With age come such things as catheters, colostomy bags and adult diapers. Now add another indignity to getting old — having to drop your pants and show these things to a complete stranger.

Two women in their 80s put the Transportation Security Administration on the defensive this week by going public about their embarrassment during screenings in a private room at Kennedy Airport. One claimed she was forced to lower her pants and underwear in front of an agent so that her back brace could be inspected. Another said agents made her pull down her waistband to show her colostomy bag.

Scientists in Japan have begun studying the "language" of oysters in an effort to find out what they are saying about their environment.

Researchers are monitoring the opening and closing of the molluscs in response to changes in seawater, such as reduced oxygen or red tide, a suffocating algal bloom that can lead to mass die-offs.

In the shakeup of Italian politics, a Canadian agronomy professor was mistakenly recruited to be Italy's next junior minister for agriculture, he revealed Saturday.

Francesco Braga, 53, teaches derivatives at the University of Guelph in south-western Ontario.

A prisoner at a Swiss jail had a brief taste of freedom on Saturday after hoisting himself on to the prison roof and leaping on to a surrounding wall several metres away.

The athletic inmate at Sion jail completed his escape by stealing a car he found nearby which had the keys left in the ignition, police in the Valais canton said.

Speeding was fingered as a possible cause Monday of what is believed to be Japan's most expensive ever road accident when up to $4 million-worth of supercars ended up in a crumpled heap on a highway.

Eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini -- plus a Toyota Prius -- were among the vehicles involved in the crash, which witnesses said happened when a speeding car slid across a wet road surface.

An eagerly anticipated pair of giant pandas arrived in Edinburgh on Sunday on a charter flight from China, to become the first of the endangered animals to live in Britain for 17 years.

Yang Guang (Sunshine) and Tian Tian (Sweetie) were welcomed to Scotland to the sound of bagpipes as their "Panda Express" plane touched down at Edinburgh Airport.

A tag from a lobster pot that was swept off the New England sea floor two decades ago during what came to be known as "The Perfect Storm" has washed up 3,000 miles away in Ireland.

The pot that held the tag with Cohasset lobsterman Richard Figueiredo's name on it was one of hundreds he lost when the vicious storm on the Atlantic Ocean struck off New England in 1991.

China's post office is hoping to boost business by allowing customers to send letters postmarked from space.

Emails will be sent to a computer aboard Tiangong-1, a spacecraft currently orbiting the earth, and rerouted to a special China Space Post Office branch on the ground in Beijing, the country's space program said on its website.

Rumors of flesh-eating bananas in Mozambique have sparked a plummet in the sale of the fruit, prompting the health minister Friday to reassure people of its safety.

"From the work conducted by the Ministries of Agriculture, Health and Trade and Industry, it was concluded that there is no record of entry of any infected banana in the country," according to a joint statement.

An Italian bar on Friday began serving up "Spread Cocktails" whose price goes up or down depending on the notoriously volatile differential between Italian and German bonds on any particularly evening.

"We decided to turn the stuff of Italy's nightmares into pleasant evenings," said Simone Liore, a 29-year-old web designer who came up with the idea and pitched it to his local bar in the town of Cuorgne in northern Italy.