TOKYO. Sumo world says ?no thanks? to pant. A tussle has broken out in Japan?s tradition-bound sumo world over the right to wear pants in the ring. Gargantuan sumo wrestlers generally compete naked but for a ?mawashi?, an arrangement of wrapped cloth that preserves a bare minimum of modesty.

Sumo?s amateur association hit upon the idea of allowing shy youngsters to wear ?sumo pants?, a more substantial garment similar to cycling shorts, to try to boost the dwindling numbers of children taking up the sport, the daily Yomiuri Shimbun said. ?Pubescent kids are not going to want to take part if they don?t look cool,? Yomiuri quoted one local amateur sumo official as saying. The sport?s professional body, the Nihon Sumo Kyokai, however, has made clear that it will not allow wrestlers in pants to take part in youth tournaments at the venerable national stadium in Tokyo, the paper said. ?The national stadium has its rules and ways of doing things,? the paper quoted a Sumo Kyokai spokesman as saying. ?We have no intention of allowing children in pants into the ring.?

NEW YORK. Prankster smuggles art into top museums Many a visitor to New York?s Museum of Modern Art has probably thought, ?I could do that.? A British graffiti artist who goes by the name ?Banksy? went one step further, by smuggling in his own picture of a soup can and hanging it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier this month before anybody noticed.

The prank was part of a coordinated plan to infiltrate four of New York?s top museums on a single day. The largest piece, which he smuggled into the Brooklyn Museum, was a 2 foot by 1.5 foot (61cm by 46 cm) oil painting of a colonial-era admiral, to which the artist had added a can of spray paint in his hand and anti-war graffiti in the background. The other two targets were the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, where he hung a glass-encased beetle with fighter jet wings and missiles attached to its body ? another comment on war, Banksy told Reuters on Thursday. ?I thought why wait until I?m dead,? explained ?Banksy?.