NEW YORK – How do you prove you’re a virgin in New York,the town that inspired “Sex and the City”??

The producers of an off-Broadway show are giving away free tickets to anyone who can demonstrate his or her chastity.

But just how will the theater know?

Producer Ken Davenport said a hypnotist would screen people lined up for the free tickets to his 90-minute comedy, “My First Time,” and determine their status.

The “virgin” stunt serves the subject of the play, “which is to get people to talk about their first sexual experience, something that almost any person on the planet has in common, whether in the United States or Rome,” Davenport said. The show is based on a decade-old Web site that invites people to anonymously share their stories about losing their virginity.

“I still have the Metallica shirt he wore that night,” one person wrote on the site.

The human lie detector, Sebastian Black, describes himself as a mind reader and a psychic hypnotist. “He’s a master of body language and tone of voice,” Davenport said

Davenport could not say how many actual virgins were likely to be admitted.

“There are a limited number of ‘virgin tickets’ available,” he said. “However, there are not that many virgins in New York City.”

Hundreds of 10,000-yen envelopes left in men’s rooms across Japan

TOKYO — Envelopes containing 10,000 yen – about $82 – and notes wishing the finder well have been discovered in municipal toilets across Japan, media reports said, baffling civil servants and triggering a nationwide hunt.

Local media have estimated that more than $16,400 worth of bills were found at men’s rooms in city halls in at least 15 prefectures in recent weeks.

Each package of 10,000-yen bills, some wrapped in traditional Japanese washi paper, was accompanied by handwritten letters that read “Please make use of this money for your self-enrichment,” and “One per person,” according to reports.

Officials are baffled over the identity of the benefactor or any motives, the reports said. Packages turned over to police were to be kept for a time in case someone claimed them.

World’s tallest man marries a woman two-thirds his height

BEIJING – The world’s tallest man married a woman who’s two-thirds his height and half his age, holding a traditional Mongolian ceremony Thursday with great fanfare at the tomb of Kublai Khan.

Bao Xishun, a 7-foot-9 herdsman from Inner Mongolia, met his bride earlier this year after searching high and low, sending advertisements around the world. It turns out he didn’t have to look far – 5-foot-6 saleswoman Xia Shujian hails from his hometown of Chifeng.

Bao wore a specially designed light blue gown topped with a gold vest, and rode to his bride’s camp in front of the tomb in a cart pulled by two camels, AP Television News reported. A limo followed the cart.

In keeping with Mongolian tradition, the bride’s attendants tried to “stop” Bao from getting into the camp. But they relented after the giant groom’s sincere appeals, and he was offered tea by the bride’s relatives, symbolizing that he had been accepted into her family.

He did not kowtow to his parents and in-laws because of his extraordinary height and arthritis in his knees, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Bao, 56, and Xia, 28, married in a civil ceremony in March. This time, more than 2,000 people turned out for the ceremonial nuptials, including relatives, locals and a large crowd of journalists.

Bao was confirmed last year by Guinness World Records as the world’s tallest person. Xinhua said his growth was normal until age 16, when a growth spurt shot him up to his current height within seven years.

He was in the news last December after he used his long arms to save two dolphins by pulling plastic out of their stomachs.

The dolphins got sick after nibbling on plastic from the edge of their pool at an aquarium in Liaoning province. Attempts to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic failed because the dolphins’ stomachs contracted in response to the instruments, Chinese media reported.

Dog removed from Wash. state voter rolls after 3 elections

SEATTLE – Duncan M. McDonald is finally off the voter rolls after the Australian shepherd-terrier mix was sent absentee ballots for three elections.

King County Elections Director Sherril Huff said she canceled the voter registration Tuesday for the dog owned by Jane K. Balogh, 66, who registered her pet to protest a change in the law that she said made it too easy for non-citizens to cast ballots.

Balogh put her phone bill in the dog’s name, then used that as identification when she mailed in the registration form in April 2006. In November, she wrote “VOID” across Duncan’s ballot and returned it with an image of a paw print on the signature line.

She admitted the ruse when an election official called, but the dog was still sent absentee ballots for school bond elections in February and May.

“Quite frankly, the process did take too long, and it should have been addressed after the November election,” said Bobbie Egan, an elections office spokeswoman.

County election procedures are being reviewed to provide speedier action against voting fraud, Egan said.

The removal came three weeks after Balogh was charged in King County Superior Court with making a false or misleading statement to a public servant, a misdemeanor. She pleaded not guilty to the charge in June.

A sheriff’s investigator wrote that she admitted registering the dog under false pretenses “to make a point that anyone could vote, even an animal.”

A preliminary court hearing was pending.

Scientists: 10,000-year-old frozen baby mammoth carcass found in Siberia

MOSCOW – The well-preserved carcass of a 10,000-year-old baby mammoth has been unearthed in the northern Siberian permafrost, a discovery scientists said could help in climate change studies.

The 4-foot gray-and-brown carcass, discovered in May by a reindeer herder in the Yamal-Nenets region, has its trunk and eyes virtually intact and even some fur remaining, said Alexei Tikhonov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Zoological Institute.

The animal’s tail and ear were apparently bitten off, he said.

“The mammoth is an animal that you look at, and you see that there is an entire epoch behind it, a huge time period when climate was changing,” he said in comments broadcast last week. “And of course when we talk about climate change, we must use the knowledge that we will get from them (mammoths).”

Scientists believe mammoths lived from 4.8 million years ago to around 4,000 years ago. Studies suggest climate change or overkill by human hunters as possible reasons leading to their extinction.

Tikhonov said the mammoth would be sent to an institute in Japan for further study.From

Associated Press reports