Minimalist poet, minimalist lifestyle

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) - A little under one-third of U.S. households have no Internet access and do not plan to get it, with most of the holdouts seeing little use for it in their lives, according to a survey released on Friday.

Park Associates, a Dallas-based technology market research firm, said 29 percent of U.S. households, or 31 million homes, do not have Internet access and do not intend to subscribe to an Internet service over the next 12 months.

The second annual National Technology Scan conducted by Park found the main reason potential customers say they do not subscribe to the Internet is because of the low value to their daily lives they perceive rather than concerns over cost.

Forty-four percent of these households say they are not interested in anything on the Internet, versus just 22 percent who say they cannot afford a computer or the cost of Internet service, the survey showed.

The answer "I'm not sure how to use the Internet" came from 17 percent of participants who do not subscribe. The response "I do all my e-commerce shopping and YouTube-watching at work" was cited by 14 percent of Internet-access refuseniks. Three percent said the Internet doesn't reach their homes.

The study found U.S. broadband adoption grew to 52 percent over 2006, up from 42 percent in 2005. Roughly half of new subscribers converted from slower-speed, dial-up Internet access while the other half of households had no prior access.

"The industry continues to chip away at the core of nonsubscribers, but has a ways to go," said John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates.

"Entertainment applications will be the key. If anything will pull in the holdouts, it's going to be applications that make the Internet more akin to pay TV," he predicted.

A mouse munched its way through thousands of pounds of cash after climbing inside a cash machine in Estonia.

The animal was found in the machine after a customer withdrew some money and got partly-eaten banknotes outside the bank in the capital Tallinn.

Bank security experts are investigating how the mouse managed to get into the machine.

Kristina Tamberg, spokeswoman for Hansapank Bank, said: "We have never heard of anything even remotely like this happening before.

"At some stage over the weekend the chewed money jammed, and the mouse seems to have spent the rest of the weekend turning the notes into bedding.

"It probably was attracted by the warmth from the machine and decided to make itself at home."

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - A cashier for Romania's state-owned railway has been asked to pay a month's worth of wages to receive government confirmation that she is alive.

Filoftea Popescu discovered when she applied for a passport that the Romania's People Registration Service had mistakenly declared her dead in November 2005, stripping her of all her rights as a citizen.

"I went to the police ... and I found out that I have no rights in the Romanian state because I died in 2005," the 55-year-old Popescu was quoted on Monday by daily Evenimentul Zilei as saying.

Romania is struggling to cut through vast red tape and complicated legislation to improve a bloated and ineffective administration in order to benefit from new membership in the European Union.

"A lawyer told me it costs me 500 Lei (to obtain a court order). Why should I pay to prove I am alive?" Popescu said.

The People Registration Service admitted its error and said it fired the staff responsible.

But Popescu's family doctor is still reeling from the shock of seeing her at his office not long after receiving a copy of her death certificate from the state.

"When she came to my clinic, I lost my voice," said Nicolae Toboiu.

I've just been watching a news report on TV about a new drug that's become available for the treatment of hay fever. I don't think I'll be offered it since it seems to only suppress the effects of grass pollen [and I seem to mainly be allergic to tree pollen]and costs £800 a year for a course of treatment.

I collected my prescription and neoclarityn tablets earlier in the week, but haven't needed to use them yet. Since I'm now unemployed again I might as well take advantage of free prescriptions; the tablets are rather expensive to actually buy at the chemist's.

OTTAWA (AFP) - The scent of a woman was too powerful for bus drivers in western Canada who twice banished her to the curb for dabbing too much perfume, press reports said Wednesday.

The buxom brunette said she boarded a bus on two separate days wearing her usual two squirts of Very Irresistible by Givenchy, billed in advertisements as bringing out a woman's spontaneity, audacity and sensuality.

But during each commute, the driver said the potent odor was interfering with his ability to operate the vehicle, and kicked her off.

"I was humiliated and embarrassed in front of other passengers," the 25-year-old chiropractic assistant told broadcaster CTV. "I got off that bus in tears."

When she complained, transit officials steered her to the back of the bus, next to an open window. "I felt like a modern day Rosa Parks," she told the National Post.

Pundits said the confrontation illustrates changing attitudes in Canada to heavy perfume use, much in the same way that smoking became less acceptable in recent decades.

"At one point, the etiquette was that if you didn't like the smoke, then leave," scent expert Roedy Green told the Globe and Mail newspaper. "Now the rule is that you don't have the right to pollute somebody else's air."

In 2000, the city of Halifax in eastern Canada banned scents in all municipal buildings, including schools, libraries and courts, as well as many workplaces, theatres and shops.

The Lung Association meanwhile said it has received more and more requests for scent-free signs and related materials, with rising rates of asthma and other pulmonary diseases that are greatly susceptible to irritants in the air.