Small Bits of News You Didn’t Know you Needed

Colleges ban jeans to 'protect' girls
Colleges in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh said that female students would be banned from wearing jeans and other Western clothes to halt sexual harassment by male classmates.
"Girls who choose to wear jeans will be expelled from the college," Meeta Jamal, principal of the Dayanand girls' college in Kanpur city told AFP. "This is the only way to stop crime against women."
A growing number of colleges in Uttar Pradesh have decided to outlaw jeans, shorts, tight blouses and miniskirts on campus in an attempt to crack down on "Eve-teasing" -- as sexual harassment is known in India.
But many of the students, who are aged between 17 and 20, said the new rules punished innocent females rather than tackling the men who treated women badly.
"Banning any clothing will certainly never solve the issue of sexual harassment," said Uzma, a graduate student from Lucknow University who declined to give her full name.
Hindu extremist groups have in recent months attacked women drinking in pubs and threatened couples who make public displays of affection.
The vigilantes claimed they were acting to protect India's conservative values against the spreading influence of Western culture.
Some colleges elsewhere in the country have previously banned the wearing of jeans, but protests from students forced the dress regulations to be reversed.
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Funny Money: Argentine court forgives forgery
An Argentine man who tried to use two counterfeit bills has been found innocent, by reason of incompetence.
A federal court in Buenos Aires says the forged bills presented by Marcos Ribles were "so clumsy and crude" that "they could not be accepted by most people."
The court says the 65-year-old man tried to pass a false 100-peso Argentine note, nominally worth about $26, as well as a false U.S. $50 bill.
Judges say the counterfeit bills had such shoddy printing and poor-quality paper that nobody could be fooled.
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Hummingbirds 'faster than fighter jets'
Male hummingbirds, swooping in an effort to impress females, achieve speeds "faster than fighter jets", according to a study.
A US researcher has captured the birds' dives with super-fast cameras. He lured them into their impressive displays using stuffed models of female birds.
The feathered acrobats reached speeds of almost 400 body lengths per second.
Christopher Clark from the University of California Berkeley filmed the courtship dives of male Anna's hummingbirds on cameras able to capture 500 frames per second.
When measured relative to the length of their bodies, the birds' top speed, he said, was "greater than [that] of a fighter jet with its afterburners on, or the space shuttle during atmospheric re-entry".
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Sex workers learn karate
Prostitutes in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have begun taking karate lessons to protect themselves from violent customers and pimps.
The women say they were so fed up with abuse that they approached a local community group for help.
The organizers hope the course in the ancient self-defense technique sends a message that violence against sex workers must stop.
India is thought to have nearly three million sex workers.
The first 75 women to take the karate course in the coastal city of Madras (Chennai) had to brave intense heat as they practice their moves.
They trained together for nearly five hours a day, mostly learning how to fight. Now the women say they feel more able to protect themselves.
"I think I can easily handle one man at any given time. I face physical abuse on a daily basis and have been abused and been beaten up by my clients many times.
"A thug once stripped me of my clothes and told me to run naked. From now on, I think nobody can do that to me. I will kick him."
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