in early March by OnePoll.

A man with foul body odour was removed from an Air Jazz flight from Charlottetown, P.E.I., to Montreal, Que., earlier this month, Charlottetown’s The Guardian newspaper is reporting.

Penny Walsh of Charlottetown was on the flight. She told the newspaper she had a cold and couldn’t smell the man, but other passengers weren’t happy about the odour.

“The guy next to me said, ‘It’s brutal,’” Walsh said.

Walsh said she observed as the flight crew escorted the man from the plane and said she thought it was for the best.

“It’s a very uncomfortable situation. I honestly think in this situation they handled it appropriately,” she said.

Air Canada did not immediately return QMI Agency’s request for comment.

~ Canoe Travel

A McDonald’s outlet in the Netherlands was wrong to sack an employee for giving a colleague a piece of cheese on a hamburger, a court has ruled.

The waitress was fired last March after she sold a hamburger to a co-worker who then asked for cheese, which she added.

The fast-food chain argued this turned the hamburger into a cheeseburger, and so she should have charged more.

Australian scientists have said they are hoping to breed sheep that burp less as part of efforts to tackle climate change.

The scientists have been trying to identify a genetic link that causes some sheep to belch less than others.

Burping is a far greater cause of emissions in sheep than flatulence, they say.

About 16% of Australia’s greenhouse emissions come from agriculture, says the department of climate change.

Australia’s Sheep Cooperative Research Council says 66% of agricultural emissions are released as methane from the gut of livestock.

“Ninety per cent of the methane that sheep and cattle and goats produce comes from the rumen, and that’s burped out,” John Goopy from the New South Wales Department of Industry and Investment told ABC.

“Not much goes behind – that’s horses.”

~ BBC News

Police in the US state of Minnesota are planning to auction off a specially modified and motorised lounge chair whose owner crashed it while drunk.

Dennis LeRoy Anderson, 62, pleaded guilty last Monday to driving the La-Z-Boy while drunk in August last year.

The chair was impounded after he smashed into a parked car as he returned from a bar in Proctor.

The chair comes with a stereo, nitrous oxide booster, parachute and a “hell yeah it’s fast” sticker.

Local police chief Walter Wobig told Agence France-Presse news agency the chair would be posted on eBay next week with no reserve price.

Minnesota police can auction off vehicles seized in drink-drive cases or keep them for official use.

~ BBC News

Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America’s customer service — really, really unhappy.

Chiscolm in August sued the largest U.S. bank and its board, demanding that “1,784 billion, trillion dollars” be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

“Incomprehensible,” U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

“He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a ‘Spanish womn,’” the judge wrote. “He apparently alleges that checks have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers.”

~ Reuters

A Dorset prison has removed anti-bacterial hand gel pumps, which contain alcohol, after an inmate reportedly got drunk on them.

The gel was made available on Monday at HMP The Verne in Portland to help combat the spread of swine flu.

But the Prison Officers Association (POA) said within hours there had been an incident with an intoxicated inmate.

The Prison Service said the pumps were removed as a “precautionary measure” and an investigation was under way.

It is believed the gel was mixed with a drink before it was consumed.

~ BBC News

…as per this year’s Edinburgh Fringe!

1. Dan Antopolski – “Hedgehogs – why can’t they just share the hedge?”

2. Paddy Lennox – “I was watching the London Marathon and saw one runner dressed as a chicken and another runner dressed as an egg. I thought: ‘This could be interesting’.”

3. Sarah Millican – “I had my boobs measured and bought a new bra. Now I call them Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes because they’re up where they belong.”

4. Zoe Lyons – “I went on a girls’ night out recently. The invitation said ‘dress to kill’. I went as Rose West.”

5. Jack Whitehall – “I’m sure wherever my dad is; he’s looking down on us. He’s not dead, just very condescending.”

6. Adam Hills – “Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. You know you’re going to get it, but it’s going to be rough.”

7. Marcus Brigstocke – “To the people who’ve got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn’t invent it!”

8. Rhod Gilbert – “A spa hotel? It’s like a normal hotel, only in reception there’s a picture of a pebble.”

9. Dan Antopolski – “I’ve been reading the news about there being a civil war in Madagascar. Well, I’ve seen it six times and there isn’t.”

10. Simon Brodkin (as Lee Nelson) – “I started so many fights at my school – I had that attention-deficit disorder. So I didn’t finish a lot of them.”

~ BBC News

Russia’s government has issued a tender for luxury furniture, including a gilded bed, triggering an outcry Wednesday in a country where the economy shrank 10.9 percent in the last quarter.

The interior ministry said it wanted a cherry wood bed and that the “the decorative elements of the head and footboards must be covered with a thin layer of 24 carat gold.”

The total value of the furniture tender was 24.4 million roubles ($755,900), according to the procurement agency’s site zakupki.gov.ru

“I cannot imagine the need to purchase expensive items during such a difficult financial situation for the country,” wrote blogger here shortly after the details became public.

The tender announcement said the bed should be sent to the ministry headquarters. Other items must be delivered to an address in an exclusive dacha district on Moscow’s outskirts.

According to Russian newspaper Vedomosti, this is where several senior officials in the interior ministry reside in state-owned homes.

~ Reuters

Visitors to London always have to be on the look out for pickpockets, but now there’s another, more positive phenomenon on the loose — putpockets.

Aware that people are suffering in the economic crisis, 20 former pickpockets have turned over a new leaf and are now trawling London’s tourist sites slipping money back into unsuspecting pockets.

Anything from 5 pounds ($8) to 20 pound notes is being surreptitiously deposited in unguarded pockets or open handbags in Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden and other busy spots.

The initiative, which runs until the end of August in London before being rolled out countrywide, is being funded by a broadbrand provider, which says it wants to brighten up people’s lives in unusual ways.

~ Reuters