Cashiers claim desperate measures

Cashiers at Chile's Santa Isabel supermarket chain say their employer is so stingy with their work breaks that they have had to resort to wearing diapers to make it through shifts without getting fired. The union at Santa Isabel, owned by Cencosud, one of Chile's largest chain retailers, said cashiers are not allowed to leave their work stations during their shifts, which last eight hours or longer. "They are not given permission to go to the bathroom and they can't last for so many hours; that's why some have started using diapers or sanitary pads," Marianela Fernandez, president of the Santa Isabel Supermarket workers union, told Reuters. Cencosud said any such incidents would have.

The complaint has been taken up by Chile's largest labor organization, the Central Workers Union, or CUT, which has requested government action in the case.

Naked man superglued to exercise bike

A gang stripped a South African man before supergluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report Thursday.

SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg.

"The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut," SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying. The man was rescued about three hours later when his partner arrived home.

Thirsty world captures investors' attention

The need to feed up to two billion more people by 2025, booming industrialization in developing countries like China, and a warming climate seen threatening the world's most precious natural resource has investors serious about water.

"Regardless of what happens to the economy -- you can bet and bank on a predictable demand for water. It is a product that is essential to life," said Deane Dray, who analyzes water markets for Goldman Sachs in New York. "People will largely pay 'whatever' because it is life-sustaining and there is no substitute. You put all those together, it is very clear why companies are enthusiastic about water."

ndeed, conflicts over water rights are already going on in dozens of areas from sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East to Australia, India, eastern Asia and the U.S. Southwest. One expert estimates that in the next 25 years trillions of dollars will be needed to upgrade fresh water and waste water technology and build new infrastructure to deliver water, with the bulk of that money to be spent in Asia. "Infrastructure upgrades that are going to be required over the next 25 years on a global basis could be close to $20 trillion," said John Balbach, managing partner at Cleantech Group, a venture capital research firm in green technology based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Such huge costs mean a budget nightmare for governments, a reality check that water companies also factor in. Eventually, they say, people in all countries will have to ration water use by price and realize it is not a free resource for the world.

Fat Brit kids shipped to Australia's outback

Britain used to ship convicts to Australia. Now it is about to send overweight youths. New reality television series "Fat Teens Can't Hunt" -- a kind of "Survivor" meets "The Biggest Loser" -- will see 10 overweight British teenagers sent to Australia's outback to live and eat with remote Aboriginal communities. They will survive for a month on "bush tucker" including witchetty grubs, local berries and grasses, or go hungry in a program "Big Brother" producer Endemol says is aimed at helping overweight children tackle overeating. "Britain has the fattest teenagers in Europe with one in three overweight or obese. Doctors warn that if we don't tackle this problem, generations of kids face a drastic reduction in the quality and longevity of their lives," Producer Bridget Sneyd told Britain's The Sun tabloid newspaper. The program, made for BBC3, will be similar to "Fat Men Can't Hunt," which featured a group of overweight men living in the deserts of Namibia. But the new series will star boys and girls aged 16-19, following them as they trap and forage for food. Producers are still searching for a suitable location and are seeking a volunteer Aboriginal community.

Snakes invade Nepal Maoist camps, rattle leader

Hundreds of snakes have invaded camps housing Nepal's former Maoist fighters, infuriating their top leader, the state-run RSS news agency said Wednesday. Maoist chief Prachanda accused the government of ignoring the maintenance of the camps, set up under a peace deal in November that ended a decade-old civil war in which thousands of people died.

"More than 700 snakes have been killed in a cantonment," RSS quoted Prachanda as saying. There are 28 camps housing 31,000 ex-guerrillas under United Nations monitoring.

Prachanda did not say if any of the former guerrillas had been bitten by snakes. Nepal is a Hindu-majority country and Hindus consider snakes holy. Lord Shiva, one of the trinity of Hindu gods, is shown in pictures with a snake as his garland.

Police call locksmith to break into jail

Police in Germany had to call in a locksmith to break into jail when the lock on a cell broke, trapping a prisoner inside, authorities said Wednesday.

Police in the Bavarian town of Zwiesel near the Czech border locked up the 18-year-old at the police station after he was accused of smashing a car window during May day festivities on Tuesday.

Officers planned to send the youth home the following morning, but could not open the door because of the broken lock.

"We told him we'd get him out of there," said a spokesman for local police. "We said the locksmith was coming and that if that didn't work we'd prise the iron bars apart for him."

The locksmith managed to spring the lock and free the prisoner.

Ice Station Antarctica

An unidentified scientist works in Antarctica in this undated image. Visitors to the Ice Station Antarctica exhibit at London's Natural History Museum from May 25, 2007 will have the chance to become "ice cadets" who don multiple layers of special clothing to learn what it's like to live and work in one of the most hostile places on the planet. (ANTARCTICA)