LONDON: A cat lost a British bus company a 40,000-dollar contract after falling asleep on a fax machine and sending confidential information to a rival firm, the Telegraph reported. Rigger, a stray adopted by Boldon Executive Coaches, settled down for a snooze on the machine, releasing details of the firm's closed bid for a contract with a local education authority by pressing the `Send' button as she curled up, reported the London newspaper on Tuesday. Christine Jones, 46, a clerk at the Sunderland-based firm, had tried to send details of the bid to a ``friendly'' competitor, with whom her company was preparing a joint tender, before leaving the office. As the number was engaged, she sent a separate letter to the rival company and left details of the closed bid on the machine ready to fax to the ''friendly'' competitor the next day. Jones was quoted as saying: ``I had tried unsuccessfully to fax a tender worth several thousand pounds to a friendlyrival. To remind me to send it the next day, I stuck it in the machine. ``When I went home Rigger was asleep on my desk.

When I came in the next morning the fax had already been sent to the rival firm. I couldn't believe it.'' The company lost the contract after its competitor put in a lower bid. A spokesman said: ``We had made a bid of 200 dollars a day. We then heard that our rival, who didn't know about the contract, had put in a bid for 195. But we can't be angry with Christine - or Rigger.''

Musical condom strikes chord for harmony in bed

DORTMUND: A German inventor has come up with a product he says is guaranteed to help couples make beautiful music together - the musical condom. For couples planning their millennium baby or just for people looking to strike a chord of ecstasy, the new invention is designed to fill a hitherto unfathomed market niche, says its creator, retired building engineer Karl Ernst Wiegand. The 79-year-old Dortmund man said he got the idea late one evening when hewas sitting with friends around a barbecue grill. ``We were sitting there after a good meal and good drink, chatting and talking,'' Wiegand recalls, ``and suddenly somebody suggested the idea.

Everyone else laughed and I did too at first. But then I got to thinking and it made a lot of sense.'' Next morning Wiegand sat down at his desk and began drawing up plans. A year later he held the finished product in his hand the patent musical and talking condom. It looks like any other condom except that the tip contains a sound module encased in foam rubber. Wiegand says the wearer notices nothing. But as soon as pressure is applied to the tip the sound module is activated. Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here, For He's A Jolly Good Fellow and The Wedding March are among the initial selections being offered. But Wiegand says the potential repertoire is limitless. ``The acoustical possibilities are also daunting,'' Wiegand says. ``I'm working on talking models with safe sex messages.''

Titanic hero safeafter boat capsizes in storm

BANGKOK: Despite newspaper reports to the contrary, Hollywood heartthrob Leonardo Dicaprio was in no danger of being attacked by sharks when his boat capsized while filming a movie in Thailand, a producer said on Tuesday. A long tail boat -- a kind of motorised, long canoe -- carrying Dicaprio and co-star Tilda Swinton went down after being hit by waves during a sudden storm last Friday during filming of The Beach off Phi Phi island in the Andaman Sea. Some newspapers, both in Thailand and abroad, reported on their front pages that sharks threatened Dicaprio, star of the blockbuster film Titanic. But Santa Pestanij, the Thai coordinator for 20th Century Fox's The Beach and who was present when the boat capsized, said there weren't any of the creatures in sight. ``We did not underestimate the sea. There were at least four security boats present and prepared for the unpredictable,'' Santa said. He said Dicaprio remained calm for the five to ten minutes hewas in the water, and helped calm crew members. ``He was a real gentleman. A hero,'' Santa said.