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Jockstrip: The world as we know it

By ALEX CUKAN, United Press International
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PANDA SEX ED WORKING

U.S.-born giant panda, Hua Mei, has arrived in China to take a special sex education course and go on "four blind dates" -- hoping to get lucky.

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It's been very difficult to get pandas in captivity to reproduce but the Wolong Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center in China is hopeful Hua Mei will get pregnant by the end of March, reports the Xinhua, China's main government-run news agency.

Hua Mei will not only be shown sex education videos featuring a couple of giant pandas mating, she will also watch her peers mating, according to Wei Rongping, assistant director of the research center.

"It's all up to Hua Mei to find her own 'Mr. Right,'" said Wei, who has four potential mates ready for the panda.


CABLE CAR CONTEST TAXING

Spending seven days in a cable car in a contest in Singapore to win $20,000 in cash and a week-long Mediterranean cruise is harder than it looks.

Three of the 36 couples didn't make it past the first several hours because they got sea sick from the rocking of the cable cars, the Straits Times reports.

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The Singapore Cable Car is hosting the test of endurance to mark its 30th anniversary.

Teams are disqualified if get sick or break rules, such as consuming anything other than the three meals and three quarts of water provided daily.


SWEET SUITE DEAL IN VEGAS

New York state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is strongly denying any wrong doing in accepting a Las Vegas casino hotel suite for $109 a night.

The New York Post reports the 1,140-square-foot suite has a parlor with a dining room, a wet bar, a powder room and a master bedroom -- and typically costs $1,500 a night.

Silver says he couldn't explain how he ended up with a suite, but said he didn't feel he was accepting a gift, even though the casino owner has been lobbying to join in a partnership in a New York casino.

The casino spokesman had a simpler explanation. He tells the Post Silver got the government rate.


BO DEREK AGAINST HORSE SLAUGHTER

Film star Bo Derek went to Capitol Hill this week to speak in favor of a bill that would prohibit the slaughter of horses in the United States for human consumption.

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"Americans don't raise horses for food and we don't eat them," she stated in support of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.

"Tens of thousands of horses are cruelly slaughtered in this country every year, just so someone in Europe can have a fancy dinner. It's just plain wrong," she said.

More than 49,000 horses were slaughtered in the United States last year at two foreign-owned slaughterhouses and those horses became dinner in Europe and Asia, according to the National Horse Protection Coalition.

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