Recently i came across the story of an eight-year-old boy from Indonesian who currently smokes about two packs of cigarettes every day. Now Indonesia is a country where anyone can smoke or buy cigarettes as there is no minimum age to do so. It has been stated by the Child Protection Commission of Indonesia that the government has failed to regulate the tobacco industry and the boy is simply an example of their failings.

In Indonesia there are 240 million residents and of this amount close to half live on less than US$700 a year and strangely enough cigarettes represents the second largest expense for household after food. Yes, can you believe it, cigarettes, not jewellery from a jewellery shop, cigarettes?

The eight year old boy, Ilham, began smoking at the age of four and his habit grew with each passing day. Now he is up to two packs of cigarette a day according to his dad.

The young boy who is from a Sukabumi village would throw a tantrum and even break glass windows if the cigarette were not given to him when he wants them. These days he spends his time at home playing and smoking since he is unwilling to attend school.

With the tobacco companies fighting against regulation from the government and although excise taxes have been increased cigarettes still remain relatively cheap when compared to international prices. The price for a pack of 20 costs less than a dollar. The tobacco industry has been accused by the Child Protection Commission of marketing to young people aggressively.

In the tobacco industry thousands of people are employed and it also earns the government close to£5 billion each year.

This 8 year old will hopefully get intensive treatment to help him kick the habit for good. The World Health Organisation reports that there has been a six fold increase in smoking rates in Indonesia over the last 50 years.

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Let’s face it, cute animal stories are often the trademark of a slow news day / month / week / year. This week the cute animal story is all about a baby aardvark (called Nuru) who was recently born in a Belgium zoo. Aardvarks are apparently very difficult to breed in captivity and baby aardvarks are also very, very cute (like a snuffly, pink, naked, long nosed and big eared mouse) which explains why it’s news. I guess it’s also that we don’t see baby aardvarks very often… I’ve certainly never seen one (or even an adult one!) before.

Before Christmas the main (no news) slow news story was about the two giant pandas arriving at Edinburgh Zoo. Tian Tian and Yang Guang arrived as a gift from China and will hopefully be producing tiny baby pandas in a few months. Now that will be slow news day news. I love this story too, I have to admit!

They not be serious news, but the cute / unusual / baby / pygmy animal news stories are some of my favourites. They quite often pop up at the end of a news segment, and it can feel like a delicious pudding at the end of a stodgy meal! Recently there was a hoax news story going around the internet about pygmy giraffes and I persuaded myself that they must be real, I liked the story so much. Unfortunately I was wrong, but that didn’t stop me hoping!

Let’s face it, the news would be a duller place if the bizarre stories after the politics and the world news were about apple mac repair salesmen, badly organised thieves or lost slippers. We need those cute animal stories!

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Whenever you or anyone from your family speaks of Halloween during the year, it just reminds of the strangely clothed children. How strange these cloths get? No imaginations – each year you see various cloths on the high street that catch your attention and you just feel, “oh, that’s perhaps would look cool but is it worth spending this much for one day?” And, you possibly turn away and get on with your regular spending.

How about a Halloween dress that isn’t particularly scary but will cost you more than the savings of a common man for the entire life? A human slinky dress as in the following video is the most expensive Halloween dress ever made on earth. It is priced at $1 million and is listed on the eBay’s American website for sale. $1m is its ‘Buy-it-now'price and its cost includes the contribution of 10% intended to be made for a charitable cause.

Thankfully, buyer of this dress does not need to worry about the fitting and size of this dress. Its slinky shape makes it possible for anyone, any size or any shape to wear this with perfection. The funky and fancy slinky indeed works like a real slinky. You can wear it and perform several tricks with no or very little practice.

The rainbow-coloured slinky is not the only highlight of the most expensive dress on earth. This dress is sufficiently durable and easy to wear. This dress has been seen on one of the most popular TV shows on earth, America’s Got Talent. If you are too surprised to hear its cost, you must not discount the fact that the dress has been featured by one of the talented fellows in the USA and has earned its reputation already.

Although you need to be really rich to be able to afford this Halloween dress, you need to be benevolent as well. After all, it’s not the money that’s being spent towards data cleaning services for your company; a part of it is going towards a noble and charitable cause too.

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The idea of having one planet orbiting around two suns was until recently a pure example of fiction. First presented in the Star Wars series, this scientifically not proved natural event gathered skepticism among scientists simply because interactions with two starts was considered absolutely impossible in terms of physics. However, NASA prove them all wrong with their latest discover. Around 200 light years from our solar system, the scientists have discovered a planet that is orbiting not one, but two solar structures.

The discovery was made with the technologically advanced Kepler telescope designed to explore our galaxy in search of earth-like planets. According to the scientists, it absolutely resembles the scenes from Star Warts where Dart Vader’s home planet is having two sunrises following one another. However, it is very unlikely that just like the fiction movie, the planet can support any life.

The planet is a gas formation, quite resembling the structure of Jupiter in our solar planet. However, it is extremely cold - temperatures reaching minus 150 degrees are a normal occurrence on the planet according to scientists from the American space agency. Even though it has two suns to warm it, the planet would remain cold because of the low solar activity of both starts - the stronger sun hardly reaches the 60% of the activity of our sun.

And despite being non-habitable, the planet is a first example in long time when fiction becomes reality decades after invented. What else is about to follow?

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See, the chance of an asteroid being close enough to hit earth is pretty ridiculous in the grand scheme of things. Although I am not a scientist and have no education to back my assumptions up, it seems to me that it’s as likely that a rock will hit earth and destroy it as it is likely that cows will don suits and start opening their own banks; in other words, it’s never going to happen. Not unless a very small chance actually becomes reality. And cows suddenly start taking more of an interest in their appearance, of course.

There again, why should we care about a rock somewhere out there, slightly closer to earth than we would like? If it isn’t going to actually hit us, then surely it’s pointless information?

Not quite, as it goes…the fact that we have recorded an asteroid this close does mean a few things, and things which we should all take very seriously. Namely that Space is a wee bit smaller than we at first thought. Or maybe that’s wrong, maybe the word is busy. Busier than we first thought. A disturbing prospect, seeing as the nearest star is a very very long way away…

One thing is certain, of course: if an asteroid of any size was to strike earth then we’d be in so much trouble, so very quickly, that there really wouldn’t be much point writing an article about it. We’d all be dissolved in a massive orange glow faster than we could register.

But actually, if that’s the way it’s going to go, then I don’t think I mind too much. There are certainly worse things to see in your final moments, surely. (Which reminds me, I must take those vinyl stickers off my wall. They’re giving me nightmares, and the drawings on them which I did as a Space-obsessed kid look worryingly like asteroids…)

if an asteroid of any size was to strike earth then we’d be in so much trouble, so very quickly, that there really wouldn’t be much point writing an article about it

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These stories aren’t your normal news like what celebrity has cheated now or what designer jewellery is a must this season, these stories are just plain strange. So if strange is what you’re looking for you’re in the right place.

A Charles Darwin book that was 122 years overdue was finally returned to the library in Australia this month. To say the staff was stunned would be an understatement.

The latest research has shown that a mother’s most stressful time of the day is exactly 5.55pm. Now isn’t that precise.

One family’s granny passed away, but when she woke up from the dead unexpectedly 25 minutes later her family had already cut off her hair. They didn’t hang about did they?

What would you do if you walked into your living room to find your three year old son petting a alligators head? Well the Brazilian mum that this actually happened to snatched her boy up and hid whilst they called the fire brigade who came and took the alligator back to an environmental reserve.

Insane prank caller rang the police 18,000 times. Police arrested the 43 year old man who had rung the emergency services harassing and abusing them over a period of six months. This guy has some serious problems!

If those stories didn’t leave you feeling baffled or a little bewildered then maybe you’re just too strange for your own good!

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It may be a cliché, but I do think it’s genuinely true that the best stories come from real life, rather than from the imagination of a writer. Take the story of my boyfriend’s family; it would make the plot of any Mills & Boon romance seem bitter and cynical, it tugs at the heart strings so much. A war bride, a woman dying young, a baby taken away from her father, only meeting up again years later… Admit it; you have tears in your eyes just reading that synopsis, don’t you? Quick go and read the fabulously grounded Dotmaison blog to bring yourself back down to earth…
Some of the funniest real life stories are to be found in the tabloids. You may have to go hunting for them, but if, like me, you’re fed up of always reading bad news, then it’s worth spending a bit of time reading the news round-up columns, as that’s usually where you find the crazies.
Like the woman who went mental in a cake shop because they’d sold out of her favourite cupcake, causing over £400 worth of damage in front of her two young sons. Or the Colombian footballer who has been banned for kicking an owl that invaded the field of play during a recent game. Some of these supposedly “funny” stories do have a serious side to them; such as the revelation the other week that 26 10-year-olds in the UK have a firearms licence. That’s the kind of story that you half giggle at, before the full enormity of the situation hits home! I prefer the stories that you know you shouldn’t laugh at but can’t help sniggering away every time you think about it. I would give you some examples, but I don’t want you to think I’m completely evil!!

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Both my parents have UK teaching jobs, which meant that I was brought up from an early age to hate the idea of going into the classroom myself when I was older. Which is a shame, as despite all their moaning and complaining, being a teacher definitely has some perks. You get to order people around all the time, you get to have super long holidays and you gets loads of presents from your pupils at Christmas.

Unfortunately, not all these presents are the kind of things you might actually want. My Mum has a stockpile of Body Shop-style gift packs in her bathroom that she could never work her way through if she had three baths a day for the rest of her life! My Dad once got a bottle of whisky, which sounds like a great present, doesn’t it? Except my Dad happens to be teetotal…

But these are small fry compared to some of the worst gifts teachers around the world have ever received. One female teacher in the US was given lingerie by the single father of a boy in her class. Creepy and inappropriate. What was even weirder was he had her size right!

I think there is only one gift that would make me feel more uncomfortable than receiving lingerie from a strange man, and that’s receiving religious books from people who obviously think I need saving. This is a strangely common gift for teachers. Probably from parents who are worried that their children are being taught about evolution rather than the fairy story in the Bible…

I can’t even imagine how great teachers need to be at acting when they open these gifts in front of a classroom full of kids. I mean, you can’t hurt their feelings, can you? Even if they are going straight in the bin once you get them home!

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When asked this question, I really had no idea what to say. I couldn’t actually reach a decision, and frankly I don’t think I have even now. A few days ago, I was asked whether I’d rather give up meat or alcohol. By meat, you’d have to make your own mind up as to whether fish and seafood remained in that category.

In terms of alcohol, it is basically restricted to booze from a bottle. Obviously if a cake contains brandy you can still eat it, and if a stew has a bottle of wine as part of the juice then that’s permitted too. Essentially, alcohol that you can drink out of a glass is banned.

I think I’d rather give up alcohol. But then again, I could live without meat just as easily. And what would the health benefits be of each? Would I get healthier if I gave up alcohol or meat? I suspect that it is alcohol that takes a greater toll on my body, but I would probably fill my life with delicious meat to make up for the absence of booze. I’m very into meat – at my wedding, I received a whole prepared bull as a wedding favour. This was a delightful present and goes to show how passionate about meat I am.

I think the meat or booze conundrum poses a serious question about our lifestyles. Maybe if we took a week of our lives and gave up one or the other (or both!) then we’d understand ourselves more and probably do our bodies some good as well.

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Fosters TV spots have taught people how to speak Australian for several years now. We all know that a salad is simply a steak with a bit of parsley, and a metrosexual is someone who bothers to roam his hand through his hair at a bar. The ads delight the person who watches them at the same time leaving the reader wondering exactly where the joke is.

The Fosters TV executives who planned the campaign knew what they were doing and decided to show American audiences things that Americans believe Australians have in common with them. The tall-tale style of the ads fits well into the American psyche and it plays into what many Americans already think after the popular crocodile hunter.

While the commercials may not get a teetotaler to drink beer, they do provide a good chuckle. Any good American will agree completely with the steak versus salad bit. No American would eat what people normally refer to as a salad. There is a lack of grease and the product is generally healthy. The steak with parsley salad is a meal that is sure to fill you up.

At the end of all of these ads, the viewers is reminded that Foster’s is Australian for beer. Asking an Australian will let you know that beer is indeed Australian for beer, but that Foster’s is an acceptable type of alcoholic beverage. Pretty entertaining overall, certainly makes for an ad that sticks in your head even if it is a total send up of what they’re actually trying to promote.

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