Glamorous Bavarian wants law to allow 7-year itch

Bavaria's most glamorous politician -- a flame-haired motorcyclist who helped bring down state premier Edmund Stoiber -- has shocked the Catholic state in Germany by suggesting marriage should last just 7 years. Gabriele Pauli, who poses on her web site in motorcycle leathers, is standing for the leadership of Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) -- sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) -- in a vote next week. She told reporters at the launch of her campaign manifesto Wednesday she wanted marriage to expire after seven years and accused the CSU, which promotes traditional family values, of nurturing ideals of marriage which are wide of the mark. "The basic approach is wrong ... many marriages last just because people believe they are safe," she told reporters. "My suggestion is that marriages expire after seven years." After that time, couples should either agree to extend their marriage or it should be automatically dissolved, she said. Fifty-year-old Pauli, twice divorced, is a maverick intent on shaking up her male-dominated and mainly Catholic party which has dominated Bavarian politics since World War Two. "This is about bringing ideas into the CSU and starting a discussion," she told German television Thursday after she had unleashed a wave of criticism from other politicians.

He used WHAT?

It was a stick up of a different kind for one Australian burglar, who broke into a neighbor's house and played sex games in the bathroom with a bottle of toilet detergent and a vacuum cleaner. A court in the northern city of Brisbane heard how 27 year old Jamie Lacey, high on drugs, broke into the house in September 2004, scattering pornographic magazines around the bathroom and making a sex toy from a bottle of detergent, a piece of wood and a rubber glove, the Brisbane Times reported. Lacey was arrested in December 2006 after police matched DNA his DNA to that on the rubber glove, according to the Australian Associated Press. A vacuum cleaner was also found in the bathroom, but the judge dismissed a defense submission that there was no proof the vacuum has been used for sexual purposes. "I'm sure that your client didn't hoover the carpets," the newspaper and AAP quoted judge Tony Rafter as saying. Lacey was sentenced to 12 months community service, with judge declining to send him to jail since he had held a steady job for two years and was now a father.

Man hides sex toys in the wurst way...

Staff at a German butcher's shop were shocked to discover a customer had hidden two sex toys in their sausages for transport to Dubai, police said Wednesday. "It was two latex dildos with a natural look," said a spokesman for police in the southwestern city of Mannheim. After shopping there earlier in the day, the man, who spoke broken English, returned to the butcher's with two large "Schwartenmagen" sausages. He asked a shop assistant to wrap and cool them until he departed for Dubai the next day. But the assistant noticed the goods had got heavier and alerted police. Officers discovered the man, who was about 50, had removed some of the meat and packed the dildos inside. "He could have used a loaf of bread," the spokesman said. "It's not against the law here. But obviously I can't speculate on what customs in Dubai will have to say about it."

"Dead" man wakes up under autopsy knife

A Venezuelan man who had been declared dead woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy. Carlos Camejo, 33, was declared dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue, where examiners began an autopsy only to realize something was amiss when he started bleeding. They quickly sought to stitch up the incision on his face. "I woke up because the pain was unbearable," Camejo said, according to a report on Friday in leading local newspaper El Universal. His grieving wife turned up at the morgue to identify her husband's body only to find him moved into a corridor -- and alive. Reuters could not immediately reach hospital officials to confirm the events. But Camejo showed the newspaper his facial scar and a document ordering the autopsy.