ShareTHAT bridge in St Petersburg, Russia, with the huge penis drawn on it is up for a prize at the country’s Innovations award, organized by the Ministry of Culture and the Center for Modern Art.

SharePRINCE Harry has been to a gay bar in London’s Soho. The News of The World, enraged by former Sky Sports football pundit Andy Gray’s sexism of TV, peppers the story with these phrases:

ShareLONDON: A pet cat that had been missing from its Liverpool home in the UK has returned seven-years after it disappeared.

ShareSYDNEY: A seven-year-old British boy nearly bought a real-life Harrier fighter jet for $113,515 via online shopping.

ShareSAO PAULO: Police in Brazil said they had freed a 45-year-old woman who had been locked in a house for 20 years with no communication with the outside world.

ShareIN Australia, medical students are experimenting on anaesthetised patients. These unauthorised examinations feature the students investigating the patients’ genital, anus and breasts.

ShareTHE good news is that James O’Neill, 28, of Cleethorpes, will not be jailed for assaulting two men – leaving both with fractured bones – because he’s off to Australia. O’Neill’s not being deported – he’s going there on his own free will.

ShareThe U.S. military is phasing out their “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which prevented gays and lesbians from openly disclosing their sexual preferences. Now PC Air, a start up airline in Thailand planning to serve South Korea and Japan, beginning in April 2011, is extending the military’s policy of openness even further by hiring transsexual...

ShareGLADYS Bulinya has six sets of twins. She lives in Kenya. The BBC’s Muliro Telew says in Kenya people think twins are curse. She then delivers this great line:

ShareSometimes when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go, even if it means being docked a game in a tennis match. Former world No. 1 Ana Ivanovic learned this the hard way Thursday when an ill-timed bathroom break caused her to lose the second game of her match in Austria against Barbora Zahlavova Strycova.

ShareA man in the US has been acquitted of drunk-driving after claiming he consumed alcohol to keep warm after – but not before – he lost control of his vehicle on an icy road.

ShareA confused woman has called the UK’s emergency hotline on Boxing Day to ask if it was Christmas Day. In an audio clip released by Hertfordshire police, the unidentified woman dialled 999 about 1.50am on December 26 and admitted that she did not have an emergency before wishing the operator Merry Christmas.

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ShareThe Czech Republic now has a transport minister without a driving licence.

Share PARIS: Some weird, wild and wonderful stories from 2010:

Share DENPASAR ( INDONESIA): A Thai woman swallowed more than 1,200 ecstasy pills wrapped in plastic and tried to smuggle them into the Indonesian resort island of Bali, officials said on Monday.

Share NEW YOR: Whatever you think about using grating words, at the end of the day it’s actually better not to say whatever, if you know what I mean.

Share OLYMPIA: With Washington state agencies looking for ways to save money, the Corrections Department says it’s economizing by recycling inmate uniforms, switching to juice boxes and providing shorter socks.

Share PRAGUE: Authorities say that life-sized cardboards of female police officers in miniskirts placed alongside roads have managed to slow down speeding drivers in several central Czech towns.

Share LAS VEGAS: It wasn’t blue suede shoes but a pair of sneakers that led a San Francisco doctor dressed as Elvis Presley to a woman who passed out at a Las Vegas restaurant after a marathon.

Share An Oregon man has had an Awesome name change. Douglas Allen Smith Jr. says he changed his name to Captain Awesome last month because he was inspired by the nickname of a character on the NBC television show “Chuck” – Dr. Devon “Captain Awesome” Woodcomb.