WEIRD STUFF:

Olympic-style sex tournament starts Thursday

Sex obsessives want love-making to be recognised as an official sport.

An Olympic-style tournament is to be held, which involves participants romping for up to six hours a day in 16 different disciplines.

Porn star Barbie Sins, from London, is set to represent Britain at the six-week sex event that begins in Gothenburg, Sweden, on Thursday.

She will compete against representatives from Romania, Greece, Finland, Spain, Croatia, Portugal, Italy, France, Slovenia and Ukraine for the top prize.

Competitors will be judged by five experts and will receive points based on communication, endurance, chemistry and sex education.

The monitored heart rates and blood pressure of the contenders will also be taken into consideration, and there will be a public vote among those watching a livestream.

Sex fanatics need to earn enough points to progress through three stages and avoid being eliminated.

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Baby boys are more 'talkative'

Baby boys are more 'talkative' than girls during the first year of their life.

A new study has revealed that it is only after they turn a year old that little girls start babbling more than their male counterparts.

Researchers studied nearly 6,000 babies age up to two years old and fitted them with small audio recorders for an average of six days.

An algorithm analysed over 450,000 hours of recordings and concluded that boys up to the age of one were 10 per cent more talkative than girls.

The experts concluded that young baby boys babble more as it is an important way to signal to their parents that they are healthy.

Dr Kimbrough Oller, who led the study for the University of Memphis, said: "Babies are inclined to babble and produce speech-like sounds because adults find this adorable and want to look after them.

"Human infants are more helpless, compared to our close relatives, the apes, so it's particularly important they get adults to look after them.

"So it does not appear to be about practice for speech, at this age, as many people think."

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Breastfed children perform better

An Oxford study has concluded that children who are breastfed are twice as likely to go on and achieve top grades in their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams.

Researchers analysed the data from nearly 5,000 pupils in England, born between 2000 and 2002, and found that performance in GCSEs, taken at the age of 16, increased incrementally the longer the children's mothers had breastfed them.

The study's authors have theorised that the nutrients in breast milk boost brain development.

The connection between breastfeeding and high grades remained even when experts took other factors such as socio-economic background into account.

Renee Pereyra-Ellis, lead author of the research from the Nuffield Department of Population Health, said: "Breastfeeding should continue to be encouraged, when possible, as potential improvements in academic achievement constitute only one of its potential benefits."

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School district employs gun-sniffing dog

RENO (AP):

A gun-detecting dog is set to join the security team in a Reno, Nevada school district in the United States of America.

The dog is being trained to sniff out firearms, and will join school police officers in a few months, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.

The urgent need for new safety measures was magnified last week when a first-grader in Newport News, Virginia, shot his teacher.

The wounded teacher reportedly remains hospitalised in stable condition.

"We can all say after seeing what happened in Virginia last week, that it has never been more important to keep our focus on gun safety," Superintendent Susan Enfield said at a recent board meeting.

The funding to cover the gun-detecting canine came from a grant, said school district Police Chief Jason Trevino. Officials are currently searching for dog handlers.

Other changes expected in the next one to two years include body camera and radio upgrades, more cameras at elementary schools, and upgrading emergency communications infrastructure.

The district reported 16 incidents involving a gun on school grounds during the last school year, according to public records obtained by the newspaper. Ten of them were found at middle schools. The rest were evenly split between high schools and elementary schools.