Six toilet paper wedding dresses are on display at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! In Times Sqaure while their designers squared off for first prize.

This year’s winner is Katrina Chalifoux of Rockford, Illinois. Chalifoux spent two weeks creating the dress. She used seven rolls of toilet paper to create the floral bodice and train.

“It’s a challenge to make toilet paper look like fabric. It’s not exactly luxurious,” Chalifoux says.

Second place went to Terri Glover of Marlin, Texas and third place went to Ann Lee of Honolulu, Hawaii.

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By TANALEE SMITH, Associated Press Writer

SYDNEY, Australia - An Australian doctor proposed Monday that the government pay up to $47,000 for kidney donations to overcome a chronic shortage.

The suggestion touched off debate around the country on the idea, which critics say will end in the poor selling their organs to the rich.

Kidney specialist Gavin Carney said allowing the sale of organs would save thousands of lives and billions of dollars in care for patients on transplant waiting lists. He also said it would stop people from buying organs on the black market in developing countries, where they pursue risky, unregulated surgeries.

Australia has one of the lowest rates of organ donation in the developed world, about 10 donors per 1 million people, according to a federal health task force.

“We’ve tried everything to drum up support for organ donation and the rates have not risen in 10 years,” Carney was quoted as saying in Fairfax newspapers. “People just don’t seem to be willing to give their organs away for free. … Let’s pay people some money for a new car or a house deposit and those waiting lists will be halved within about five years.”

Carney, a professor at the Australian National University, could not immediately be reached by The Associated Press.

Carney’s proposal was immediately criticized by transplant groups, who fear it would exploit poor people.

The idea was dismissed by Health Minister Nicola Roxon, who said Australians would not be allowed to market their organs. “But we do know that we need urgent action in this area of organ donation,” Roxon told Australia Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Rather than paying people for organs, Roxon said her ministry would act on some of the recommendations of a federal task force that recently completed a review of the organ donation system. She did not specify its recommendations.

The task force attributed Australia’s low organ donor rate to a decrease in road accidents and strokes, lack of public awareness, and poor identification of donors in hospitals, among other factors. In comparison, Germany has 15 donors per 1 million people, the Netherlands has 25, the United States 27, and Spain 35, it said.

Selling or buying organs is illegal in Australia, as in most countries, and carries a penalty of six months in jail and a fine of up to $4,130.

More than 1,800 people are waiting for kidney transplants in the country but only 343 kidneys were donated last year, Fairfax reported. Transplant Australia, a national charity and organ support group, said the average wait for a kidney transplant is four years.

The group’s chief executive Chris Thomas said his organization rejects paying for organs and instead is working with the government to change the donation system. He said Carney’s proposal would leave poor people vulnerable.

“It really focuses on the poor and people who are least able to pay for things in society. They get attracted to these types of things,” he told ABC Radio. “We’d reject that.”

Kidney Health Australia also rejected Carney’s proposal, saying it would be open to “many ethical issues and abuse.”

“In my opinion it is inappropriate for the Australian medical system to consider, and is counter to the Australian culture which promises an equitable approach in all things,” KHA medical director Tim Mathew told The Associated Press. “The commercial trade in organs is not something we can support.”

Carney said the suggestion that paid donation would exploit poor people was “a red herring,” telling ABC radio that government regulation of organ commercialization would ensure high ethical standards and medical safeguards.

“I don’t support (illegal trade),” Carney said. “But I also do not agree with the fact that we should let people just rot on dialysis until they have been on dialysis so long they are untransplantable.”

Last week, health officials in the Philippines announced that foreigners will be banned from receiving kidneys for transplant there in an attempt to crack down on a thriving black market in organs sold by poor people.

YANGON, Myanmar - Almost 4,000 people were killed and nearly 3,000 others are unaccounted for after a devastating cyclone in Myanmar, a state radio station said Monday.

Foreign Minister Nyan Win told foreign diplomats at a briefing that the death toll could rise to more than 10,000, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was held behind closed doors.

Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit the Southeast Asian country, also known as Burma, early Saturday with winds of up to 120 mph. It knocked out electricity to the country’s largest city, Yangon, and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless.

Some sought refuge at Buddhist monasteries while others lined up Monday to buy candles, which had doubled in price, and water since the lack of electricity-driven pumps had left most households dry.

Myanmar is not known to have an adequate disaster warning system and many rural buildings are constructed of thatch, bamboo and other materials easily destroyed by fierce storms.

“The government misled people. They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared,” said Thin Thin, a grocery store owner.

Myanmar’s ruling junta, which has spurned the international community for decades, appealed for aid on Monday. But the U.S. State Department said Myanmar’s government had not granted permission for a Disaster Assistance Response Team into the country.

Laura Blank, spokeswoman for World Vision, said two assessment teams have been sent to the hardest hit areas to determine the most urgent needs.

“This is probably the most devastating natural disaster in Southeast Asia since the tsunami,” Blank said, referring to the 2004 disaster that killed around 230,000 people in 12 Indian Ocean nations. “There are a lot of important needs, but the most important is clean water.”

Myanmar’s government had previously put the death toll countrywide at 351 before increasing it Monday to 3,939.

The radio station broadcasting from the country’s capital, Naypyitaw, said that 2,879 more people are unaccounted for in a single town, Bogalay, in the country’s low-lying Irrawaddy River delta area where the storm wreaked the most havoc.

“Our staff has heard that in eight townships, over 95 percent of the land has been severely affected,” Pamela Sitko, World Vision’s communication relief manager for the Asia-Pacific region, told The Associated Press from Bangkok.

The situation in the countryside remained unclear because of poor communications and roads left impassable by the storm.

“Widespread destruction is obviously making it more difficult to get aid to people who need it most,” said Michael Annear, regional disaster management coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross in Bangkok.

At a Monday meeting with foreign diplomats and representatives of U.N. and international aid agencies, Myanmar’s foreign ministry officials said they welcomed international humanitarian assistance and urgently need roofing materials, plastic sheets and temporary tents, medicine, water purifying tablets, blankets and mosquito nets.

In Washington, the State Department said the U.S. Embassy in Yangon had authorized an emergency contribution of $250,000 to help with relief efforts.

“We have a DART team that is standing by and ready to go into Burma to help try to assess needs there,” deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters. “As of this moment, the Burmese government has not given them permission, however, to go into the country so that is a barrier to us being able to move forward.”

Myanmar Red volunteers already were distributing some basic items, said Matthew Cochrane at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ Geneva headquarters.

The World Food Program has pre-positioned 500 tons of food in Yangon and plans to bring in more relief supplies, said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

U.N. agencies were working with the Red Cross and other organizations to see how it can help those affected by the cyclone. UNICEF spokeswoman Veronique Taveau said the U.N. children’s agency alone has five teams assessing the situation in the country.

The cyclone blew roofs off hospitals and schools in Yangon. Older citizens said they had never seen the city of some 6.5 million so devastated in their lifetimes.

Many stayed away from their jobs, either because they could not find transportation or because they had to seek food and shelter for their families.

“Without my daily earning, just survival has become a big problem for us,” said Tin Hla, who normally repairs umbrellas at a roadside stand.

With his home destroyed by the storm, Tin Hla said he has had to place his family of five into one of the monasteries that have offered temporary shelter to those left homeless.

His entire morning was taken up with looking for water and some food to buy, ending up with three chicken eggs that cost double the normal price.

Despite the havoc wreaked by the cyclone across wide swaths of the country, the government indicated that a referendum on the country’s draft constitution would proceed as planned on May 10.

“It’s only a few days left before the coming referendum and people are eager to cast their vote,” the state-owned newspaper Myanma Ahlin said Monday.

At the meeting with diplomats, Relief Minister Maj. Gen. Maung Maung Swe said the vote could be postponed by “a few days” in the worst-affected areas. However, the foreign minister intervened to say the matter would be decided by the official referendum commission.

Pro-democracy groups in the country and many international critics have branded the proposed constitution as merely a tool for the military’s continued grip on power.

Should the junta be seen as failing disaster victims, voters who already blame the regime for ruining the economy and crushing democracy could take out their frustrations at the ballot box.

___

Associated Press writers Carley Petesch in New York and Alexander G. Higgins and Eliane Engeler in Geneva contributed to this report.

[Source: Yahoo News]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A New York company is voluntarily recalling about 286,000 pounds (129,700 kg) of fresh and frozen meat and poultry products that may be contaminated with bacteria, U.S. agriculture officials said on Saturday.
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The products produced by Gourmet Boutique LLC of Jamaica, New York, were sent to food service and retail establishments nationwide, a U.S. Department of Agriculture statement said.

The meat may be contaminated with Listeria monocyotogenes bacteria, which can cause a rare but potentially fatal disease known as listeriosis, the USDA said. Infants, the elderly, people with HIV and patients undergoing chemotherapy are among those at risk for the disease.

Listeriosis also can cause miscarriages and stillbirths.

The USDA said it had received no reports of illnesses linked to the products that were being recalled.

More information about the recall can be found at http://www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Recall_013-2008_Release.pdf.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

By DAVID KOENIG, AP Business Writer

DALLAS - American Airlines canceled more than 1,000 flights Wednesday, more than one-third of its schedule, as it spent a second straight day inspecting the wiring on some of its jets — the same issue that caused it to scrub hundreds of flights two weeks ago.

The nation’s biggest airline had already canceled 460 flights on Tuesday, stranding thousands of travelers. Federal inspectors found problems with wiring work done two weeks ago, although the airline says passenger safety was never jeopardized.

Airline officials said the flights would have averaged more than 100 passengers, meaning that more than 100,000 travelers could have been left scrambling to book new flights.

Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American, said the cancellations could continue beyond Wednesday as the airline works on its fleet of 300 MD-80 jets. By Wednesday morning, only 30 of the planes were back in service.

American uses the MD-80s mostly on mid-range flights, particularly from hub airports in Dallas and Chicago. Wagner said 208 of Wednesday’s cancellations would occur at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and 138 at Chicago O’Hare.

At New York’s LaGuardia Airport, hundreds of passengers stood in a check-in line. The airline offered free doughnuts, coffee and orange juice, but there were few takers.

Bishop Bernard Jordan, a Harlem minister, was in a first-class line trying to catch a flight to Atlanta, where he was scheduled to preach Wednesday night.

“It would have been good to know in advance,” said Jordan, who said he has 4 million frequent-flier miles with American and flies to Atlanta every other week. “I would have booked with another airline.”

At Dallas-Fort Worth, Mike Barnes was wearing the same clothes he had on Tuesday morning when he left San Diego for a business trip to Indianapolis. The trip was interrupted by the sudden midday announcement of cancellations, leading Barnes to call the airline “totally unprepared.”

“If it was safe enough to fly from San Diego to Dallas, why isn’t it safe enough to fly from Dallas to Indianapolis?” asked the 53-year-old information technology consultant.

The airline issued a fresh apology Wednesday from Gerard Arpey, the chief executive of American and its parent, AMR Corp. Arpey said American “will do whatever it takes” to help affected customers, including compensating those who stayed overnight somewhere other than their final destination.

The Fort Worth-based carrier said it would put displaced travelers on other American flights or those operated by competitors. Wagner said that because the delays were “within our control” and not weather-related, American was offering meals, lodging and ground transportation to those affected.

American operates about 2,300 daily flights, more than one-third with MD-80s.

It was American’s second bout with mass cancellations in less than two weeks for failing to meet the same wiring rules set by the Federal Aviation Administration, which is cracking down on airlines after admitting its inspectors were too lax last year with Southwest Airlines Co.

Since the FAA began looking more closely at airlines’ compliance with safety directives, there have been cancellations at Southwest, Delta Air Lines Inc. and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines. The agency levied a $10.2 million civil penalty against Southwest for using planes that had missed inspections for cracks in the fuselage.

This week, FAA inspectors looked at 19 of American’s planes and found that 15 violated regulations on bundling of wires in the wheel well, said FAA spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere. According to American, the issue revolves around the spacing and direction of cords used to secure bundles of wires in the planes’ auxiliary hydraulic systems.

The airline said flight safety was never compromised, but began yanking planes out of service around mid-afternoon Tuesday so that wiring bundles could be inspected and stowed properly in the wheel wells.

The cancellations and resulting loss of revenue could hardly come at a worse time for American, which is facing high fuel prices and a weakening economy that could hurt demand for travel.

AMR is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings in two weeks, and analysts are forecasting a loss of more than $300 million, according to a survey by Thomson Financial.

Jamie Baker, an analyst with JPMorgan, said in a recent note to clients that he expects airline revenue to decline significantly beginning in the April-June quarter due to the one-two punch of costly fuel and a possible recession.

___

Associated Press writers Ula Ilnytzky in New York and Jeff Carlton in Dallas contributed to this report.