CYCLE FOR YOUR FOOD

A Danish hotel is pioneering a pedal-power electricity generation scheme it hopes will catch on in other countries.


The Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers, 15 minutes from the centre of the Danish capital and five minutes from Scandinavia's main airport, is installing two exercise bicycles hooked up to generators.

Guests will be invited to jump on and start pedalling -- and if they produce enough electricity they will be given a free meal.

From June, they will be able to race against the 366-room hotel's solar panel system in a bid to produce the most electricity.

"Anyone producing 10 watt hours of electricity or more for the hotel will be given a locally produced complimentary meal encouraging guests to not only get fit but also reduce their carbon footprint and save electricity and money," the hotel said in a statement.

Hotel spokeswoman Frederikke Tommergaard said the free meal offer applied only to paying guests, not passers-by.

The value of the meal -- any one of the main courses on the hotel restaurant or lobby bar's menu -- is about 240 Danish crowns (28.50 pounds), she told Reuters.

The electric bikes will be up and running from April 19 and the plan is to test the idea for a year with a view to expanding it to more Crowne Plaza hotels, part of the InterContinental Hotels Group.

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THIEVING OCTOPUS

A diver chased a thieving octopus underwater off the Wellington coast for more than five minutes to retrieve his new digital camera.


Wellington man Victor Huang was diving near the Wahine Memorial between Breaker Bay and Moa Point on Wednesday when he spotted the octopus.

The Weta digital animator swam closer to get a better picture of the octopus when it suddenly grabbed his camera with one of its tentacles and swam off, Fairfax media reported.

Mr Huang gave chase and caught up with the thief while the camera was still recording.

With the help of a speargun placed beneath the octopus, he managed to wrench the camera free from the creature's mouth.
However, the octopus grabbed the speargun and refused to let go, Mr Huang said.

He swum around a bit with the octopus in tow and as he neared the shore, the octopus let go.

Mr Huang moved to Wellington from San Francisco six years ago to work on animation in the King Kong movie, and said he had fallen in love with the lifestyle in New Zealand.

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COMA PATIENT AMAZES

Doctors in Croatia are baffled by a coma patient who woke up fluent in another language.


Medics are scratching their heads over the 13-year-old who now speaks perfect German - but can't converse in Croatian.

The girl's parents, who hail from the southern town of Knin, say their daughter had only just started to learn German before she lapsed into the coma.

Her unconscious spell only lasted 24 hours but it has left her able to speak German to a far higher level than before her illness, reports the Daily Mail.

Her parents claim she had been trying to watch German television shows and read books in German but wasn't very proficient in the language.

She is still being cared for at Split's KB Hospital as she has apparently forgotten how to speak Croatian.

Doctors are still trying to discover what caused her coma, which may have been prompted by extremely high body temperature, and why it affected her language skills.

"You never know when recovering from such a trauma how the brain will react," says the hospital's director Dujomir Marasovic. "Obviously we have some theories although at the moment we are limited in what we can say because we have to respect the privacy of the patient."