QUIRKY WORLD ... Victoria’s secret: 45in knickers worth thousands
A pair of Queen Victoria’s cotton knickers with a 45in waistline could fetch thousands of pounds when they go under the hammer next week.
The pants will be sold alongside nightdresses, stockings, and hats worn by Queen Victoria and her third child, Princess Alice. All items of clothing, from the Yesterday’s World museum in Sussex, bear the stamp VR — short for Victoria Regina.
Auctioneer Richard Edmonds said the royal clothing is in “excellent” condition, having been preserved in tissue paper in a temperature-controlled storeroom. Edmonds dated the pants by measuring the waistline — 45.5 inches.
Britons are no more satisfied with their lives than they were before the financial crash.
When asked to rate their quality of life out of 10, UK residents give an average score of 6.8 — the same as in 2007. The figure suggests Britons are more satisfied with their lives than people in Italy (6.0) and Portugal (5.1), but not as content as residents of Norway (7.4) or Australia (7.3).
Among all the 34 members of the OECD, Greece has the lowest life satisfaction score (4.8) while Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland have the highest (7.4).
The Vatican isn’t ruling out that Pope Francis might chew coca leaves — or at least sip tea made from them — to fend off altitude sickness when he arrives in Bolivia next week.
Francis embarks on a South American tour on Sunday that will take him to Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay. He is due to land on Wednesday at La Paz airport, 4,000m above sea level.
Bolivian culture minister Marko Machicao said that Francis had asked to chew coca leaves upon arrival. Coca is legal in Bolivia and is considered a mild stimulant similar to coffee, but is banned by most nations because it is the raw material for cocaine. A Vatican spokesman said: “The Pope will do what he thinks is right.”
Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul is becoming the first major presidential candidate to publicly court donations from the marijuana industry.
The Kentucky senator’s fundraiser at the Cannabis Business Summit in Colorado comes as the marijuana industry approaches its first US presidential campaign as a legal enterprise.
Though legal marijuana business owners have been active political donors for years, presidential candidates have avoided holding fundraisers made up entirely of them.
“It really speaks to how important this issue is and how far it’s come,” said Mason Tvert, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project — a major sponsor of legalisation campaigns in Colorado, Washington, and other states.
Paul has embraced state marijuana experiments, while other candidates have either taken a wait-and-see approach or vowed to challenge state legalisation efforts.
An exhibition of Israeli surveillance technology has offered a rare peek into the secretive world of Israeli espionage and special forces operations.
Some two dozen Israeli companies exhibited their products used by Israeli and international militaries, police units, and intelligence organisations.
Among the products displayed were cameras concealed in cups of hot coffee, mini-drones that can peek into buildings and invisibility cloaks that conceal a soldier from heat-sensing cameras. The exhibition was part of a conference promoting business partnerships between the military and civilians.
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