Sue Tilley posed for Freud over a four-year period in the early 1990s

A life-sized Lucian Freud painting of a sleeping, naked woman has set a new world record price for a work by a living artist.

The 1995 portrait, titled Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, sold for $33.6m (£17.2m) at Christie's in New York.

The previous record was held by Jeff Koons' Hanging Heart, which fetched $23.5m (£12.1m) last November.

The Freud work, sold at auction for the first time, shows Jobcentre supervisor Sue Tilley, now 51, asleep on a sofa.

Christie's described it as a "bold and imposing example of the stark power of Freud's realism".

Ms Tilley, nicknamed "Big Sue", was introduced to the painter, now 85, by the Australian performance artist Leigh Bowery.

She posed for Freud for four years in the early 1990s, and told BBC Radio 5 Live it was a strange feeling posing in the nude.

She said: "The first couple of times, I was a bit embarrassed but you get used to it. It's a bit weird to think that a picture of me could be worth so much money.

"You don't have to sit still the whole time. It's two or three days a week and you have breaks."

She added: "When we were painting it we didn't sit there going: 'I bet this'll be the biggest selling painting in the world'. It was just like one of his other pictures."

Beijing artist Li Wei's work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. Li Wei states that these images are not computer montages and works with the help of properties such as mirror, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics.

He started off his performance series ‘Mirroring’ and ‘Falls’ which shows the artist with his head and chest embedded into the ground.

Visit Hemmy's website for more incredible pics of Beijing artist Li Wei's performance art!

The recent poll from goo Ranking picked out the top 30 cutest corporate mascots in Japan. Kyoro-chan (キョロちゃん), the mascot of Morinaga Chocoballs ranked no.1 on the list:

Note that characters from companies like Sanrio, Disney, and San-X who are sold as characters in their own right were excluded from this survey.

Research results

Q: Who do you think is the cutest corporate mascot animal? (Sample size=1,036)

Rank	Character		Product	Score
1	Kyoro chan		Morinaga Chocoballs	100
2	Lismo kun		KDDI LISMO	85.8
3	Namacha Panda		Kirin Beverage Namacha	81.7
4	Pon De Lion		Mister Donuts	81.3
5	Hiko-nyan		Hikone Castle 400 Year Anniversary	80.6
6	Gachapin		Fuji Television Hirake! Ponkikki	73.5

The JoongAng Ilbo reports that Hallim University Medical School dean Kim Yong-seon, whose thesis claiming that Koreans were particularly at risk of contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease sparked the whole US beef import uproar, has told friends that media reports have exaggerated his findings, and politicians are misusing them for political gain.

Rjkoehler has the story:

Hallim University Director Yun Dae-won, who is with Kim on business in Finland, told reporters that the professor was quite embarrassed by the mess. Yun said he was speaking for Kim because the latter felt if he did the talking, he’d become an even bigger victim and perhaps be unable to return to Korea.

Kim appeared with Yun during the interview.

Earlier, Kim’s secretary said his boss felt insulted because some of his thesis had been exaggerated by the press.

Yun said the real problem at the heart of the uproar against US beef was not the facts contained in Kim’s thesis, but rather that those facts were being politically manipulated. He said Koreans were currently not making a rational judgment.

He stressed that Kim’s thesis was very specialized, so even other scholars would have a tough time analyzing it haphazardly. He said it was very dangerous to interpret Kim’s findings arbitrarily. In particular, Yun expressed concern about focusing the discussing on US beef. He said this appeared to be political; the real problem was European beef. He noted that only three cows in the United States had been infected with Mad Cow disease, and all three were infected outside the United States.

Then the kicker — Yun said Kim has enjoyed and continues to enjoy eating US beef, both when he was researching Mad Cow Disease in the United States and now. Given this, Yun said, you could probably guess what the professor personally thought about US beef.

Traffic police said, "over half of speeding drivers either cover up their plates or use a fake plate, the chances of capturing them is next to nil!"

Speeding drivers in south China are getting clear away thanks to machines which switch the numbers on their licence plates in seconds, state media said.

"More than 50 percent of cars caught on camera for speeding and other offences either cover up their plates or use a fake licence plate," a traffic policeman in the Guangdong city of Yangjiang was quoted by the Beijing Youth Daily as saying, "our chances of capturing them is next to nil."

The price of the remote-control device starts at around 800 yuan ($115), while a more advanced apparatus with the ability to flip over the numbers in less than three seconds costs more than double.

"The era of covering up the licence plate by hand has passed," a driver surnamed Zheng told the newspaper.

"It's really convenient and economical too," a salesman who specializes in such devices in the provincial capital of Guangzhou was quoted as saying.

In April, Xinhua news agency reported that China had confiscated thousands of fake military vehicles and number plates in a move to crack down on citizens masquerading as privileged members of the People's Liberation Army.

In years past, Chinese counterfeiters have used fake military vehicles to ship bootleg cigarettes and other goods, previous reports have said.

Hoping to relieve its stress of alarming overpopulation, the world's most crowded city - Tokyo's construction industry has trained its sights on the only vacant lot around -- the waters of Tokyo Bay. Witness the impossible dream of city planners: to build a 3,000-foot pyramid over the water, with skyscrapers suspended like peapods within its enormous frame.

There’s an interesting opinion article in the New York times regarding the world’s food crisis. Different than the financial crisis and harder to find a solution to, author Paul Krugman offers several reasons as to why this food shortage is happening.

One major reason he states is China: "There’s the march of the meat-eating Chinese — that is, the growing number of people in emerging economies who are, for the first time, rich enough to start eating meat like Westerners. Since it takes about 700 calories’ worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef, this change in diet increases the overall demand for grains."

Other reasons for the food shortage include naturally occurring events such as bad weather/droughts, and not-so naturally occurring events, such as bad policy-keeping.

Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed.

The combination of emerging economies such as China, droughts, and poor enforcement of policies make an ideal environment for a worldwide food crisis. (Also, biofuels - They’re not such a good idea. When you try to make the world’s fuel supply by using the world’s food supply.)

In Japan, the effects are being felt as the prices of food increase, including the controversial increase of Kentucky Fried Chicken prices. Countless TV programs examining this issue are aired weekly, and many companies have been resorting to putting out expired foods to keep their prices competitive, including patisserie giant Fujiya.

The solution seems simple: enforce policies to keep grain supplies in check, and cut down on the world’s meat supply. But unfortunately these sorts of things are easier said than done, and until people change the way wealth is interpreted, it will be a harsh winter for us grasshoppers.

Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.

Read New York Times' article HERE.