Dwarf drought

Berlin, Dec. 25 (Reuters): Snow White had to make do with just four dwarves rather than the usual seven due to cost-cutting at a theatre in the eastern German town of Stendal, the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported.

The Altmark Stendal theatre said it could afford only six actors for its Christmas rendition of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which led to protests from theatre-goers from the nearby western city of Hanover who wanted to see seven dwarves.

The theatre said it had attached two puppets in dwarf outfits to a background wall to give the production six dwarves. The actor playing the prince was supposed to double as the seventh dwarf but only made one brief appearance on stage.

?The seventh dwarf wasn?t on stage the whole time because he was in stuck down in the mine working overtime,? theatre spokeswoman Susanne Kreuzer said.

Daring dip

Berlin (Reuters): About 30 Germans wearing nothing more than red Santa Claus caps leapt into a Berlin lake for their annual Christmas Day swim on Saturday, a dip in the ice-cold water they believe is good for their health. The naked men and women, between the ages of 25 and 73, spent up to about five minutes in Berlin?s Oranke lake, where temperatures were one degree Celsius.

Odd birds

Tokyo (AFP): Researchers have found a number of same-sex pairs of penguins at aquariums in japan, with an imbalance between the numbers of male and female birds suspected to be the cause. A research group led by Keisuke Ueda, professor of behavioural ecology at Rikkyo University, Tokyo, found about 20 same-sex pairs at 16 major aquariums and zoos. Penguins in captivity ?may be more likely to form same-sex pairs? due to the difficulty of finding partners of the opposite sex.