Jockstrip: The world as we know it

Bikini pic commemorates South Pole visit

LONDON, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- British Royal Navy officer Polly Hatchard celebrated her recent visit to the South Pole by stripping down to a bikini in the freezing cold for a photograph.

The Sun reported the 30-year-old officer, who traveled more than 112 miles of frozen tundra to reach a South Pole scientific base, posed for the photograph in only a bikini and a feather boa despite the area's frigid temperature.

Hatchard, who was been nicknamed Polar Polly, admitted her unusual photo opportunity on New Year's Day did not last very long.

"I didn't hang around very long -- the hairs in my nostrils froze," she confessed. "It was well worth it."

To help commemorate the event, Hatchard took a teddy bear she named Boobie Bear with her on the hazardous trek that began on Christmas Day 2006.

In addition to the likely unprecedented photograph, Hatchard made history by becoming the first female armed forces member to complete the hazardous journey to the South Pole.

Too-small grave stops London burial

LONDON, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- A London woman was horrified when her husband's coffin wouldn't fit into the grave provided by New Southgate Cemetery.

Sarah Coleman and her family watched as pallbearers tried again and again to lower her husband's solid walnut coffin into a grave at the North London cemetery, The Daily Mail reports.

Finally realizing the task couldn't be accomplished, the burial was interrupted for an hour while the grave was enlarged.

"At first I thought they hadn't got it leveled," Coleman said. "But this went on two or three times. At one point they nearly stood it up on end and by then people had realized something was wrong."

Cemetery managing director Richard Evans said funeral directors are responsible for providing grave measurements.

Undertaker Ian Argent Coleman a letter of apology and a check for $600.

British town under siege by escaped goats

EXETER, England, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- A herd of goats that consistently escapes its confines has been eating its way through the English town of Lynton.

The Daily Mail said the 70 goats, which are a major tourist attraction in the area, have managed to escape and harass the town's citizens despite the presence of a cattle grid that cost more than $78,000 to construct.

"They are very destructive, especially in our lovely cemetery," Lynton Mayor Suzette Hibbert said of the goats. "They get in and eat the cut flowers."

With the goat herd garnering national attention for having lived for centuries on the nearby Valley of the Rocks site, Lynton residents must now consider re-examining the grid to identify its obvious flaws.

The grid was paid for by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Lynton town council as a means to limit the movements of the goats and to contain a group of ponies as well.

Adultery could lead to life in prison

DETROIT, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- An obscure provision in Michigan's criminal law could ultimately cause spouses who are unfaithful in their marriages to receive life sentences in prison.

The Detroit Free Press reported Michigan's Court of Appeals found last November that, given the right circumstances, an unfaithful married individual could be hit with the state's most serious sexual assault charge.

The court's decision was based on a provision that states if the adultery is committed in conjunction with another felony, then the sexual indiscretion could be seen as first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

The court ruling placed Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, who confessed to an adulterous relationship in 2005, in the limelight as it was an appeal his office was handling that sparked the court's decision.

Yet a spokesman for Cox promptly explained that such a legal move was ludicrous in a state that hasn't convicted anyone for felony infidelity since 1971.

"To even ask about this borders on the nutty," Rusty Hills said to the paper. "Nobody connects the attorney general with this -- N-O-B-O-D-Y -- and anybody who thinks otherwise is hallucinogenic."