Jockstrip: The world as we know it

WOMEN SURVIVES CRASH WITH TRAIN

A 79-year-old woman in Perth, Scotland, is recovering after the car she was driving was struck by a train traveling at 100 mph.

Heidi Beerensson drove on a level railway crossing as a London-bound passenger train, carrying about 200 passengers, approached, the London Telegraph reports.

"We heard the smash and ran out fearing the worst," says spokesman for the Perthshire Abandoned Dogs Society, where Beerensson works as publicity manager. "The only part of the car unaffected by the smash was the driver's seat."

Beerensson was shaken, had minor injuries and is recovering in the hospital. No one on the train was injured, according to the spokesman for British Transport Police.

RITZY POLAR BEAR CLUB

Polar bear clubs nationwide usually are make-shift affairs with few amenities beyond coffee and a towel, but not the Coney Island Polar Bear Club.

The 101-year-old club has heated tents, Tiki torches, palm trees and thousands of hot sausage sandwiches.

The largess and the hot sausage sandwiches are the result of the club's first corporate sponsor -- Jimmy Dean, the maker of sausage links, the New York Post reports.

"But we're not doing it for the sandwiches or for the heaters!" says Polar Bear President Louis Scarcely, whose members make their annual swim on New Year's Day. "We're doing it for the charity -- Jimmy Dean will donate more than $6,000 to local charities."

HOGMANAY CANCELED BY WIND

The world-famous Hogmanay New Year's fireworks display and concert in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens in Scotland had to be canceled because of gale force winds.

Four stewards in the gardens were injured by falling gates and pieces of debris, Scotsman.com reports.

"The experts that ran the fireworks tell us that given wind direction and wind strength it was not safe to fire fireworks from the castle," Chief Constable Ian Dickinson says.

Peter Irvine, of Unique Events, who runs the event, says he was "devastated."

Organizers had planned a mass singing of "Auld Lang Syne" by at least 100,000 people to be broadcast by the BBC.

SUBWAY RIDER HIT IN HEAD BY TRAIN

An impatient New York City subway rider is in critical condition after he leaned over the tracks looking for a train and was struck by the first car.

Twenty-three-year-old Niko Jeljenic, of Fairview, N.J., suffered a fractured skull and is being treated at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, the New York Post reports.

Jeljenic, who works with computers, was waiting with co-workers at a subway station when he leaned his head over the tracks and looked in the direction from which he thought the train was coming.

The train was approaching from the other direction, however, and struck him at the back of the head, police said.