A New Zealand woman dying of cancer will be buried in a pink coffin decorated with 30 pairs of breasts, a newspaper reported Friday.

Pam Hermansen, 48, of Christchurch, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, told The Press it had been a major part of her life so she wanted breasts represented at her funeral.

She said her left breast had been removed, but the cancer spread to her bones and liver and she was told in 2008 that her condition was terminal. In February, she was given about five months to live. “It’s a bit unpredictable, but I am living, not waiting to die,” she said.

Local artist Lyn Taylor painted the breasts on the coffin made by a builder friend of Hermansen.

“I started thinking about painting ethereal boobs, but the more I painted, the more realistic they got,” she said. “I wanted to make them subtle, but boobs aren’t subtle are they? They need to stand out. They’re beautiful boobs.”

Hermansen said she felt no fear when she saw the coffin for the first time. “When faced with this, there is an inner strength that comes out,” she said. “I mean, I don’t really want to be in it, but I want to raise awareness for breast cancer.

A woman from a remote mountain village in Eastern Europe turned 130 yesterday, it is claimed making her the oldest person on earth.

Officials in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia say Antisa Khvichava was born on July 8, 1880.

She lives with her 40-year-old grandson in an idyllic vine-covered country house and retired from her job as a tea and corn picker in 1965, when she was 85.

Wearing a bright dress and headscarf for her birthday, Antisa said, “I’ve always been healthy, and I’ve worked all my life at home and at the farm.”

She never went to school to learn Georgian and speaks only the local language, Mingrelian.

Lost certificate

Antisa’s age still has not been independently verified. Her original birth certificate has been lost, but according to records, she retired as a tea and corn picker in 1965 at age 85.

Officials said they have other documents that back her age claim, and her family insists she is 130.

To mark her birthday, a string ensemble played folk music out on the lawn, while her grandchildren offered traditional Mingrelian dishes like corn porridge and spiced chicken with herbs to all guests at the party.
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The age of Eugenie Blanchard of Saint Barthelemy, France, the oldest woman, according to the Gerontology Research Group

The state of Pennsylvania has introduced America’s first-ever wine vending machine as part of a supermarket trial.

Customers just have to swipe their driver’s licence, look into the camera and blow into a breathalyser attached to the machine to purchase bottles of wine.

If the machines prove successful inside two supermarkets, the state Liquor Control Board says it could place the high-tech gadgets in up to 100 more.

Strict licensing laws in Pennsylvania mean individuals can only buy wine and liquor for home consumption at state-owned stores staffed by public employees.

Several attempts to reform the laws have been blocked by special interest groups intent on maintaining profits from the alcohol trade.

The vending machines are being provided by Simple Brands, based in Pennsylvania, for free in exchange for being able to sell advertising on attached flat-screen monitors.

Customers choose their bottle of wine on a touch-screen display, swipe their ID, blow into an alcohol sensor and look into a surveillance camera.

The whole process takes around 20 seconds and a fee of $1 could be added after the trial period.

A state employee in Harrisburg remotely approves the sale after verifying the buyer matches the photo ID.

Pennsylvania liquor board chairman Patrick Stapleton said the kiosks gave ‘an added level of convenience in today’s busy society’.

Simple Brands president Jim Lesser said the vending machine was not aimed at wine connoisseurs.

“They were developed for the average consumer who wants a nice bottle of wine with their steak and seafood,” he added.

An experimental solar-powered aircraft took off from a Swiss airbase here in a bid to make history by flying round the clock and through the night.

Solar Impulse whirred along the runway at Payerne in western Switzerland in the early hours of Wednesday, reaching 35 kilometres per hour as lone pilot Andre Borschberg gently lifted into clear skies at 0451 GMT on a scheduled 25 hour flight, “This should be a great day of all goes well,” said team chief Bertrand Piccard, who made the first non-stop round-the-world flight in a balloon more than a decade ago.

“It’s clear that this is something that is completely different at least for aviation, but it’s also something completely different to what has existed in our society,” he added moments before take-off.

“The goal is to take to the air with no fuel. The goal is to show that we can be much more independent from fossil energy than people usually think.”

The ground control crew were due to decide about 13 hours later, shortly before dusk, whether Borschberg should press on through darkness.

The go-ahead will depend on the sun’s ability to charge up Solar Impulse’s batteries in the daytime and the threat of strong high altitude winds, joint flight control chief and former astronaut Claude Nicollier said.

A traffic officer from Louis Trichardt, South Africa, was arrested after he drove at more than twice the speed limit in his personal Mercedes-Benz over the weekend.

Joe Munyai was nabbed near Bandelierkop on the N1 on July 3 by two provincial traffic officials, who had a new mobile recorder in their patrol car, after he allegedly clocked 274km/h in his Mercedes-Benz C200 Kompressor.

The part of the N1 has only single traffic lanes with a speed limit of 120km/h.

“It looked like he was on the Kyalami racetrack,” 24.com quoted Clarissa Naidoo, spokesperson for the provincial traffic department, as saying.

This particular car’s top speed is only 235km/h, according to Media24 motoring journalist Marnus Hattingh.

But Naidoo, as well as Gordon Horn of the Limpopo traffic department and provincial police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Mohale Ramatseba, insisted that Munyai had been caught at 274km/h.

Munyai appeared in the Bandelierkop Magistrate’s Court on July 5. Ramatseba said he was released on bail. He will appear in court again on July 9.

Louis Bobodi, spokesperson for the Makhado municipality, said Munyai has not been suspended.

Naidoo said Pinkie Kekana, the MEC for transport, was very upset about the incident.