Minimalist poet, minimalist lifestyle

Here's a tip for aspiring college students: Make sure your applications don't warrant a visit from the bomb squad.

Emergency crews evacuated an Eastern Illinois University building Friday, after a campus postal carrier discovered a disheveled-looking package heading for the college's admissions office.

"There was no return address, it was poorly written, poorly addressed to the university, there were misspellings," school spokeswoman Vicki Woodard said Saturday. "There was some tape over it. Just the overall appearance was rather strange."

The stuffed-and-stained envelope was strange enough that police alerted the bomb squad.

Explosives investigators X-rayed the package and blocked off a nearby street before they discovered the envelope contained only an application to the 12,500-student school.

Woodard said the application came from somewhere in northern Illinois, but wouldn't comment on whether the bomb scare would affect the prospective student's chances of admission.

"I'm sure it'll be processed like any other application at this point," she said.

I've just had a bit of a disagreement with someone on the phone. This person phones me up about once every two months [it certainly sounds like the same person each time] and asks about various neighbours on the street. Each time I tell him that I don't have a clue who lives several houses away because all the properties are short-term lets; the tenants never staying for probably more than a year.

I think this person [who speaks with a broad Scottish accent] must work for a debt collection agency and this is why he's so keen to get in touch with these people. Anyhow, a few minutes ago I'd had enough and so I pre-empted what he was going to say and told him that I don't know who lives at number 51 and no, I'm not prepared to push a note through their letterbox with his contact number on.

This is harrassment and I'm not prepared to be polite any more. The previous time he phoned up I told him to remove my details from their database and not contact me any more.

All this hassle I'm getting and I'm registered with the Telephone Preference Service - but, of course, these aren't telemarketing calls are they? So I suppose the legislation doesn't apply.

Armed police went into action in the German city of Wuppertal after a woman reported seeing a masked criminal -- but having rushed to the scene, they were surprised to find not a crook, but a large stuffed toy.

The woman was returning late at night to her car in an indoor car park when she saw the suspected brigand through the window of a parked van, police said Thursday.

Though she later admitted to only catching a glimpse in the darkness, she was sufficiently alarmed to alert the authorities.

Armed officers arrived in three cars and surrounded the van. What they found was a large toy beaver, strapped into the passenger seat.

A police spokesman said he struggled to see how the toy, which has two oversized front teeth, could have been mistaken for a person.

She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg's 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said.

In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer - many thousand times faster than most residential connections, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, head of the Karlstad city network unit.

Jonsson and Lothberg's son, Peter, worked together to install the connection.

The speed is reached using a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers placed up to 1,240 miles apart, without any transponders in between, Jonsson said.

"We wanted to show that that there are no limitations to Internet speed," he said.

Peter Lothberg, who is a networking expert, said he wanted to demonstrate the new technology while providing a computer link for his mother.

"She's a brand-new Internet user," Lothberg said by phone from California, where he lives. "She didn't even have a computer before."

His mother isn't exactly making the most of her high-speed connection. She only uses it to read Web-based newspapers.

A woman has been arrested on suspicion of kissing a painting by American artist Cy Twombly and smudging the bone-white canvas with her lipstick, French judicial officials said Saturday.

Police said they arrested the woman after she kissed the work on Thursday. She is to be tried in a court in the southern city of Avignon on Aug. 16 for "damage to a work of art," judicial officials said.

The painting, which is worth an estimated $2 million, was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon. It is part of an exhibition slated to run at the museum through Sept. 30. Officials did not provide further details on the painting.

Twombly is known for his abstract paintings combining painting and drawing techniques, repetitive lines and the use of graffiti, letters and words.

Born in Lexington, Va., in 1928, Twombly has lived in Italy for nearly a half- century. He won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 2001.