WORLD/Berlin: A German reality television show featuring stars wading in manure and cooking with animal guts will keep running despite criticism from animal-lovers and media institutes, according to the show's producers.
Die Alm (Alpine Meadows), which started this month, follows the lives of eight German celebrities, including TV presenters and models, on a farm in the Italian Alps as they carry out arduous and often disgusting tasks.
"It is the mixture of seeing media figures tested in basic survival skills and the humour element which makes it so popular," said Petra Verner.
Ms Verner is a spokeswoman for the show's producers, ProSieben television.
But animal rights groups say they will take legal action against the producers for making a goat lick salt and syrup off a former glamour model and showing stars slaughtering a turkey. ProSieben rejected the criticism.
"No animals suffered during the making of the programme," said Ms Verner.
Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated story about Germany and cows, Associated Press has drawn attention to the Bavarian tradition of ox-racing.
Their photo shows Marianne Grandl, a 13-year-old farm girl from Riegerau, southern Germany, riding her mount, Tornado, a three-year-old ox, across the fields near her home, this week.
Marianne works out the ox daily and runs him in the traditional Bavarian ox races.
Brussels: French men come out worst at sharing the daily chores with women in a Eurostat survey of how time is spent in 10 European countries.
The average French man spends an hour and 53 minutes a day on such things, nearly half an hour less than his Swedish counterpart, who was the most helpful man in the study.
The figures compared working adults in Belgium, Britain, Germany, Estonia, France, Hungary, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden and Norway, a non-EU member. German women, the least keen on domestic chores, spent 73 minutes a day less on them than Slovenian women, who averaged four hours 24 minutes.
In all countries men spent longer out at work than women, and women managed to sneak in a few extra minutes sleeping.
Zandvoort: A team led by an 82-year-old pensioner has won the first Dutch championship for battery-powered electric scooter racing with a top speed of 12 kilometres an hour.
The Nationaal Fonds Ouderenhulp, a foundation for the elderly, organised the race for people in their 70s and 80s. A team of Rotterdam pensioners took the chequered flag at Zandvoort motor-racing circuit, beating 12 rival nursing homes over the 250-metre course of speed bumps, wooden ramps and plastic slalom cones.
"I'm 88. In the end my [buggy's] battery was running out. It was very frustrating," said contestant Wilhelmus Souren.
Buenos Aires: Red wine is flying off the shelves in Buenos Aires after health experts there declared that drinking it is a great way to tighten the stomach and firm the breasts.
"It brings firmness and nutrition to the skin, making it healthy and elastic," said "wine therapy" specialist Diego Barberan.