report from think tank Policy Exchange claims that most mothers of children under 3 years of age would rather get financial help to care for their children at home rather than use subsidized childcare.

According to one of the authors of the report, Catherine Hakim, said that "One study showed that, in an ideal world, only one third of mothers in Britain would use any child care at all before their child's third birthday," according the Raisingkids website.

A fishing town in Japan has declared its all-out support for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and for good reason too; the city and the senator share the same name. The Illinois senator took time to send city leaders a letter thanking them for their support, according to Mayor Toshio Murakami.

"I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to the city of Obama for your support and encouragement and thank you for your thoughtful gift. We share more than a common name. We share a common planet and common responsibility. I look forward to a future marked by the continued friendship of our two great nations and shared commitment to a better, freer world," Obama wrote in the letter.

Two mothers were embroiled in a scuffle at a birthday party held at a Chuck E. Cheese, when the birthday son accused another boy of "hogging" an arcade game.

Police reports stated that the sons of Catherine Aliaga, 38, and Tarsha Williams, 33, were fighting over a basketball arcade game at the children's restaurant.

On July 5, the first special flight that will allow passengers to fly in their birthday suit, naked that is, will take off from Erfurt in Southeast Germany to its destination in the island of Usedom off Baltic Sea.

"All the passengers will fly naked, but they are only allowed to undress once they are in the plane. But then they will be able to enjoy the hour-long flight in the way God intended," Enrico Hess, the founder of the travel company OssiUrlaub, has been quoted as saying.

orld-popular cartoon characters The Smurfs are now 50 years old and Belgians have prepared a big birthday bash starting early this week. The celebration will cover key European cities including Paris and Berlin.

The Smurfs, the diminutive blue-colored forest dwellers, were created by late Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, fondly called 'Peyo,' through a comic strip in the late 1950s-back then, they were still called Schtroumpf. In the early 1980s, Smurfs debuted on US television and became hugely popular worldwide since then.