Jockstrip: The world as we know it.

Queen's new carpet ruined after two days

LONDON, March 17 (UPI) -- A Buckingham Palace carpet Britain's Queen Elizabeth II commissioned for $351,000 was ruined by spilled tea only two days after it was installed.

The new carpet in the 156-foot-long room was ruined when a wheel fell off of a beverage cart being pushed by a palace worker and the hot tea spilled all over the floor, the Daily Mail reported Monday.

Cleaning staff were unable to remove the dark stain left by the tea and the workers were forced to replace an entire section of the carpet at a cost of nearly $85,000.

"They spent a week in the gallery trying to remove the stain. But instead of making it better, it seems they opened up the fibers of the carpet and made it even worse. It was ruined," a palace source said. "They had a spare section of carpet which officials thought would cover unforeseen accidents in the future -- not in the same week it was laid. They've had to use it all up at one go."

Python swallows 12.8-pound dog

KATHERINE, Australia, March 17 (UPI) -- An Australian woman said a python slithered onto her property and swallowed her 12.8-pound dog.

Patty Buntine said she became concerned Wednesday when her Maltese terrier mix, Bindi, did not show up for breakfast at 7 a.m. in her Katherine, Australia, home, the Northern Territory News reported Monday.

"She was always there so I got worried and went to look for her," she said. "I went around the side of the house and that's when I found the snake. It couldn't move and had its head up in a striking position.

"It's belly was bulging -- it looked like a great big coconut was inside it. I knew straight away that it had ate Bindi," she said.

Snake catcher David Reed of Reedy's Reptiles came to Buntine's home to collect the reptile.

"I've had a lot of calls about dogs that have been bitten by snakes, and I have even had an olive python that had eaten some new-born puppies, but never one like this," Reed wrote on his Web site, www.reedysreptiles.com.

He said that by swallowing Bindi, the snake had consumed 60 percent of its body weight. He said the reptile was still digesting its meal nearly a week after the incident.

Scientist's sudoku solution

ROCK HILL, S.C., March 17 (UPI) -- A South Carolina computer scientist says he has come up with an infallible system for solving sudoku puzzles.

J.F. Crook, a computer scientist at Winthrop University, said in the latest Notices of the American Mathematical Society that he has come up with the first mathematically guaranteed system for solving the popular numbers puzzle, USA Today reported Monday.

Sudoku generally involves a grid of 81 squares, some of which contain numbers 1-9. The object is to fill in the remaining boxes with single-digits while avoiding repeating numbers in a row, column or the nine interior 3-by-3 boxes.

"The algorithm is a tree-based search algorithm based on backtracking in a tree until a solution is found," Crook wrote in his paper, which was published Monday at ams.com.

Crook said the solution involves considering two possible numbers for each box and he recommends using different colors of pencils to keep track along the way.

Bus driver attacks toy seal with a stick

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 17 (UPI) -- A Canadian bus driver faces no criminal charges after getting out of his bus and beating a toy seal used by anti-seal hunt protesters in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The incident happened Saturday during an international protest against the seal hunt, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

The unidentified bus driver spotted the protesters in a busy shopping district with the prop, which they had splashed with imitation blood, Staff Sgt. Don Fox of the Halifax Regional Police told the broadcaster.

"He exited the bus and went over to the area where the protesters were and began beating on the stuffed animal seal that was on the ground there," Fox said.

Protesters called police as the driver bashed the toy with a stick and officers persuaded him to return to the bus. He drove away and continued his work, the report said.

No charges were filed, although the Metro Transit system said it was conducting its own internal investigation, the CBC said.