Naked reporter as good as his word
 Two years after a kilted Irish priest ran out on to the track and caused havoc at the British Grand Prix, a naked Scot jogged out in front of 100,000 Formula One fans on Sunday.
This time, however, it was all about charity -- and McLaren's revenge.
Daily Express reporter Bob McKenzie declared last year, when McLaren were slow and struggling with repeated engine failures, that he would run naked around Silverstone if the Mercedes-powered team won a race in 2004.
When Finland's Kimi Raikkonen won the Belgian Grand Prix, team boss Ron Dennis demanded the Scot honour his word.
"I'm not completely heartless," he had declared. "He's allowed to wear his trainers".
A smiling Dennis was at the start line at Silverstone, two hours before the start of the race, brandishing a green flag to wave the reporter on his way.
Wearing no more than body paint in McLaren's colours, and a traditional sporran to cover his modesty, McKenzie was as good as his word.
After several shortcuts across the grass, he crossed the finish line to kiss the asphalt in relief with a time of 36 minutes.
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Would-be nation-builders hunt for land
Gregory Green is between countries these days. In 1994 he founded The New Free State of Caroline, a small nation-state based on a speck of coral in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But he lost it five years later in a custody battle with Kiribati, a country that only came into existence itself in 1979.
So now Green, a conceptual artist by trade, is preparing to start again by claiming a pair of small islands in the Indian Ocean.
Though he's cagey about exactly where they are.
Unclaimed territory is hard to find these days. Virtually every square inch of the planet's terrestrial surface has been carved up by the world's 199 officially recognized nations, leaving nothing for those who want to start their own countries except a few barren rocks sticking out of the Arctic Ocean and maybe a handful of extremely remote coral atolls.
That hasn't stopped a few bold dreamers from trying. Some of them, like Green, scour maps for as-yet unclaimed territory and try to make it their own through legitimate international channels. Others half-seriously stake out virtual realms in cyberspace or, thinking outside the sphere, boldly go after other planets. A few creative types even try to carve their territory out of existing nations by exploiting technicalities or ambiguities in international law.
 

Italians ok naked sunbathing
Most Italians think nude sunbathing is perfectly natural and don't mind crossing paths with bottomless beach-goers -- even when those bottoms are unsightly, survey results released on Sunday said.
While topless sunbathing is widely practised in Italy, bottoms are usually required and nudists can face fines of more than 500 euros (344 pounds) on some beaches, the Italian Naturalist Federation said.
But the federation said a poll it commissioned from a mainstream media outlet found nearly 70 percent of those surveyed said they would sunbathe nude if everyone else did it. More than 80 percent said nudism was not erotic, but natural.
Women were more frequently bothered by nude sunbathing than men. Just over 40 percent of women said they did not like seeing other naked females on the beach, while just 5 percent of men shared their opinion about nude women.
The survey found nearly two-thirds of men said they weren't bothered by nude male sunbathers.

 Paula Jones plans Clinton Library visit
Paula Jones plans to make her first visit to the Bill Clinton presidential library a profitable one — she plans to wear a T-shirt emblazoned with a sponsor's name.
"I'm going to make a big show out of it," said her publicist, David Hans Schmidt. "Paula is basically going to go to the Clinton Library and go on a tour like the faithful taxpayer that she is."
The visit is expected to take place sometime later this month, and Schmidt said it would be followed by a news conference.
Jones accused Clinton of sexual harassment, saying he made an unwelcome sexual advance in 1991 in a Little Rock hotel room while he was Arkansas governor and she was a state employee. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit against Clinton.
During an appeal of that decision, Clinton agreed to an $850,000 settlement with Jones that included no apology or admission of guilt.
"I got $151,000," Jones told the New York Daily News. "That's gone. I was going through a divorce. I had to get a home for my two boys, I never made bunches of money."

WW2-era explosive found at Moscow hotel
Workers demolishing a Stalin-era Moscow hotel on Sunday discovered a tonne of explosives that would have been used to blow the building sky-high if Nazi troops had taken the Soviet capital, media reported.
After its opening in 1935, the hotel Moskva was one of the Soviet Union's flagship hotels and stood opposite the Russian parliament and only a stone's throw from Red Square.
"The boxes held only explosives without detonators so there was no risk of an (accidental) explosion in the hotel," a police spokesman told Russian news agencies.
NTV television showed sappers and construction workers removing bags of explosive from the deep, muddy hole that is all that is left of the hotel, which once sported a distinctive facade and dominated one of the capital's main thoroughfares.
"According to preliminary information, the explosive was hidden in a cache during the Great Patriotic War," a police spokesman was quoted by Itar-Tass agency as saying, referring to World War Two. Police said they had removed a tonne of explosive by evening.

 Strippers arrested in alleged spanking
Three strippers and two nightclub managers have been arrested in Arkansas for allegedly spanking a trucker at his 31st birthday bash and severely bruising his backside.
After his friends paid $25, Keith Lowery was handcuffed and spanked with a 3-foot-long paddle and a belt while one of the strippers restrained his head with her legs, investigators with the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office said.
Kelly Eslick, 21, a stripper at Sensations nightclub in Jacksonville, northeast of Little Rock, admitted to police that she used a paddle drilled with holes for less air resistance while the two other dancers, Lisa Nolen, 23, and Charlene Smith, 23, used the belt.
The three women were charged with misdemeanor battery, and they and two other club employees — James Daugherty, 31, and Dena Mitchell, 30 — were charged with participating in an obscene performance at a live public show, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
 

Skateboarder clears Great Wall of China
Daredevil skateboarder Danny Way rolled down a massive ramp at nearly 50 mph and jumped across the Great Wall of China on Saturday, becoming the first person to clear the wall without motorized aid, an event sponsor said.
Way botched the landing on his first attempt but then successfully completed the jump across the 61-foot gap four times, adding 360 degree spins on his last three tries, sponsor Quiksilver, Inc. said.
"I was aware of the dangers and my heart was pumping in my chest the whole time, but I managed to pull it off with the help of my team, and I'm honored to have my visions embraced by the people of China," Way said in a statement.
A crowd of several thousand people, including China's ministers of extreme sports and culture, gathered at the Ju Yong Guan Gate about a 40-minute drive from Beijing, Quiksilver's greater China marketing director Ryan Hollis said.

Tailpiece

Two statues
For decades, two heroic statues, one male and one female, faced each other in a city park, until one day an angel came down from heaven.
"You've been such exemplary statues," he announced to them, "That I'm going to give you a special gift. I'm going to bring you both to life for thirty minutes, in which you can do anything you want." And with a clap of his hands, the angel brought the statues to life.
The two approached each other a bit shyly, but soon dashed for the bushes, from which shortly emerged a good deal of giggling, laughter, and shaking of branches. Fifteen minutes later, the two statues emerged from the bushes, wide grins on their faces.
"You still have fifteen more minutes," said the angel, winking at them.
Grinning even more widely the female statue turned to the male statue and said, "Great! Only this time you hold the pigeon down and I'll crap on it's head."