Swiss girl, 7, finds condom in McDonald’s Happy Meal!

October 6th, 2009 GENEVA - Celebrated film director Roman Polanski was set to stay in jail after Swiss justice ministry officials said Tuesday the risk of flight if he were to be released was too high. The Swiss justice ministry deemed that Polanski posed a risk that he would try to flee the Alpine country if released to either house arrest or on bail, options which had previously been floated.

September 29th, 2009 GENEVA - Film director Roman Polanski filed a formal appeal with a Swiss court Tuesday against the arrest order for his extradition to the US. Polanski was arrested late Saturday at Zurich airport on a warrant dating from a 1977 California case in which he pleaded guilty to unlawful intercourse with a 13-year-old girl he plied with champagne and sedatives.

September 22nd, 2009 RIO DE JANEIRO - A three-year-old girl has survived after falling from the fourth floor of a building in Brazil's Sao Paulo city, authorities said. The child suffered multiple fractures but was conscious, doctors said.

September 16th, 2009 MOSCOW - Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin handed over a 5000 dollar Swiss watch to a weapons manufacturing factory worker in Tula. According to The Telegraph, the metalworker put Putin in a spot after he gave a speech on the economy in the town of Tula.

September 6th, 2009 LONDON S - The horrified mother of Phillip Garrido, the "American Fritzl", who held a girl captive for 18 years and fathered two children with her, has said that she thought kidnapped victim Jaycee Lee Dugard was his daughter by a former lover. Frail Patricia Garrido, 88, says she had no idea what was going on in Garrido's life.

September 3rd, 2009 NEW DELHI - India and Switzerland will soon start negotiations to enlarge the scope of their bilateral double taxation treaty to allow sharing of details of bank accounts of people accused of tax evasion, visiting Swiss Vice-President and Minister of Economic Affairs Doris Leuthard said Thursday. We are open to renegotiation of the treaty to include tax evasion, which is a crime here.

September 2nd, 2009 GENEVA - The Swiss government has called on Libya to honour pledges it made in an accord with Switzerland and allow two detained Swiss nationals to leave the country, the official Swisinfo.ch news website reported. In a statement, Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz and Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey also repeated Switzerland's commitment to complying with the terms of the deal aimed at normalising relations soured by the arrest of Hannibal Gaddafi, a son of the Libyan leader, in Geneva last year.

August 12th, 2009 GENEVA - The US and Swiss governments have reached an agreement in the case against UBS over charges of tax fraud, a US government attorney said Wednesday. During a conference call among UBS, Swiss and US government attorneys which the news media listened in on, one US attorney told Judge Alan Gold, of a Florida district court, that the deal was initialled and ready to be signed, but gave no further details.

July 29th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Just hours after she was released by her kidnappers, a 10-year-old Chinese girl helped the police arrest them on Wednesday. Cops in Xuchang, Henan province, revealed that the little girl was kidnapped on her way to school in the morning.

July 27th, 2009 WELLINGTON - Good relationships with family and friends and job satisfaction are what make people happiest, finds a new survey. The annual UMR Research happiness survey involving almost 15,000 New Zealanders over the age of 18 showed that even socialising, having a sport, hobby, or interest in the arts can help people stay happy.

July 22nd, 2009 LONDON - Silvio Berlusconi spurns a condom - at least that's what new tapes of a hooker's alleged dealings with the Italian PM which hit the internet suggest. The Sun reports, in one of the tapes, Patrizia D'Addario, 42, recoils as a business tycoon linked to Berlusconi's parties tells her: "He will give you a present.

April 27th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Votes in the Swiss Alps have passed legislation banning naked hiking after dozens of mostly German nudists started rambling through their region. The government recommended the ban after citizens objected to seeing the nude walkers, wearing nothing more than boots.

April 22nd, 2009 LONDON - An American man has lost a stone in 30 days - just by eating McDonald's. Doug Logeais, 40, was determined to get rid of the flab, but also wanted to treat himself by eating at his favourite fast-food restaurant.

April 17th, 2009 MELBOURNE - John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston reportedly jetted into Australia for a three-day visit. The Hollywood couple had previously been avoiding the spotlight after losing their 16-year-old son Jett, who died from a seizure during a family holiday in the Bahamas on January 2.

March 30th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Despite fiance Michael Clarke being a cricket superstar, Lara Bingle has revealed that she finds cricket "boring". "I love when he's playing (but) it's not a very dramatic sport and yeah, it can get a little boring," The Daily Telegraph quoted her, as saying.