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Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- A state agency in charge of environmental regulation has flushed its six-year experiment with waterless urinals. According to California Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Lindsay VanLaningham, the agency has removed all 56 waterless urinals at its 25-story headquarters in downtown Sacramento. ... But VanLaningham says CalEPA has received hundreds of complaints over the years about foul odors and wet floors. Maintenance costs also grew high.

UNISEX wash basin areas could be built in schools to help tackle bullying. The move is part of recommendations covering schools in England being rebuilt or refurbished as part of the Government's £45bn Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme. BSF aims to rebuild or renew every one of England's 3,500 state secondary schools during the 15-year lifetime of the initiative. The new guidelines were issued by the Government agency responsible for delivering the programme, Partnerships for Schools. Toilets in Schools was published earlier this month and details new toilet block designs to be incorporated into all BSF schools. It...

The Kansas City International Airport has added several foot-washing basins in restrooms to accommodate a growing number of Muslim taxicab drivers who requested the facilities to prepare for daily Islamic prayer, WND has learned. The move concerns airport police who worry about Middle Eastern men loitering inside the building. After 9/11, the airport beefed up its police force to help prevent terrorist attacks. "Why are we constructing places of worship for them inside our airports?" said an airport official who requested anonymity. "Why are we catering to their rituals? We don't do it for any other religion." Other major airports...

SANTA FE New Mexico is taking its fight against drunken driving to men's restrooms around the state. The state has ordered 500 talking urinal cakes that will deliver a recorded anti-D-W-I message to bar and restaurant patrons who make one last pit stop before getting behind the wheel. The top of the devices feature the state D-W-I slogan -- "You drink, you drive, you lose." Some Albuquerque bars installed the devices this week. And the state Transportation Department plans to distribute them to Santa Fe bars and restaurants as well as establishments in Farmington, Gallup and Las Cruces. The state...

SANTA FE -- New Mexico has taken its fight against drunken driving to men's restrooms around the state. The state has ordered 500 talking urinal cakes that will deliver a recorded anti-DWI message to bar and restaurant patrons who make one last pit stop before getting behind the wheel. The top of the devices feature the state DWI slogan -- "You drink, you drive, you lose." Some Albuquerque bars installed the devices this week. And the state Transportation Department plans to distribute them to Santa Fe bars and restaurants as well as establishments in Farmington, Gallup and Las Cruces....

New Mexico is taking its fight against drunken driving to men's restrooms around the state. The state has ordered 500 talking urinal cakes that will deliver a recorded anti-DWI message to bar and restaurant patrons who make one last pit stop before getting behind the wheel. "Hey there, big guy. Having a few drinks?" a female voice says a few seconds after an approaching male sets off a motion sensor in the device. "It's time to call a cab or ask a sober friend for a ride home."

No touch, no flush. No water, even. Waterless urinals are being tested at City Hall. But although they are saving hundreds of thousands of gallons of precious water in 29 states -- and in high-profile venues like Disney World and the Rose Bowl -- the devices are illegal in Illinois. Waterless urinals use a replaceable, biodegradable cylindrical filter containing a floating layer of liquid sealant. Urine penetrates the sealant, which closes to seal off odors, and goes down the drain. "It's as benign as a sink when it's kept up," said Jim Allen of the Sloan Valve Co., based in...

Belgians get scolding from Vito Photo stickers of Bush were placed in urinals in some ministry offices in Brussels Saturday, February 26, 2005 By TERENCE J. KIVLAN WASHINGTON -- Photo stickers of President Bush and the American flag placed in urinals in some Belgian ministry offices in Brussels right before the president's European tour have Rep. Vito Fossella mighty peeved. But the lawmaker's ire, expressed to the Belgian prime minister at the Belgian Embassy here, may have been misdirected. Although Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) accused the prime minister of responsibility for the stickers, Serge Wauthier, an embassy spokesman, noted that the...

Local DC talk show host Michael Graham has taken his show to Ireland. Today he had a news item that did not show up in the Washington Post or New York Times. It seems that a high official in the Belgian govt was passing out "stickers" to be placed in the urinals of Brussels during the presidents visit. Visit the WMAL web site to see what it looks like.

Stickers on urinals all over Belgium where President Bush was today for a third day are inviting people to relieve themselves on likenesses of the President himself, and the American flag. The stickers distributed by the Belgian Socialist Party (search) can be found in the bathrooms of schools, youth clubs, and pubs, and even in the office restrooms of Belgium's Vice Prime Minister, Johan Vande Lanotte. After all, the man who designed the stickers is one of Vande Lanotte's spokesmen. The leader of the Socialist Party was asked about them on Belgian television but, as The Weekley Standard points out,...

At the official site of the Belgian Flemish Socialist Party, the creative young socialists have designed “urinoir-stickers” to be placed in urinals—featuring a caricature of President Bush. http://www.s-p-a.be/nationaal/mensen/wieiswie/detail.asp?sCode=ORG

German men are being shamed into urinating while sitting down by a gadget which is saving millions of women from cleaning up in the bathroom after them. The Water Closet (restroom) ghost, a £6 voice-alarm, reprimands men for standing at the lavatory pan. It is triggered when the seat is lifted. The battery-operated devices are attached to the seats and deliver stern warnings to those who attempt to stand and urinate (known as "Stehpinkeln"). "Hey, stand-peeing is not allowed here and will be punished with fines, so if you don't want any trouble, you'd best sit down," one of the...

Even though they allow for high-volume servicing and back-in-a-flash trips to the john, the point-and-shoot-a-stinky-deodorizer-cake oddity known as the men’s restroom urinal has been, for women, a constant enigma. But nothing will prepare you for the men’s room in the newly-designed Virgin Airways Clubhouse in New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, terminal 4: Urinals shaped like a woman’s mouth, dolled up with red lipstick, wide open and ready for business. “In anything that we do there has to be a smile, and that’s the smile in this Clubhouse,” said John Riordan, Vice President of Customer Services for Virgin Airways....