Miami-based strippers have taken Bacardi to court after being burned by a bottle of 151-proof rum they claim ignited like a “flamethrower”.

The three performers, employed at Secrets adult club in 2002, were injured when a patron lit a trail of rum, leading to a bottle that was filling shot glasses at the time. They claim the fire raced to the mouth of the bottle, causing it to explode, according to website RollOnFriday.

Bacardi 151 rum bottles come complete with a label warning of the alcohol’s dangers, including an inbuilt “flame arrester”.

The strippers contend the rum is by definition dangerous, and that the arrester can be removed too easily, the website said.

“[Bacardi have] done nothing to make this bottle safe when they know of the dangers,” the women’s lawyer said. “Justice will have its day.”

Bacardi has asked for the case to be dismissed, arguing the women’s injuries were the fault of the bartender, who poured rubbing alcohol on the bar and then ignited it as part of a flaming drinks promotion.

Sterilise parents of problem children

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Ever harboured the private feeling that some people just shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce? Many would balk at going public with such a draconian policy, but not a US city council member, who recently suggested that parents of troublemaking children should be neutered by the state.

Councillor Larry Shirley outlined what he saw as a “failure in society”, according to the Charleston Post and Courier newspaper. Shirley’s cheery solution for mothers of kids running wild or fathers who fail to pay child support is officially sanctioned sterilisation.

The Republican from South Carolina put forward the well-fertilised argument that “we pick up stray animals and spay them. These mothers need to be spayed if they can’t take care of theirs”.

“Once they have a child and it’s running the streets, to let them continue to have children is totally unacceptable.”

Shirley went public with his theory after news of a video store robbery in Hollywood by a girl, 14, and boy, 12, made headlines, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

A nine-year-old boy was also alleged to have taken part in the robbery, but was brought home to his mother by police who said he was too young to charge, the paper said. According to Shirley, if the child in question was too young to be held accountable for the crime, then his parents should be held responsible instead.

“What we've got is a failure in society, whether it’s in Mount Pleasant with yuppie parents or whether it’s on the East Side with poor crack-head parents,” he said.

A state senator, Robert Ford, replied by saying that “what [Shirley] needs to talk about is getting City Council to provide some recreational facilities and activities for these kids and creating an atmosphere conducive to a normal society”.

Flatulent Pole’s protest lands him in jail

A nationwide hunt for a Polish man has been ordered following charges that he communicated his opinion of the President by farting loudly.

Having been approached by police at a train station in Warsaw, Hubert Hoffman, 45, criticised President Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw for steering the country back to a communist dictatorship.

When the police ordered him to display more respect for the nation’s leaders, Hoffman’s rear trumpet reply saw him quickly arrested.

Charged with contempt for the office of the head of state and released on bail, Hoffman was gone like the wind, failing to return to court at a later date. Despite objections from Hoffman’s lawyer that the prosecution’s case was full of hot air, the judge rejected an appeal for the charges to be thrown out.

“Such a case of disrespect is taken very seriously,” a court spokesman said, explaining why a nationwide hunt, involving Interpol, had been ordered as a result.

That’s not a shiv - this is a shiv!

A Darwin prison has substituted the normal hard labour activities of rock-breaking and number plate-punching for career training in the handling of crocodiles.

Five inmates from Darwin Correction Centre are acting as guinea pigs in an 11-week pilot scheme to be held at Darwin Crocodile Farm. They are being taught to manage the saltwater reptiles, fix fences and enclosures and compile reports at a farm that has over 36,000 crocodiles.

“The course is the first of its kind in Australia and will give prisoners the real life skills that they can use back in their communities,” Northern Territory Justice Minister Syd Stirling said.

“Even the value of developing a work ethic in preparation for release cannot be underestimated.”

The owner of the farm, Mick Burns, believes everyone, warm and cold-blooded alike, wins from the scheme.

“This not only assists in the maintenance of the farm itself, but provides life skills which will ultimately be put back into the community,” he said.

Robbers use sex toys to restrain employees

Armed bandits who robbed a sex shop in Atlanta, Georgia, used kinky sex aids to restrain the employees, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The three men apparently took approximately US$236 ($316) in cash from a smut-peddler in Stone Mountain, Atlanta.

But before making their getaway, they restrained the two employees to prevent them from alerting the police.

The first was shackled with a pair of silver leg irons to a sink, while the second was bound with furry black handcuffs, according to DeKalb County police.

Rigid at such injustice

A man from Rhode Island with a decade long erection could lose US$400,000 ($534,689) in compensation after a judge dismissed his claim following a dodgy penile implant.

Former handyman Charles ‘Chick’ Lennon heard the deflating news in late September when Justice Edward C Clifton of the Superior Court gave his ruling. The decision resulted from a request by the implant manufacturer’s insurer, National Union Fire Insurance Company, which argued that as Dacomed Corp’s bankruptcy removed the manufacturer from liability in the case, the same should apply to them.

Lennon had the device implanted in 1996. Made of both steel and plastic parts, it was designed to allow the user to raise and lower his member whenever the need arose. Yet Lennon claimed his implant could not be lowered due to an internal fault with the mechanism, which Dacomed stiffly denied.

With the release of Viagra capturing the impotence market, Dacomed promptly filed for bankruptcy. Yet Lennon was left with his towering problem, which he likened to a “constant headache”, causing him pain and embarrassment, rendering simple acts like hugging loved ones difficult.

Lennon’s lawyers said the insurer was still bound to pay the money following an affirmation of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.