In an attempt to help overweight officers get back in shape, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has hired a full-time diet coach to chalk out special diet plans for them. Rana Parker, who joined the force in July, was working as a diet coach at Head Start, the federal aid program for children. Now she will target recruits and help instill in them good eating habits and finding time for balanced meals.

Pierre-Louis Colin, a speechwriter for the French foreign minister has written a new tourist guide on where best to ogle 'les parisiennes' or Frenchwomen. The 190-page book Guide des jolies femmes de Paris, which was released last month, lists the best places to ogle gorgeous women in the city. Colin has singled out bars, parks, metro trains and times of day to observe women in Paris.

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.

While other Canadian cities are solving major transport related problems like the threat of a strike in Toronto and the use of Tasers in Vancouver, Parliament Hill is setting a first in Canadian transport by introducing its first batch of female train and bus operators. Ontario now has two women drivers, Margaret Bicknell and Margaret Lafrance. OC Transport wants to add more by launching a recruitment campaign to attract more females and minorities to the company. But the transport firm has more luck getting visible minority applicants than women drivers, admitted Alain Mercier, director of transit services of the City of Ottawa.

ngola is staging a beauty contest on April 2 with landmine victims as participants in order to raise awareness of the plight of tens of thousands of people injured by landmines. 'Miss Landmine Survivor' is organized by National Commission for De-mining and Humanitarian Assistance (CNIDAH). "The objective of the contest is to restore self-esteem (in women maimed by the mines) and make them ambassadors for their own cause," said CNIDAH coordinator Madalena Neto.