Bizarre: Tattooed man looks like rotten corpse

BRITAIN: A 26-year-old man had his face and body tattooed in a weird way. The brain-tumor survivor now looks like a rotting corpse and he actually wanted that specific look, reveals The Sun.

The heavily tattooed model is a close friend of Lady Gaga, which might explain his choice of look, said the daily.

Kids as young as 5 turned into sex slaves

SCOTLAND: Scottish kids, as young as five, are lured into a life of sexual slavery by criminal gangs.

The gang of predators trap kids barely old enough to talk, reveals The Sun.

Despite the rampant activity, no one has been prosecuted yet for child trafficking. This kind of criminal activity mostly occurs behind closed doors, reveals a top vice-squad cop to the daily.

Earlier, most of the kids trapped into child trafficking were brought into the UK from abroad, but officials fear that the criminals invovled in flesh trade and turning more and more to Scotland.

Paedophile gangs lure in little kids, barely out of their prams with tempting gifts such as mobile phones and designer clothes. Once they are roped in, they are introduced to drugs and alcohol to keep them in the trade.

The children are also abused physically and threatened to keep quiet about their situation.

 
Smartphones are better than sex and chocolate: survey

BRITAIN: Smartphones are indeed dearer to Brits than sex and chocolate.

About 63 per cent of British population are ready to give up chocolate and 33 per cent would gladly give up sex, rather than give up their favourite gadget, reveals The Sun. The numbers were revealed by Vodafone's Vittorio Colao ay a press conference recently.

'Cooking with Poo' up for prize?

BRITAIN: You could be forgiven for thinking that there cannot be a better contender for the oddest book title of the year than 'Cooking with Poo'.

However, the Thai cooking book by Saiyuud Diwong is not as strange as the title sounds for the simple reason that 'Poo' means crab in Thailand's native language and it is also the chef's nickname.

Some of the other bizarre books that have made it to the shortlist are Aino Praakli's Estonian Sock Patterns All Around the World and The Great Singapore Penis Panic: And the Future of American Mass Hysteria by Scott D Mendelson, which details the 'Koro' psychiatric epidemic that hit the island of Singapore in 1967, reports Metro.

Other books with names like 'A Century of Sand Dredging in the Bristol Channel: Volume Two' and 'Mr Andoh's Pennine Diary Memoirs of a Japanese Chicken Sexer in 1935 Hebden Bridge' by Stephen Curry and Takayoshi Andoh have also been shortlisted.

Horace Bent, The Bookseller's diarist and the custodian of the prize, told the daily: 'Never has the debate raged so fiercely as to which books should be put forward for the shortlist.'

He revealed that this year's titles were so strong that a shortlist of seven was named, rather than the traditional six.

A total of 75 submissions were received for the 32nd installment of the prize.

The winner will be selected through a public vote at thebookseller.com and its sister consumer website welovethisbook.com and will be declared on March 30, 2012.

Girl, 18 commits suicide over severe acne issues

BRITAIN: An exceptional student who attended a grammar school in Britain recently committed suicide. The 18-year-old was suffering from depression after developing severe acne on her face and upper body. 

The girl started suffering from the problem when she turned 14. She was prescribed medication for her condition but the same pills have been responsible for a number of cases of depression and suicide, reports Daily Mail.

This was not her first attempt at suicide. She had tried ending her life in August 2009 the day before her AS-level results were due.

She was kept under observation by mental health services but she took the drastic step again and this time she succeeded. The court was told that those who were supposed to look after her, let her down.

Her body was found in April 2010, seven months after her last appointment with a psychiatrist. Her sessions were discontinued because the health expert went on leave and no one else was ready to take her case.

The brilliant student could have been saved if she was was given better care, a psychiatrist told the court.

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