A GERMAN woman laid waste to her family home by setting fire to it as she tried to kill spiders in her garage with a can of hairspray and a cigarette lighter.
Police said that when the aerosol failed to finish them off, the 34-year-old woman tried to burn them with the lighter. However, this set the area she had just sprayed on fire and the blaze spread to a hedge. She tried to put the fire out with a garden hose, but couldn't. Instead her semi-detached house next to the hedge caught fire. It's now uninhabitable. The total cost of the damage stood at well over 100,000 euros.
"The family have had to look for somewhere else to stay," the police said. "The spiders are gone though - that problem was solved."
AN English expected to find a tiny mouse rustling behind the TV in his apartment. Instead, he found a venomous giant centipede that somehow hitched a ride from South America to Britain.
The insect was identified as a Scolopendra gigantean, the world's biggest species of centipede. An entomologist at Britain's Natural History Museum said it was likely that the centipede hitched a ride aboard a freighter, probably with a shipment of fruit.
The centipede has front claws that are adapted to deliver venom when it stings, which can lead to a blistering rash, nausea and fever. The sting is rarely life-threatening, but painful.
ANTAI Management School at Jiaotong University in Shanghai is offering a six-month MBA programme with Buddhist characteristics for harried abbots trying to balance spiritual wealth with the other kind. Eighteen monks and lay Buddhists began classes this week. Wang Fanghua, president of the school said, "They can't live in a void. They must interact with their changing environment."
Wang wouldn't reveal the tuition per student, saying it was negotiated with each temple but was less than a regular MBA student would pay. In addition to regular master of business administration courses, the curriculum includes lectures related to temple management, philosophy and religious product marketing. Sun Tzu's ancient "The Art of War" and corporate strategy books are also on the reading list.
