Funky dishes get kids' taste-buds tingling...

A father's attempts to help his four-year-old son to eat vegetables is proving to be an internet hit. Thousands of parents are logging on to FunkyLunch.com to copy dishes created by a 36-year-old web designer to tittilate his son's reluctant taste-buds. Mark Northeast found that young Oscar's eating habits improved markedly once he began turning his lunches into designs including cartoon characters and a grand piano.

Northeast, from Littlehampton in West Sussex, was encouraged by friends to set up the website. He said: "I made his sandwich into the shape of a space rocket with vegetables for boosters and he wolfed it down really quickly.

"The following week I thought I would try something different so I made a pirate ship. He started posting pictures of his creations on internet sites Facebook with Twitter updates soon gathered a loyal following. Fans are now posting their own inventive recipes.

"Facebook friends encouraged me to set up a website. FunkyLunch.com was born out of the desire to turn an ordinary lunchtime sandwich into something a bit different to encourage children to try to eat a varied and healthy lunch."

‘Tiger' sets new wing-walk record

An eight-year old London boy, Tiger Brewer broke the world record for the youngest wing-walker at an RFC airfield near Cirencester last week.

Tiger is the grandson of Vic Norman, who operates the only formation wing-walking team in the world, SuperAeroBatics. Mr Norman, of North Cerney, flew the 1940's biplane when Tiger took to the skies.

The high-flying youngster broke the record by three years after it was previously held by Guy Mason, son of Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, who wing-walked in 2001 aged 11.

Speaking after his achievement which saw him fly at 1000 feet and at 100mph, Tiger said: "It was really great. Everything went from being really big to being really small.

‘I wanted to wave at my parents but I couldn't make out who they were."

Cambridge tranquility punctured by ‘punt wars'

Punting by CambridgeUniversity students on the Cam and its ‘ Backs' has been the setting of countless scenes in films and novels. But in recent months the gentle art in which the flat-bottomed boats are poled on tranquil waters has taken an ugly twist...as ‘war' has been declared between the established firms who have run the punts for more than a century and new firms, hoping to grab a share of the lucrative market.

Sam Matthews of The Punting Company is one of the latest victims of what locals are calling the "punt war" as firms view for control of the £2.5 million industry in Cambridge "It's somebody hoping to start a war to get rid of us," he said after two of his boats were deliberately vandalised one night last week.

Two of his boats were found sawn through from top to bottom in a night time attack described as " the most audacious in the spate of clashes that have disrupted the tranquillity of the Cam" and have prompted calls for a cap on the number of boats competing for custom from the four million people who visit the city each year. Observers say punting is now in danger of becoming a tawdry industry that will lower the city's reputation.

The panoply of weapons used in the punting wars is said to include stink bombs thrown from bridges to render a rival's boat inoperable, washing up liquid squirted to make it too slippery for the punter to stand, and bolt-cutters to snap mooring chains. But never, until now, an electric jig saw.

Matthews, whose independent company jostles for space on the Cam with century-old established punting companies, more recent co-operatives, and "mobilers", so named because they have no established moorings, estimates damage to his boats in excess of £10,000.

Rod Ingersent, general manager of Scudamore's, the oldest and largest of the punting companies, described the attack as "a new departure".

"We've had argy bargy, touts fighting over tourists, pushing and shoving, yes. But everyone is a bit shocked because it is not something we have known before." In the last three years, police have investigated 31 altercations between touts. One was said to have involved a knife, and in another a woman broke her hip when she was caught up in a brawl.

Showing what they "have to offer"

Just as the rather dull German Chancellor Angela Merkel was named as the most powerful woman in the world for the fourth consecutive year, the political climate was unexpectedly warmed up by the appearance of titillating billboards displaying the generous cleavages of the Merkel and her fellow Christian Democratic Union (CDU) MP Vera Lengsfeld - both in low-cut gowns - with the suggestive strapline: ‘We have more to offer', a play on the party's official slogan ‘We have the power'.

While the move has enraged many politicians, Lengfeld apparently hopes that the campaign will help her retain the marginal seat in the eastern part of Berlin in next month's general elections. The 750 posters are mostly confined to the precincts of Lengsfeld's constituency of Berlin Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain, and she has admitted that she had not taken the formidable Chancellor's permission to make these revelations, so the CDU cannot be accused of being part of this descent into décolletage democracy.

What would the GSD do? Atlas shudders at the thought...

Heading for your TV screens...

A group of comic book ‘superheroes' - Named the 99 as each possesses one of Allah's 99 attributes - has proved such a massive success in the Muslim world that the TV series about them is soon to be adapated and screened in the UK. The characters include a burka-clad woman named Batina the Hidden, and a Saudi Arabian Hulk-type man named Jabbar the Powerful.

They have proved a hit from Morocco to Indonesia and were recently named as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the world by Forbes magazine.

Now they are being brought to British television by Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, with a mission to instill Islamic values in children across all faiths.

Until now, the superhero market has been dominated by the likes of Batman, Spiderman and Superman who have typically limited their crime-fighting abilities to America and the Western world.

The 99 were created by Dr Naif al-Mutawa, a clinical psychologist from Kuwait, who felt Muslim children needed a new set of heroes to look up to, to counter jihadist role models.

"It hit me that the stories I was hearing were from men who grew up believing that their leader, Saddam, was a hero, a role model - only to one day be tortured by him," he told The Times. "I decided the Arab world needed better role models."

However, despite being called the 99, there will never be a full cast of 99 superheroes since it is forbidden to depict all Allah's attributes. The cartoons were "based on attributes such as generosity and mercy. These are not things that Islam has a monopoly over," he said.

Muslim model to be caned...for drinking a beer...

At the other end of the scale - and a significant iundicator of religious intolerance in parts of the Muslim world, a former model Kartika Sari Dewi Sukarno has been sentenced to six cuts with a cane...for drinking beer. The caning - and public humiliation - of the young woman has been postponed till the Ramadan month is over.  Her shocking treatment has become the fifth most popular story on both the CNN and BBC websites, according to the Malaysia Times.  "I feel boiling mad with her sentence, because the canning punishment is barbaric and out-dated for any crime," a columnists in the newspaper wrote this week.  "It should have been outlawed long ago.  It does not serve as a deterrent, and neither should it serve as punitive punishment.  It belongs to the Dark Ages."

Can you show me the bull-ring is?

As the global credit crunch drives more and more Britons to take their annual holidays at home - and the weak pound attracts more of her European neighbours to cross the Channel - the City of London Information Centre (CLIC) has listed some of the strangest and funniest questions it has been asked in recent weeks by both local holidaymakers and foreign visitors.

What sort of parallel questions would be put to our enthusiastic young men and women manning the Tourist Information offices at Casemates or the Frontier, Atlas wonders.

"How can I have tea with the Queen?" CLIC was asked. Here, "How can I have tea with Sir Robert?" doesn't quite have the same surreal ring. Someone might even mistake the request as relating to a well known lawyer; but how about: "When can I have tea with King Juan Carlos?"

Could "When do the clowns come on at Piccadilly Circus?' be replaced locally by "When does Parliament sit?"

"Where can I see the buildings destroyed in the Second World War?" another of the questions directed at CLIC could be converted to a simpler: "Where can I find the Rosia Tanks?"

"Which way to the Eiffel Tower?" would transpose as "Which way to the bull ring?" and "What number in Oxford Street is Oxford University?" would be "Why is Parliament NOT in Parliament Lane?" or "Why is No6 not No1?"And instead of "Where can I buy paraffin for my lamp?" why not "Is Princess Anne's  Battery dry cell or wet cell, and is it for a car or for a flashlight?"