idiotrant.com

CANBERRA (Reuters) –
Parents used to save for their children's weddings but now there's another major rite of passage to fund before they even leave home — the school formal or prom, a booming industry which seems recession-proof.

Parties or balls to celebrate the end of school have become increasingly glitzy affairs in a list of countries from Britain, to Singapore, to India and Australia, emulating U.S.-style proms glamorized in the hit Disney movie "High School Musical" and the TV series "Gossip Girl."

Teenagers are no longer content to celebrate in a school gym decorated with streamers and a parent DJ — and parents are left with the dilemma of whether or not to join the party and splash out on their teenager's big night.

Figures from Elk and Sons Consolidated Ptd Ltd, which runs event organizer Prom Night Events, show that in Australia the high school formal market grew nine percent in the past year to be worth $170 million ($155 million) in the city of Sydney alone.

With the Australian school year ending in December, thousands of teenagers are forking out for glamorous evening gowns, hair stylists, a spray tan, photos and limousines as they celebrate at five-star venues more used to weddings than school events.

"This has become a huge industry in a niche market and some people even think it will overtake the bridal market," said Elliot Kleiner from Prom Night Events.

"The school formal is the biggest event on their calendar for the year. This is the Academy Awards of their school life and for many of them it's the last time they will see other."

A survey of nearly 2,000 Australian students aged between 15 and 18 found that on average girls were spending $1,330 each on the big night while boys were spending an average of $840.

GLAMOUR DAZZLES OVER EXAMS

The poll found that 77 percent of the students when questioned at the start of their final year at school were more focused on the school formal than on their final exams.

In Britain a survey by supermarket chain ASDA found the average cost of attending the high school prom came in at 258 pounds (US$425). Formal menswear shops are seeing a surge in business from teenagers hiring suits and department store John Lewis has added a prom dress line, British media reported.

Melbourne mother Debbie Ward paid $600 for her daughter Emma's formal dress as well as about $360 on hair, nails and a fake tan, $50 on limousine hire, $100 on shores, $95 for a ticket, $75 for ball dancing lessons and $300 on official ball photos, for a total price tag of $1,580.

"It was important as it brings the year level together and the kids enjoyed doing the ball lessons and also dressing up and presenting themselves to their family," she said.

Amy Best, author of the book "Prom Night: Youth, Schools and Popular Culture," studied the trend of upscaling proms, finding the rising purchasing power of youth culture had made the prom into an industry in its own right.

Kleiner believes the massive change in communication had made teenagers into savvy consumer aware of their buying power.

"The teenagers of today have more expendable cash than previous generations for this kind of thing and far more sophisticated tastes," said Kleiner who is setting up franchises in Britain, the United States, South Africa and Canada.

In Singapore, some beauty salons and make-up artists are offering special prom packages for students, who are also shelling out more to prepare for glitzier school parties — to the chagrin of some parents.

"I really wonder, why is it so popular for schools in Singapore to hold their prom night at some expensive high-class hotel with an… expensive dinner which can easily reach much more than $100," wrote one irate parent on blog sgforums.com.

"Somemore, the students must wear appropriate clothing, which could easily cost up to $100," the parent added.

"Isn't it better to hold a simple dinner at school which more students can afford?"

(Editing by Miral Fahmy)

CHICAGO (Reuters) –
Beverage can tops are still finding their way into the stomachs of some children, especially teens, despite being redesigned in the 1970s to keep people from swallowing them, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

A 16-year study at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center found 19 children had swallowed the safety tabs, which are designed to fold back but stay attached to cans for soda and other beverages.

"I think we all know if you fiddle with these stay tabs, you can easily break them off," Dr. Lane Donnelly, who led the study, told reporters at the Radiological Society of North America meeting in Chicago.

The study included children aged 1 to 18 at his medical center, but he suspects many cases go unreported.

Donnelly said he suspected children break off the tab, drop it into the soda can and inadvertently swallow the tab. When broken, the tabs have jagged edges that could perforate the stomach or intestine.

Since the tabs are made from aluminum, they are much harder to detect on an X-ray than coins, which babies and toddlers often swallow, Donnelly said.

He said parents should be aware of the problem and that beverage companies might consider a newer design that makes the tabs harder to break off.

As for the children in his study, none required surgery, although one was sent home with explicit instructions from the emergency department that read: "No sucking on can tops."

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Peter Cooney)

STOCKHOLM (Reuters Life!) –
Designer jeans labeled "Made in North Korea" will go on sale this Friday at a trendy department store in the Swedish capital, marking a first foray into Western fashion for the reclusive communist state.

The jeans, marketed under the "Noko" brand, carry a price tag of 1,500 Swedish crowns ($215) and will share shelf space at Stockholm's PUB store with brands such as Guess and Levi's.

Noko's founders told Reuters they had spent over a year trying to gain access to factory operators in North Korea, and struggled with poor communications and an unfamiliar approach to doing business once inside the country.

"There is a political gap, there is a mental gap, and there is an economic gap," said Jacob Astrom, one of three Swedish advertising executives behind the project. "All contacts with the country are difficult and remain so to this day."

The idea for the project was born out of curiosity for North Korea, which has grown increasingly isolated in recent years under Western criticism of its human rights record and nuclear ambitions.

"The reason we did this was to come closer to a country that was very difficult to get into contact with," Astrom said.

North Korea, a country better known for its reclusive nature than fashionable clothes, rarely allows outsiders within its borders and has virtually no trade or diplomatic relations with most Western countries. Sweden, one of only seven countries to have an embassy in North Korea, is an exception.

But the process of agreeing a deal to produce just 1,100 pairs of jeans — the first ever produced by the country, according to the founders — often proved baffling. E-mails vanished into a void and communications were strained.

At one point they were asked to bring a zinc smelting oven into the country, and a trade representative once asked them to help him find a pirated version of the computer program Adobe Acrobat so he could read files they were sending him.

"Everyone is a manager. Even our chauffeur was some sort of manager," said founder Jakob Ohlsson, adding that North Korean titles were often confusing.

After being turned down by North Korea's largest textile company, the group managed to secure a manufacturing deal with its largest mining company, Trade 4, which also happens to run a small textile operations on its site.

"This is often the way it works in North Korea," said Ohlsson. "Companies seldom specialize and therefore often manage several operations that differ completely from one another."

During the summer, the trio travelled to the factory in North Korea to oversee the production process and ensure that workers there were treated according to Noko's guidelines.

"We were forced to operate by micro-management," Ohlsson said, referring to his experience on the factory floor.

Fashionable novelty seekers can order Noko jeans from the company's website www.nokojeans.com after December 4, but you are not likely to see a pair on the streets of Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, anytime soon.

Socialist dress code forbids them.

(Writing by Nick Vinocur, editing by Paul Casciato)

BERLIN (Reuters) –
Germany's most wanted fugitive was captured Tuesday after a five-day manhunt, when police knocked the escaped murderer off the woman's bicycle he was riding along a rural road near the Dutch border.

Peter Paul Michalski surrendered without a fight after an unmarked police car deliberately crashed into him, knocking him off the bicycle onto the grassy shoulder of the road.

The 46-year-old, who was serving a life sentence when he escaped from prison last week, was carrying a pistol.

Heavily armed police commandos had raided a number of buildings in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia searching for Michalski following his escape from a high-security prison in Aachen. An accomplice in the escape was captured Sunday.

They made a copy of a key inside the jail and simply unlocked several doors to escape, according to German media reports. They even stopped to wave good-bye to a security camera outside the front gate before getting into a taxi.

"Bad luck for you — we just broke out of jail," the accomplice Michael Heckhoff was quoted telling the taxi driver in his testimony to police, according to a report in Bild newspaper Tuesday. "He said that was no problem for him."

Thousands of police were involved in the hunt and authorities in neighboring countries were also alerted.

Police warned the public the two were extremely dangerous. They stole a car and robbed several people along their escape route through several western German towns and cities.

(Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum; editing by Jon Boyle)

ROME (Reuters Life!) –
Rome's largest taxi cooperative is trying to improve the bad name of the city's cabbies, notorious among tourists to one of the world's best loved cities.

A ride from either of Rome's airports to the center of the Italian capital can cost twice what it should, with drivers often squabbling over the right to carry apparently inexperienced visitors and inventing excuses not to pick up locals.

That is set to end, according to Radiotaxi 3570, which has launched a system for tourists to pay on line before they leave home.

"We want to change the public's perceptions about Rome taxi drivers," said 3570's Chairman Loreno Bittarelli at a press presentation, adding that the same services would soon be available in other large Italian cities.

The on-line booking system will also allow tourists to order a cabbie who speaks English, French, Spanish or German. Another scheme will let customers order and pay via telephone text message.

Improving the image of taxi drivers is part of a broader attempt to spruce up services for visitors and end scams.

A colorful billboard campaign recently launched by the town council announces: "Rome loves tourists."

Under the slogan: "Be smart, don't try to be clever," the posters tell taxi drivers, hoteliers and shopkeepers that "more honesty and transparency help you and your city."

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; editing by Robin Pomeroy)

LONDON (Reuters) –
Jonathan Littell, who won France's prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2006 for "The Kindly Ones," has picked up another prize for the same work — the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

The annual prize was contested this year by literary heavyweights Philip Roth for "The Humbling," John Banville for "The Infinites" and Paul Theroux for "A Dead Hand."

The judges praised what they called Littell's "ambitious and impressive" novel, which was originally published in French.

"It is in part a work of genius," they said.

"However, a mythologically inspired passage and lines such as 'I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg' clinched the award for The Kindly Ones.

"We hope he takes it in good humor."

Littell was not expected to attend the prize ceremony in London.

The award was established by Auberon Waugh in 1993. It is designed to draw attention to the "crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels, and to discourage it."

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; editing by Patricia Reaney)

SOFIA (Reuters) –
Bulgarian villagers have named their home-made rakia brandy "Borisovka," playing on the name of Prime Minister Boiko Borisov to thank him for stopping parliament from raising taxes on alcohol.

Last month, the Balkan country's new center-right government abandoned plans to raise alcohol taxes after public anger that this would threaten a centuries-old tradition of making wine and rakia at home.

But the parliament's budget commission later proposed a hike from 2010 and parliament was due to approve the increase on Wednesday when Borisov, a firefighter by training with a black belt in karate, stepped in and asked deputies to scrap the plan.

To express their gratitude, the villagers of Kapatovo, 170 km (100 miles) south of Sofia, decided to call their 2009 rakia "Borisovka," emulating Russian vodka brand "Putinka" that plays on the name of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

"The people of my village and other villages are jubilant. But not because we are drunkards, this must be clear. We simply want to preserve this tradition of making rakia at home," Standart daily quoted Kapatovo's mayor Ognyan Kukov as saying.

Bulgarian families are allowed to produce 30 liters a year of rakia, a traditional grape brandy, without paying tax.

"We must protect the ordinary people who spend their time hoeing the vineyards," Borisov has said.

Kukov will send several bottles to Borisov, Standart said.

To try to secure revenue during the recession, parliament instead raised the tax on gambling by 5 percentage points to 15 percent.

"Better slightly tipsy than robbed," media quoted parliamentarian Krasimir Velchev, from Borisov's GERB party, as saying.

(Reporting by Anna Mudeva)

GUARAJUBA, Brazil (Reuters) –
Brazil's coffee industry is engaged in a tireless battle against rogue roasters who cut corners and costs by bulking up their products with corn, soy or even wood, the ABIC industry association says.

The tainted products have not been known to cause health problems in the consumers who drink them, usually unknowingly, but the industry takes a hard line against the fraudulent practice to protect the beverage's image.

The joint initiative known as the Seal of Purity is run by the Brazilian Coffee Industry Association (ABIC) and involves laboratory testing of coffee picked at random from supermarket shelves. The seal was launched 20 years ago.

"The most common thing is to find wood from the (coffee) tree and shells from the beans but you can also find corn or caramel, which is much cheaper than coffee," said Almir Jose da Silva, ABIC's chairman.

Most of Brazil's exported coffee is shipped as raw beans, confining this problem to products sold at home. Silva said the problem was still small given the huge amount of coffee sold in Brazil, the world's No. 1 coffee grower and No. 2 consumer.

Brazilian law prohibits the sale of coffee with more than 1 percent impurities, and ABIC has taken upon itself to weed out producers who flout the rules. It reports sub-standard products to the public prosecutor and health authorities.

"Our forecast for 2010 is to carry out more than 3,000 collections" to test, Silva said. ABIC members whose coffee is consistently free of impurities are allowed to use the Seal of Purity label on their packaging.

THREE STRIKES

Roasters falling short of the law on the other hand, are given the opportunity by judicial authorities to fix the problems within a set time and their contaminated batches are withdrawn from sale.

The fine is doubled if more impure coffees are discovered at a later date and then companies can eventually be shut down by the government authorities if the practices continue.

This year, 10 firms were thrown out of ABIC and reported for deliberately bulking up their products. Some even go to the trouble of heating sugar to confection caramel to add, which unusually imparts a bitter rather than sweet taste.

Silva said the presence of contaminants was occasionally accidental, but rarely.

"Some don't take the necessary precautions but in the case of fraud using corn and sugar, this is done deliberately by the industry," Silva said, adding firms involved were immediately expelled from ABIC since their actions were intentional.

He said he knew of no cases of health problems due to such products but said impurities could cause discomfort.

"These coffees can make you feel unwell in the stomach or make you burp a lot," Silva said in an interview.

ABIC's efforts in hunting down fraudulent coffee producers are intended to avoid damage to coffee's image and also to help the industry continue to recruit new drinkers.

"Research shows that when coffee is good quality it develops the habit of consumption and when it is bad it can stop people drinking coffee. Quality is what develops consumption," Silva said.

(Editing by John Picinich)

DUBLIN (Reuters) –
Irish workers caused traffic jams on Tuesday as hundreds made use of a one-day public sector strike to do some Christmas shopping in the cheaper stores across the border in Northern Ireland.

Unions said more than 250,000 teachers, nurses and other public sector workers were taking part in the strike against government plans to cut their pay.

Managers of shopping centers on the UK side of the border said business was like at weekend or pre-Christmas peaks.

"(It) is a direct result of the day of (strike) action," said Peter Murray, manager of the Buttercrane shopping center in Newry, just north of the border on the main Dublin-Belfast road.

Many families traveled north because schools were closed for the day south of the border.

Shoppers from the Republic of Ireland have caused a mini-boom in places like Newry, cheaper due to the weakness of sterling against the euro, lower UK value-added-tax (VAT) and rents, while adding to the woes of the former "Celtic Tiger" economy.

"There are no strike specials," Murray added on Irish public radio RTE, which said there were 5-mile (8-km) queues into Newry.

The chairman of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' public service committee, who warned a second round of strikes could take place on December 3, said he had not seen any evidence of public servants spending the day shopping.

"I have visited picket lines this morning and saw tens of thousands of public workers who were picketing. I have no evidence of public servants spending their day shopping," Peter McLoone told a news conference.

(Reporting by Andras Gergely and Padraic Halpin; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

BERLIN (Reuters) –
A car expert says he has tracked down Hitler's favorite Mercedes to a garage near the town that helped the Austrian-born Fuehrer become a German citizen.

Classic cars specialist Michael Froehlich said he found the bullet-proof touring car after charting its postwar travels from Austria to Las Vegas and back to Munich, where Hitler burst onto the political scene with a failed putsch in 1923.

"It was the best car in the world at the time. Better than the Bugatti, Bentley, Rolls Royce or whatever," Froehlich told Reuters from his office in Duesseldorf. "It was his favorite car: the one he used most often, which he used for parades."

After being commissioned by a Cypriot buyer to find the vehicle, Froehlich discovered it had been bought by a farmer near Braunschweig, where in 1932 local Nazi officials got Hitler a civil servant's job so he could claim citizenship.

"I thought it was an interesting job, but on the other hand I wasn't too thrilled, because my parents and grandparents suffered greatly under his regime," Froehlich said of the commission.

The dark blue car, which Froehlich said had spent decades in the basement of the Imperial Palace Casino in Las Vegas, was recently sold by the heirs of a Munich brewing tycoon before he traced it "in under two months" to northern Germany.

Froehlich said reports the buyer was Russian were mistaken, and rejected the notion that past owners of the vehicle with the number plate "1A 148 461" were admirers of the dictator.

"They weren't Nazis from what I can see, I think it's something they saw as a business investment," he said. "I can well imagine that an old Hitler banger has a certain value."

Froehlich declined to name the car's price tag, or give details about the buyer, but said the 1935 edition custom-made vehicle could fetch "more than 10 million euros ($14.91 million)."

Though he had not yet had outside confirmation of the car's authenticity, the owner's paperwork left no doubt, he added.

"The Mercedes sales register shows this 770 K model was ordered for the Fuehrer and Chancellor of the Reich in 1935," he said.

Only 88 of the series were ever made and the Braunschweig car showed all the special modifications made for Hitler, who had to be driven because he had no "Fuehrerschein" — a German word made up from "driver" and "license" — Froehlich said.

"He was a Fuehrer without Fuehrerschein," he said.