View Full Version : Funny and strange news -thread
MPAA training police dogs to sniff out DVDs
The dogs, Lucky and Flo, faced their first test at the FedEx UK hub at Stansted Airport.
FedEx was glad to assist in Lucky and Flo's first live test in a working situation. They were amazingly successful at identifying packages containing DVDs, which were opened and checked by HM Customs' representatives. While all were legitimate shipments on the day, our message to anyone thinking about shipping counterfeit DVDs through the FedEx network is simple: you're going to get caught."
Kinda makes me thing twice about shipping anything through FedEX. Seriously, this is like training drug dogs to find plastic bags.
From the MPAA press release:
"United Kingdom, Los Angeles - - The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), express delivery company FedEx and HM Revenue & Customs, has joined forces to launch an exciting new initiative to help combat DVD piracy.
As part of a project promoted by the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA), FACT instigated the training of two black Labradors named Lucky and Flo by one of the world's leading experts in the field whose other clients include police, fire and rescue service. The dogs were trained over an eight month period to identify DVDs that may be located in boxes, envelopes or other packaging, as well as discs concealed amongst other goods which could be sold illegally in the UK. These DVDs are often smuggled by criminal networks involved in large scale piracy operations from around the world."
http://www.spacegrinder.com/article8.html
Punk rock prodigy earns MBA at 18
'I have been in college for so long,' says Pennsylvania teenager
PITTSBURGH - Jessica Meeker is not your average MBA. She’s a black-clad, punk rock fanatic whose hair has seen more colors than the average rainbow.
She’s also 18, and on Saturday, she will be the youngest student ever to receive an MBA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, school officials said.
She’s not caught up in being a prodigy, though
“It just feels so good to finally be done,” Meeker said Friday. “I have been in college for so long.”
At age 12, Meeker became the youngest student to enroll at Pennsylvania State University and, at 16, she was the youngest to earn a bachelor’s degree there, majoring in psychology.
Being a young teenager at a huge university wasn’t easy.
“I was a little kid,” she said. “Everyone was like, ‘What’s she doing here?”’
But Meeker eventually thrived, enjoying coffee shops and dorm life with her older peers.
Frank Meeker, 49, and Leigh Meeker, 46, always knew their daughter was smart — she could spell at 18 months. In first grade, after repeatedly complaining that she was bored, she was given an IQ test and scored in the 99.7 percentile, her mother said.
Meeker’s parents took her out of public school system and taught her at their home in Bellefonte, in the state’s center, about 10 miles north of Penn State’s main campus.
Leigh said she is proud of her daughter, though watching her grow up has been bittersweet.
“She’s going to get her own place and not be our little girl anymore,” Leigh said. “She’s an adult now, and she’s going to go out on her own.”
What next?
What Meeker will move on to, however, is an open question.
She said she’s considering getting a doctorate in psychology. She hasn’t received any job offers.
The director of the MBA program, Krish Krishnan, predicted Meeker would be successful at a company with younger management and an unorthodox style or at a firm that targets its products to teens.
“She knows her accounting, finance, marketing and business law,” Krishnan said. “And she has a mind-set and direct connect to those kind of businesses.”
Meeker joked that she would rather work someplace like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
“I’m addicted to sugar and Mountain Dew, and everyone tells me you should work in something you like,” she said.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12767676/
Burglar puts the touch on his victim
Tokyo police: Man ties up woman, takes cash, massages her shoulders
TOKYO - How about a little relaxation with your robbery?
A burglar gave a 35-year-old woman a shoulder massage for several hours after breaking into her apartment in central Tokyo and tying her up, police were quoted as saying on Friday.
He stole 210,000 yen ($1,900) in cash and her bank cash card, though he later mailed the card to her as she requested after withdrawing 980,000 yen from her account, Kyodo news agency said.
It said Lee Jin-se, 29, a South Korean, admitted the burglary and told police he lingered in the woman's apartment and gave her the massage "to relax her."
Police believe Lee waited there until business hours began for bank cash machines, virtually none of which operate around-the-clock in Japan, Kyodo said.
A police spokesman confirmed the robbery but declined to comment on the reported massage. He said the woman did not appear to have been physically assaulted.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12763439/
Britons pick teeth with screwdrivers, scissors ...
Survey: More than 60 percent use whatever’s handy to dislodge food
LONDON - More than 60 percent of Britons use items such as screwdrivers, scissors and earrings to remove food from between their teeth, according to a survey on Friday.
The National Dental Survey found that when it comes to oral hygiene, people use whatever is close to hand to pick their teeth.
More than 60 percent questioned by the British Dental Health Foundation said they used makeshift items, which included knives, keys, needles and forks.
The survey also found that 23 percent of people choose to leave food stuck between their teeth, increasing the risk of gum disease and bad breath, the foundation, which promotes oral health, said in a statement.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12763486/
canoilers
05-13-2006, 10:57am
Thats one of the weirdest things I ever heard, man those japenese have some polite criminals.
Hair-raising Beethoven piece: da-da-da Diamond!
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Beethoven composed many enduring symphonies, but now a Chicago company wants to make a Beethoven piece that lasts forever -- a diamond made out of strands of the 18th-century composer's hair
LifeGem Memorials, a company that first gained attention in 2002 by making diamonds out of the carbon from cremated human remains, now says it can make diamonds out of human hair, allowing people to bury their loved ones but still have a memento they can carry with them.
To publicize this -- and to raise money for charity -- the company has teamed with John Reznikoff, who is in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the largest and most valuable collection of celebrity hair.
Reznikoff is giving six to 10 strands of Beethoven's hair to LifeGem, which will use it in a process to create three diamonds of between 0.5 and 1 carat in weight.
Greg Herro, chief executive officer of LifeGem, said the diamonds will initially be put on a worldwide tour of museums and opera houses for about half a year as the company tries to gain attention for its ability to make diamonds from hair.
"We thought, well, what better way to do it than with an international icon who is known to millions," Herro said.
Eventually, the diamonds will be sold at auction, with the proceeds donated to raise money for military families, Herro said.
Reznikoff, who has about 115 hair samples in his collection -- including locks from Abraham Lincoln, Marilyn Monroe and Charles Dickens -- noted that Beethoven has wide appeal. The composer's music has been used in jazz, disco and rock songs, including the use of the familiar da-da-da-dum beginning to Symphony No. 5 in the Electric Light Orchestra's version of "Roll Over Beethoven."
"Of all those that could be picked to spearhead this, I think the one with the most cross appeal is Beethoven," Reznikoff said.
The Westport, Connecticut-based handwriting expert, document examiner and manuscript dealer acquired Beethoven's hair in 1997 from Eldred's auction house in East Dennis, Massachusetts. Reznikoff said he could not recall how much he paid for the hair purchased along with other items that day..
Since 2002, LifeGem has created diamonds from the remains of loved ones for close to 2,000 families, Herro said, adding that most families order several gems.
The process bonds the carbon to a microscopic crystal and other minerals -- including boron and nitrogen --used to catalyze the carbon into a diamond, under intense pressure and heat. The diamonds are then faceted and polished into a finished gem-quality diamond.
LifeGem plans to use other parts of Reznikoff's collections to make diamonds that will be sold to raise funds for charity. Herro said the company also hopes to convince some celebrities to donate their hair to be made into diamonds and sold to support the celebrity's favorite cause.
All of which could lead to the question: is a Carol Channing diamond a girl's best friend?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060514/od_nm/beethoven_diamond_dc;_ylt=AhFKb9MFG4NiJ9v4kS0.Lqys 0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3NW1oMDRpBHNlYwM3NTc-
Authorities find woman taken as a child in ’76
‘Pretty surreal’ discovery occurs 30 Mother’s Day weekends after abduction
PONTIAC, Mich. - A woman whose father was charged with kidnapping her as a child 30 years ago has been found living in Arizona, her mother and sheriff’s officials said.
On Mother’s Day weekend in 1976, Laura Gooder’s estranged husband, Eric Douglas Nielsen, picked up 21-month-old Genevieve Rachel Nielsen for an overnight visit. They never returned.
This Mother’s Day weekend, a police officer arrived Saturday at Gooder’s home in Frederic, Mich., with news that her daughter — now 31 — had been found, The Detroit News reported.
Gooder’s daughter had been raised under another name and grew up believing her mother had been killed in an auto accident. Law enforcement officials declined to release her other name.
“It is pretty surreal,” Gooder, 53, said. “I am keeping my fingers crossed and waiting for her to call.”
On Sunday, Gooder told The Associated Press that she didn’t want to speak about the case until she hears from her daughter.
Eric Nielsen was incarcerated in Arizona under a different identity on an unrelated charge, authorities said. A tip led investigators to visit an Arizona prison Thursday, said Michael Bouchard, sheriff in Michigan’s Oakland County.
Gooder’s daughter, who now has a child of her own, was traumatized by the revelations, Bouchard said.
“She obviously was told something completely different from the father,” Bouchard said. “She is devastated.”
After her daughter’s disappearance, Gooder remarried and had three sons.
Last year, U.S. marshals joined the search for Gooder’s daughter, and a judge charged Eric Nielsen with kidnapping. He had been wanted on a state kidnapping warrant since 1976.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12789463/
Zoo visitors watch bears kill, eat monkey
‘They are and remain wild animals,’ Dutch zoo says after incident
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Bears killed and devoured a monkey in front of horrified visitors at a Dutch zoo, officials and witnesses said Monday.
Visitors reported that the grisly scene began as several bears chased the monkey, a macaque, onto a wooden structure at Beekse Bergen Safari Park.
They said a bear tried unsuccessfully to shake the monkey loose, ignoring attempts by keepers to distract it. The bear then climbed up and grabbed the monkey, mauling it to death and bringing it to its concrete den, where three bears ate it.
The park confirmed the killing. “The habitats here in the safari park are arranged in such a way that one animal almost never kills another, but they are and remain wild animals,” it said in a statement.
The attack occurred in an area of the zoo that contains both monkeys and sloth bears, a type of black bear found in the Asian subcontinent.
The park said it plans now to move the macaques to another part of the park.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12809975/
cftennisnative3
05-16-2006, 5:43pm
That's pretty sad.... thanks for posting.
SevenUp!
05-16-2006, 6:26pm
That is very sad... :cry: ...but like the Zoo spokesperson said they are wild animals and that's what they do...hunt and kill. Too bad a monkey had to die before anyone realized how unsafe it was for them to be so near the bears. :(
canoilers
05-16-2006, 6:34pm
Their bears, how was this not seen? Bears do hunt and they are carnivors, how do you not know thats was going to happen? I pretty sure unless your sticking them in with maybe Tigers, they'd eat whatever was in the cage with them. Expect for maybe Tigers and Lions the bears win.
SevenUp!
05-16-2006, 6:39pm
Their bears, how was this not seen? Bears do hunt and they are carnivors, how do you not know thats was going to happen?
Sometimes you just have to wonder...what are people thinking?
Buckled up for safety
Seat belt, bra strap save Florida woman from gunshot
TAMPA, Fla. - A 44-year-old woman escaped serious injury from a gunshot Sunday thanks to her seat belt and a thick bra strap, authorities said.
Robin Key, 44, of Riverview, Fla., was shot through the windshield of the car she was riding in Sunday. She said she felt a searing pain in her shoulder.
Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies said a .38-caliber bullet smashed through the windshield then bounced off Key's shoulder — thanks to a seat belt and a thick bra strap.
The copper-jacketed slug landed in her lap.
"It's a big bullet, but you had all those forces acting against it," Hillsborough sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway told the St. Petersburg Times. "It's very rare that something like that occurs. She's very lucky. You know, we're just glad she came out OK."
Key said she didn't know why anyone would shoot her. Sheriff's deputies arrested two men in connection with the shooting several hours later.
Authorities said they do not have a motive for the shooting.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12822937/?GT1=8199
Presumably, the butt did eventually go out
Man burns own house down by trying to snuff out cigarette in paint thinner
DENVER, N.C. - A man taking a break from painting burned down his house after trying to snuff out a cigarette in a bowl of paint thinner.
Stevie Spencer had put the bowl on his coffee table before taking a smoke break about 10 p.m. Saturday.
"I forgot paint thinner was in the bowl," Spencer said. "I thought it was water."
The fire from the paint thinner ignited some papers, Spencer said. He got his wife out of the house, then tried to extinguish the flames with a hose. Spencer suffered minor injuries.
Fire Chief Jay Flynn said the house was too far gone to save it when firefighters arrived.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12803030/
Eau de Play-Doh?
Now you can smell like modeling clay without smearing it all over yourself
PAWTUCKET, R.I. - It's one of the most unique smells around. And now you can wear it.
Hasbro is continuing its celebration of Play-Doh's 50th anniversary by releasing "Eau de Play-Doh," a perfume designed to smell just like the kids' modeling clay.
Spokesman Gary Serby says Play-Doh's smell is one of its most enduring memories, and Hasbro figures smelling the perfume will transport people back to their childhood.
It sells for $19 a bottle.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12793708/
Some millionaires decorate their mansions with rare paintings. Richard Moriarty bolted a 1974 Lamborghini to the wall of his Newport Beach estate early Friday.
Because Home Depot doesn't sell kits to hang cars as artwork, Moriarty hired a 70-ton crane to lower the Italian sports car through a skylight in his living room.
Earlier, the car's engine was removed and transformed into a "200-mph coffee table" for guests who prefer their drinks "shaken not stirred," said Moriarty, an heir to the family that developed South Coast Plaza. Full Story
http://savemanny.blogspot.com/2006/05/man-mounts-lamborghini-on-mansion-wall.html
Woman forfeits friend for free tank of gas
She leaves companion at gas station as deposit after fill-up, never returns
BERLIN - A German woman left her friend as a deposit at a gas station because she did not have enough cash to pay for her gasoline, police said Wednesday.
"She didn't have enough money to pay the bill, so her friend stayed behind as a human deposit while she went to withdraw cash," said a spokesman for police in the southern town of Münchberg. "Unfortunately, the woman did not return."
Two hours after the 20-year-old driver left, the gas station called the police, who interrogated the stranded "deposit" before releasing her. Police are investigating the driver on suspicion of fraud.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12855909/from/RS.1/
The piano that went up a mountain and stayed
Volunteers cleaning up Britain’s highest peak find instrument near summit
LONDON - Volunteers tidying up Britain's highest mountain have found a piano near the summit, a conservation group said Wednesday.
The instrument was discovered over the weekend under a pile of stones near the top of 4,418-foot Ben Nevis, according to the John Muir Trust, which owns part of the Scottish mountain.
"Our guys couldn't believe their eyes," trust director Nigel Hawkins said. "At first they thought it was just the wooden casing, but then they saw the whole cast iron frame complete with strings.
The only thing that was missing was the keyboard, and that's another mystery," Hawkins said.
A cookie wrapper with an expiration date of Dec. 12, 1986, was found underneath the piano, suggesting it may have been there for 20 years.
Hawkins said he suspected the piano was carried up as part of a charity fund-raising effort by a group that decided it was easier to bury it under a pile of stones, or cairn, than carry it back down.
"People have played rugby up there, and someone drove up a herd of llamas," Hawkins said. "It does attract a lot of wacky things."
Volunteers, who were also clearing trash left by some 120,000 people who visit the mountain every year, have broken up the piano and carried down the pieces.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12856420/from/RS.1/
A case for the lawn ranger
Thief steals California homeowner’s front yard — sod, shrubs and sprinklers
ADELANTO, Calif. - It was a sod story for a Mojave Desert homeowner whose entire front yard — grass, bushes and sprinklers — was hauled away by a thief.
The homeowner telephoned law officials to report the yard in front of his under-construction home was gone, sheriff's spokeswoman Staci Johnson said Tuesday.
Witnesses told the homeowner they saw the thief taking the sod, plants and irrigation system to a nearby residence, Johnson said.
David Roger Bowers, 34, was arrested at the home and booked for investigation of grand theft and possession of stolen property, the sheriff's spokeswoman said.
The landscaping materials were returned to the victim.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12856726/from/RS.1/
SevenUp!
05-18-2006, 8:27pm
I hope the "deposit" told police who her "friend" was!!
Well, a final resting place is a resting place ...
Man charged for funeral home break-in, stealing some shuteye in coffin
CANTON, N.Y. - A man was charged with burglary and criminal mischief Thursday after he allegedly broke into a funeral home and fell asleep in a coffin.
Joel Fish, 20, of Queensbury, was arrested after he was discovered at the O'Leary Funeral Home in Canton, 127 miles north of Syracuse.
Debra White, wife of the home's funeral director, Joe White, said she noticed a broken window and open door to the casket display room when she awoke at 6:30 a.m. Inside, she saw a boot and pair of pants on the floor and a pair of knees sticking out of a stainless steel coffin.
Fish, who police said was intoxicated, was treated at Canton-Potsdam hospital for cuts. He was arraigned and released to return to court at a later date.
The funeral home estimates the damage from the burglary, mostly to the coffin, at $4,000.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12861396/from/RS.2/
CHANDLER, Ariz. One Arizona high school has added another item to its list of banned substances: bottled ketchup.
One student at Basha High School in Chandler was disciplined after being caught with a ketchup bottle two days in a row. And the principal says the school called the parents of several others found with the contraband.
The smuggling began after the school cafeteria limited students to three packets of ketchup per hamburger. You can get extra packets, but they cost 25 cents each.
You also can bring your own packets. But bottled ketchup is banned because the school says it would be a health code violation.
The policy was adopted because administrators were fed up with students stomping on ketchup packets and squirting the red goo on sidewalks and hallways.
http://www.woodtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4926296
Very interesting. Three packets is a joke.
When I have fries, its like would you like fries with your ketchup!
David
Girl, 10, takes SUV for wild ride
It’s hard to avoid collisions when you have to duck down to stomp the gas
PENSACOLA, Fla. - A 10-year-old girl who drove off with her guardian's sport utility vehicle with a toddler and a 5-year-old on board crashed the vehicle into several cars, authorities said.
The girl sideswiped several cars during her 15-minute drive Thursday night and reached speeds up to 50 mph, said Ted Roy, spokesman for the Escambia County Sheriff's Office.
"She was so little she had to go down and hit the gas and pop her head back up to see where she was going," Roy said.
The girl had grabbed her guardian's keys and walked out of her house without telling the guardian she was leaving, authorities said.
Dispatchers received calls about an SUV driving recklessly, and sheriff's deputies and highway patrol officers followed the vehicle. The trip ended when the SUV jumped a curb and hit a fire hydrant.
The children suffered minor injuries, Roy said.
Sheriff's deputies charged the girl as a juvenile with kidnapping and false imprisonment and vehicle theft.
The highway patrol charged her with careless driving, not having a driver's license and not using a child restraint.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12910982/
Bomb parts found in french fry plant’s potatoes
Hand grenade, artillery shell piece from WWI and WWII force evacuations
YORK, England - Workers at a British factory making French fries were evacuated two days running last week after bomb parts turned up in potatoes imported from France and Belgium, the site of battles in World War I and II.
The plant, owned by Canada’s McCain Foods, the world’s largest producer of frozen fries, was emptied on Friday after a worker spotted a shell tip among the potatoes as they were being cleaned for slicing.
“The police were called and the bomb squad advised a 100-meter exclusion zone should be set up,” said a McCain spokesman.
On Saturday, an entire hand grenade was discovered in the potatoes and the plant was evacuated again.
“The army took the device away and blew it up in a controlled explosion in a field nearby,” a spokeswoman for the North Yorkshire police said.
The Scarborough plant, located in northern England, was opened in 1969 and uses 1,400 tons of potatoes every week. Production is back to normal.
McCain’s Whittlesey plant near Peterborough in eastern England has also been evacuated several times this year after WWII ordnance was found in batches of potatoes.
“Occasionally during the use of imported potatoes from Belgium and northern France, ordnance debris from the First and Second World War is found,” McCain said in a statement.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12914977/
Driver Has 18 Times Legal Alcohol Limit
VILNIUS, Lithuania - Lithuanian police were so astonished by a breath test that registered 18 times the legal alcohol limit, they thought their device must be broken. It wasn't
Police said Tuesday 41-year-old Vidmantas Sungaila registered 7.27 grams per liter of alcohol in his blood repeatedly on different devices after he was pulled over Saturday for driving his truck down the center of a two-lane highway 60 miles from the capital, Vilnius.
Lithuania's legal limit is 0.4 grams per liter.
"This guy should have been lying dead, but he was still driving. It must be an unofficial national record," Saulius Skvernelis, director of the national police traffic control service, told the AP. "He was of high spirits and grinning the whole time he was questioned."
Medical experts say anything above 3.5 grams per liter of alcohol in the blood is lethal for most people.
"A person this intoxicated should be in an intensive care unit, not behind the wheel," said Tautvydas Zikaras, head of the dependence illness center in the country's second-largest city, Kaunas. Zikaras said he had never heard or read of someone being so drunk.
Sungaila, who was slapped with a $1,110 fine and the loss of his license for up to three years, told police he had been drinking the night before and tried to freshen up by downing a pint of beer for breakfast.
Lithuania has one of the worst road safety records in the European Union. Last year, 760 people died in traffic accidents in this country of 3.5 million residents. Most were alcohol-related
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060523/ap_on_fe_st/lithuania_record_drink_driver
Why do scientists strive to learn the language of animals? It is not a matter of communication. Primarily, they want to understand nonhuman logic and use it for deciphering messages from extraterrestrials.
Let us assume that scientists get an encoded message from aliens. The message needs to be decoded or at least singled out from a cacophony of space signals. Lawrence Doyle, a researcher at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, California, came up with a way to find evidence of extraterrestrial origins in the language of dolphins.
Doyle and a team of specialists from the University of California used communications methods based on a mathematical technique for analyzing any sequence of symbols e.g. series of DNA units, figures, letters or phrases.
First and foremost, it is necessary to be sure that a signal really contains some sort of information. George Zipf, a linguist at Harvard University, devised a method for counting different letters in a typical English text. The linguist counted the number of different letters occurrence in a typical English text. Then he drew a chart for the occurrence frequency of letters in a given order and on a logarithmic scale. Thus he came up with an incline with an angular coefficient that equals -1. The angular coefficient for the text in other languages proved to be the same. At the same time, a random combination of letters devoid of information did not have any slant at all. In other words, a meaningless bunch of words will amount to zero on the chart if filtered through the mathematical formulas.
The researchers used the Zipf method for studying the dolphins’ whistle. The results looked slightly out of the ordinary, because the dolphins’ whistle produced the same angular coefficient as the human languages did on the chart. The “chatter” of the monkeys turned out much more primitive. Therefore, dolphins are closer to humans in terms of intelligence, according to the researchers. Now they need to understand what the “whistlers” are trying to say to humans.
Dolphins have long become an inspiration for numerous authors of most kooky theories. One of the latest theories was put forward by Simon Clark, an astronomer at the Kennedy Space Center. He maintains that dolphins are indigenous to one of the moons of Jupiter. “Next to humans, dolphins could be the most intelligent creatures in our solar system so forget ‘the little green men,” said Cark at a press conference in Florida this January.
NASA’s Galileo noticed some movement under a thick ice layer of Europa, the Jovian moon, while flying past it at an altitude of 400 kilometers several years ago. The probe’s sound sensors reportedly detected a whistle coming right out of the ice cover. Until recently NASA has kept all data pertaining to the Galileo Interstellar Mission under wraps. The details of the findings are still coming through.
“Scientists were just amazed at the results of a computer analysis of the data. The frequency of the sounds coming from the moon’s ocean was found to be equal to that of the sounds produced by dolphins on Earth! The error margin is 0.001%,” said Clark.
At the moment it is impossible to identify the life forms “communicating” with one another in the oceans of Europa. However, a fresh theory says they could be similar to common dolphins.
Are dolphins and humans the most intelligent creatures in the Universe? We put the question to Vladislava Tarchevskaya, a researcher at the Laboratory of Bioacoustics, she has been studying issues relating to dolphins’ sound communication for many years.
“They might as well be the smartest ones,” Tarchevskaya said. “The creatures have enormous capabilities. The frequencies range they use is a lot wider than that used by humans. The range of our sound communication normally stays within a frequency band of 20 kilohertz (musicians can tell sounds ranging up to 40 kilohertz). And dolphins use an “extended” frequency range going up to 300 kilohertz. Moreover, our research shows that dolphins have approximately the same number of levels with respect to the sound organization i.e. six. The number breaks down as follows: sound, syllable, word, phrase, paragraph, context. Humans can tell the meaning starting from a third level (word) and upward. We don’t know yet where it starts in the case of dolphins. Meanwhile, both for humans and dolphins the sound organization is nearly the same in terms of complexity. On the whole, there are lots of noticeable parallels between the two species: Homo Sapiens and Orcinus Orca. Not unlike humans, dolphins can eat any creature while no animal dare attack them. The span of dolphin life resembles an average human lifespan. Dolphins reach maturity at the same age as humans do, they are very sociable, live in families. They even have dialects, something that is akin to our languages.”
http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/77144-0/
18,000 pounds of fireworks seized from truck
Police say vehicle was tailgating a fuel tanker in NYC area
WESTHAMPTON BEACH, N.Y. - Police officers who stopped a truck that was tailgating a fuel tanker on a highway say they made a potentially explosive discovery — 18,000 pounds of fireworks.
"It would have devastated a quarter-mile radius if they had gone off," Suffolk County Police Department spokesman Robert Boden said Wednesday.
The truck carrying the explosives was found to be dangerously overloaded when it was pulled over Monday for a routine safety check, police said.
A police dog named Nitro — a German shepherd added to the department's anti-terrorism efforts after the Sept. 11 attacks — sniffed out the fireworks.
The driver of the truck, whose manifest said it was carrying paper goods, brought the fireworks from Maryland for illegal resale, police said.
State law prohibits the sale or possession of fireworks without a permit. The driver, who was with his adult son, faces multiple summonses for carrying hazardous materials and driving an overweight truck.
To demonstrate how powerful 18,000 pounds of fireworks could be, police exploded about 25 pounds of the sky rockets, Roman candles and other fireworks inside a car at the department's firearms range in Westhampton. The car was destroyed in a massive fireball.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12969169/from/RS.3/
Scientists trace AIDS origin to wild chimps
Gene tests match virus in primates in Cameroon to first known human case
WASHINGTON - Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases emerged, scientists have confirmed that the HIV virus plaguing humans really did originate in wild chimpanzees, in a corner of Cameroon.
Solving the mystery of HIV’s ancestry was dirty work. Scientists employed trackers to plunge through dense jungle and collect the fresh feces of wild apes — more than 1,300 samples in all.
Before that, it took seven years of research just to develop the testing methods to genetically trace the primate version of the virus in living wild chimps without hurting the endangered species.
Until now, “no one was able to look. No one had the tools,” said Dr. Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She led the team of international researchers that reported the success in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.
“We’re 25 years into this pandemic,” Hahn said. “We don’t have a cure. We don’t have a vaccine. But we know where it came from. At least we can make a check mark on one of those.”
Scientists long have known that nonhuman primates carry their own version of the AIDS virus, called SIV or simian immunodeficiency virus. But with one exception, it had been found only in captive chimpanzees, particularly a subspecies that in the wild populates mostly West Africa.
It was not known how prevalent the virus was in chimps in the wild, or how genetically or geographically diverse it was, complicating efforts to pin down the jump from animal to man.
Hahn’s team tested chimp feces for SIV antibodies, finding them in a subspecies called Pan troglodytes troglodytes in southern Cameroon.
Chimps tend to form geographically distinct communities. By genetically analyzing the feces, researchers could trace individual infected chimps. The team found some chimp communities with infection rates as high as 35 percent, while others had no infection at all.
Every single infected chimp had a common base genetic pattern that indicated a common ancestor, Hahn said.
There are three types of HIV-1, the strain of the human virus responsible for most of the worldwide epidemic. Genetic analysis let Hahn identify chimp communities near Cameroon’s Sanaga River whose viral strains are most closely related to the most common of those HIV-1 subtypes.
“The genetic similarity was striking,” Hahn said.
Spread to urban areas
The first human known to be infected with HIV was a man from Kinshasa in the nearby country of Congo who had his blood stored in 1959 as part of a medical study, decades before scientists knew the AIDS virus existed.
Presumably, someone in rural Cameroon was bitten by a chimp or was cut while butchering one and became infected with the ape virus. That person passed it to someone else.
The Sanaga River long has been a commercial waterway, for transporting hardwood, ivory and other items to more urban areas. Eventually, someone infected made it to Kinshasa.
“How many different transmission events occurred between that initial hunter and this virus making it to Kinshasa, I don’t know. It could have been one, it could have been 10, it could have been 100,” Hahn said. “Eventually, it ended up in an urban area, and that’s where it really got going.”
Somewhere in all that spread, the virus became more deadly to people than it is to chimps, who seldom are bothered much by SIV.
The research seems to settle any question of HIV’s origin, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health’s AIDS chief.
When tracing a virus’ evolution, “it’s important to get as close to the source as you can,” he said. “It’s of historic interest.”
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12966623/
Lovesick swan falls in love with swan paddle boat
BERLIN (Reuters) - A swan has fallen in love with a plastic swan-shaped paddle boat on a pond in the German town of Muenster and has spent the past three weeks flirting with the vessel five times its size, a sailing instructor said Friday.
Peter Overschmidt, who operates a sailing school and rents the two-seat paddle boat on the Aasee pond, said the black swan with a bright red beak has not left the white swan boat's side since it flew in one day in early May.
"It seems like he's fallen in love," said Overschmidt. "He protects it, sits next to it all the time and chases away any sail boats that get anywhere nearby. He thinks the boat is a strong and attractive swan."
Overschmidt said the swan will figure it out sooner or later but hopes he won't be too heartbroken.
"I'll wish him all the best and hope that he doesn't make the same mistake again," said Overschmidt."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060526/od_nm/germany_swan_dc;_ylt=AsIlIcSDhBrGTmRKiVP9nVWs0NUE; _ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-
Ruh-roh! Pot in Scooby-Doo satchel no mystery
Dad takes rap when 6-year-old pulls marijuana from backpack at school
ST. PAUL, Minn. - When a teacher asked a 6-year-old boy to pull a folder out of his Scooby-Doo backpack, a bag filled with 25 smaller bags of marijuana fell out instead, a court document said.
The teacher gave the drugs to a school administrator, who called police. Before officers arrived at HOPE Community Academy, the boy's father showed up. He took the backpack from his son and quickly walked away, according to a criminal complaint.
The father was later arrested and told investigators he hid the marijuana in the backpack and left it in a bedroom closet. When he discovered the backpack was missing, he ran to his son's nearby school.
Corey Randle, 29, was charged Thursday with a fifth-degree drug-sale charge.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13027469/from/RS.1/
Another global warming gift: itchier poison ivy
Study finds more carbon dioxide makes for faster, more allergenic plant
WASHINGTON - Another reason to worry about global warming: more and itchier poison ivy.
The noxious vine grows faster and bigger as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, researchers report Monday.
And a CO2-driven vine also produces more of its rash-causing chemical, urushiol, conclude experiments conducted in a forest at Duke University where scientists increased carbon-dioxide levels to those expected in 2050.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas — a chemical that traps heat similar to the way a greenhouse does — that’s considered a major contributor to global warming. Greenhouse gases have been steadily increasing in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.
Poison ivy is common in woods around the country, making it a bane of hikers, campers, fighters of forest fires, even backyard gardeners. Its itchy, sometimes blistering rash is one of the most widely reported ailments to poison-control centers, with more than 350,000 reported cases a year.
Compared to poison ivy grown in usual atmospheric conditions, those exposed to the extra-high carbon dioxide grew about three times larger — and produced more allergenic form of urushiol, scientists from Duke and Harvard University reported.
Their study appears in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The fertilization effect of rising CO2 on poison ivy ... and the shift toward a more allergenic form of urushiol have important implications for the future health of both humans and forests,” the study concludes.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13046200/
Surgery planned for baby with three arms
2-month-old Chinese boy born with well-formed extra limb
SHANGHAI, China - Doctors in Shanghai on Tuesday were considering surgery options for a 2-month-old boy born with an unusually well-formed third arm.
Neither of the boy’s two left arms is fully functional and tests have so far been unable to determine which was more developed, said Dr. Chen Bochang, head of the orthopedics department at Shanghai Children’s Medical Center.
“His case is quite peculiar. We have no record of any child with such a complete third arm,” Chen said in a telephone interview.
The boy, identified only as “Jie-jie,” also was born with just one kidney and may have problems that could lead to curvature of the spine, local media reports said. Jie-jie cried when either of his left arms was touched, but smiled and responded normally to other stimuli, the reports said.
Chen said doctors hoped to work out a plan for surgery, but the boy’s small size made it impossible to perform certain tests that would help them prepare.
Media reports said other children have been reported born with additional arms and legs, but in those cases it was clear what limb was more developed. Chen’s hospital is one of China’s most experienced in dealing with unusual birth defects, including separating conjoined twins.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13046061/
SHANIANUTS!
05-30-2006, 8:27pm
..just getting over my first case of the season...had it in my eye too...a killer...
..just getting over my first case of the season...had it in my eye too...a killer...
Thats gotta stink.
Ancient skeleton unearthed in Rome
Woman's remains found in excavations under Caesar's Forum
ROME - Archaeologists say they have dug up a woman skeleton dating to the 10th century B.C. in an ancient necropolis in the heart of Rome.
The well-preserved skeleton appears to be that of a woman aged about 30, said archaeologist Anna De Santis, who took part in the excavations under Caesar's Forum, part of the sprawling complex of the Imperial Forums in central Rome.
An amber necklace and four pins also were found near the 5-foot-3-inch-long (160-centimeter-long) skeleton, she said Tuesday.
The bones, dug up Monday, would likely be put on display in a museum after being examined further, De Santis said.
It was the first skeleton to be found in the 3,000-year-old necropolis, she said.
Early this year, a funerary urn that contained human ashes, as well as bone fragments that appeared to be from a sheep, were found in one of the necropolis' tombs.
Alessandro Delfino, another archaeologist who took part in the excavations, said Monday's discovery highlighted a "social change" in the funerary habits of the people who dwelled in the area, from incinerating to burying the dead.
Experts have said the necropolis was destined for high-ranking personalities — such as warriors and ancient priests — heading the tribes and clans that lived in small villages scattered on hills near the area that later spawned one of the world's greatest civilizations.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13059675/
Study says Arctic was once like Miami
Researchers surprised to see how CO2 could raise polar temperatures
WASHINGTON - Scientists have found something about the North Pole that could send a shiver down Santa’s spine: It used to be downright balmy.
In fact, 55 million years ago the Arctic was once a lot like Miami, with warm average temperatures, alligator ancestors and palm trees, scientists say.
That conclusion, based on first-of-their-kind core samples extracted from more than 1,000 feet (300 meters) below the Arctic Ocean floor, is contained in three studies published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. Scientists say the findings are both a glimpse backward at a region heated by naturally produced greenhouse gases run amok and a sneak peek at what human-caused global warming could do someday.
Scientists believe a simple fern may have been responsible for cooling things back down, by sucking up massive amounts of the carbon dioxide responsible for the warming. But this natural solution to global warming wasn’t exactly quick: It took about a million years.
Earth went through an extended period of natural global warming, capped off by a supercharged spike of carbon dioxide that accelerated the greenhouse effect even more about 55 million years ago. Scientists already knew this “thermal event” happened, but figured that while the rest of the world got really hot, the polar regions were still comfortably cooler, maybe about 52 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) on average.
But the new research from the multinational Arctic Coring Expedition found the polar average was closer to 74 degrees F (23 degrees C).
‘Big surprise’
“It’s the first time we’ve looked at the Arctic, and man, it was a big surprise to us,” said study co-author Kathryn Moran, an oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island. “It’s a new look to how the earth can respond to these peaks in carbon dioxide.”
The 74-degree temperature — based on core samples, which act as a climatic time capsule — was probably the year-round average, but because the data is so limited, it could also be simply the summertime average, researchers said.
“Imagine a world where there are dense sequoia trees and cypress trees like in Florida that ring the Arctic Ocean,” said Yale geology professor Mark Pagani, a study co-author. He said it was probably a tropical paradise, “but the mosquitoes were probably the size of your head.”
Cause is still a mystery
Researchers are not sure what caused the sudden boost of carbon dioxide that set the greenhouse effect on broil. Possible culprits could be huge releases of methane from the ocean, gigantic continent-sized burning of trees, or lots of volcanic eruptions.
What’s troubling is that this suggests the current projections, which say Earth will grow warmer by several degrees over the next century, may be on the low end, said the study’s lead author, Appy Sluijs of the Institute of Environmental Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Also, the findings are proof that too much carbon dioxide — more than four times current levels — can cause global warming, said another co-author, Henk Brinkhuis of Utrecht University.
Purdue University atmospheric sciences professor Gabriel Bowen, who was not part of the team, praised the work and said it showed that are “tipping points” in the Earth’s climatic system “that can throw us to these conditions.”
Ferns to the rescue?
With all that heat and big freshwater lakes forming in the Arctic, a fern called Azolla started growing and growing. Azolla, the fastest-growing plant on Earth, eventually started sucking up carbon dioxide and helped cool the Arctic, Brinkhuis theorized.
Bowen said he has a hard time accepting that part of the research, but Brinkhuis said the studies show tons upon tons of thick mats of Azolla covered the Arctic and moved south.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13067956/
Former Marine fends off robbers, kills 1
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- A former Marine cook used a pocketknife to fend off a group of would-be robbers, killing one and wounding another, police said.
Thomas Autry, who authorities said will not be charged, was walking home from his job waiting tables Monday night when four people got out of a car and chased him, Atlanta police detective Danny Stephens said. One attacker had a shotgun, and another had a pistol.
"My first instinct was to run, but they cornered me, so I had no other choice than to defend myself," Autry said. (Watch how the 6-foot-6 ex-Marine got ready to fight for his life -- 3:29)
The suspects caught up with Autry, who yelled for help and pulled a knife out of his backpack. He kicked the shotgun out of one of the attacker's hands and stabbed both a 17-year-old girl who jumped on him and a man who also attacked him.
The suspects fled in their car, but police found them later at a hospital, where the girl was pronounced dead. The stabbed man was in critical condition, Stephens said.
Autry's attackers will face robbery and assault charges and are suspected in other recent robberies, Stephens said.
Autry, 36, suffered a cut to his hand and a bruise on his chest, Stephens said.
Autry said he was honorably discharged in 1992 after serving for four years. The Department of Defense confirmed his service.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/31/veteran.robbery.ap/index.html
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- A man who stuffed a dead mouse into his Taco Bell burrito in a botched extortion attempt was sentenced Friday to 16 to 30 months in prison.
Ryan Daniel Goff, 20, pleaded guilty last month to a felony count of attempted false pretenses between $1,000 and $20,000.
Sheriff's investigators said Goff complained to a restaurant employee in January that his burrito tasted "funny."
Goff, of Traverse City, reported finding the mouse to the local health department and Taco Bell's regional manager. According to court records, he allegedly told the manager: "It won't be a good day if the media finds out about this."
But investigators said his girlfriend told them he purchased frozen mice from a pet store and put one of them in his burrito.
Goff's sentencing was just the latest in several recent cases of alleged extortion over body parts and dead animals in restaurant food.
In January, Anna Ayala, 40, was sentenced to nine years in prison for planting a severed human finger in a bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant in California in an extortion scheme. Her husband, Jaime Plascencia, 44, who obtained the finger from someone who lost it in an accident, was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison.
In April, Carla Patterson, 38, and her 22-year-old son, Ricky, were convicted of trying to extort money from the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain by claiming they found a dead mouse in a bowl of soup in Virginia. Both are awaiting sentencing.
http://www.woodtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4980878
Pilot lands plane with rogue snake in one hand
Man grabs unwanted 4.5-foot co-pilot behind head, gets quick clearance
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The much-talked-about movie "Snakes on a Plane" doesn't open until August. But Monty Coles doesn't have to see it. He's lived it.
Three-thousand feet in the air on Saturday, he discovered a four-and-a-half-foot black snake peering out at him from the instrument panel of his Piper Cherokee.
He'd already been preparing to land in southern Ohio after a flight from West Virginia.
He tried to swat the snake. But it just fell to his feet under the rudder pedals and then darted to the other side of the cockpit.
So, while flying the plane with one hand, Coles grabbed the snake behind its head with his other hand, even as it coiled around his arm.
Next, he told the control tower he needed emergency landing clearance — and that he had "one hand full of snake and the other hand full of plane."
He says he was cleared right in.
Coles made a smooth landing, then posed for pictures with the snake, before letting it loose.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13104033/
Chinese doctors remove baby's third arm
Surgeons hail operation's success, unsure how remaining arm will function
SHANGHAI, China - Doctors on Tuesday successfully removed an extremely rare, well-developed third arm from a 2-month-old Chinese boy, but said they were unsure how well his remaining left arm would respond to physical therapy.
Doctors successfully removed the one of Liu Junjie's two left arms that had laid across his chest, said chief surgeon Dr. Chen Bochang. A second left arm is further up on his shoulder.
"The surgery really went much better and smoother than expected because we found the nerves and blood vessels for the arm were formed just as they would be for a normal arm," Chen told reporters following the three-hour operation.
Chen said the baby will require long-term physical therapy to gain function in his remaining hand, which has no palm and flexes in either direction.
"We're hoping to exchange information with doctors who've dealt with similar cases anywhere in the world," said Chen, head of the orthopedics department at Shanghai Children's Medical Center. "This is so rare that we have virtually no information to go on."
Worried parents
Liu's mother said she was relieved the surgery was over but worried for her son's future.
"I'm very happy but there are some fears that I just can't let go," said the woman, who asked that her name not be used to maintain her privacy. "I worry about how he will grow, whether this will have a big impact on his growth."
Chen said was impressed by the concern showed by the couple, poor farmers from rural Anhui province, west of Shanghai.
"We'll be paying special attention to this child," he said.
Chen said doctors don't know what causes such additional limbs, although many speculate they start out as limbs of a conjoined twin that never developed. He ruled out environmental factors such as birth defect-causing pollution, saying that couldn't fully explain similar cases elsewhere.
Chen said no reliable figures exist on the frequency of such cases, partly because many fetuses with more than four limbs are aborted or miscarried. In most cases where the fetus survives, it's clear which limb is less developed and should be amputated.
Junjie's case was especially rare because both left arms were almost equally well developed. He said doctors decided to remove the one closest to the chest because it did not fully extend.
Because of shortfalls in China's rural health system, Liu Junjie's mother never received a sonogram before giving birth by cesarean section, Chen said.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13158089/
Oh, the absorbent softness of it all!
Flaming toilet paper spill clogs New York highway, backs up traffic for miles
BATAVIA, N.Y. - Please don't squeeze the Charmin. And don't dump it on the highway, either.
Crews on the New York State Thruway spent hours cleaning up the mess caused when a truck full of toilet paper caught fire Monday.
It happened about 40 miles east of Buffalo. The driver of the rig managed to escape.
But roll after roll of the bathroom tissue spilled onto the highway, backing up traffic for miles. That, in turn, led to a separate accident involving two trucks. Police say no one was seriously hurt.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13169349/from/RS.1/
Russian Boss Punishes Lazy Employee By Chaining Him Naked to a Tree
Russian police are investigating a case of a boss who chained his subordinate naked to a tree in the forest to punish him for badly done work.
On May, 26 a naked man covered in bangs and bruises was found standing chained by a pair of handcuffs to a tree in the forest near the Belogorsk town in Russia’s Far East.
According to Interfax, the man had spent almost 24 hours in the forest before he was found by railway workers; Regnum news agency reports he spent several hours at the tree.
The man, 39, told the police he had been punished by his boss, director of a Belogorsk enterprise, for refusing to engage in illegal actions.
However the investigation found out the boss had been angered by the man’s botchery. Enraged, the director beat the man up and took him out of town to a nearby forest where he made him undress and chained him to a tree.
The hot-tempered employer is now charged with illegal restriction of a man’s freedom, with a maximum penalty of two years in prison.
http://mosnews.com/news/2006/06/05/chainyouremployee.shtml
FinnFreak
06-08-2006, 2:16am
I've heared worse stories than that...
John - :smirk:
canoilers
06-08-2006, 2:24am
I guess you can beat on people and not get charged in Russia, I'm suprised no charge for the beating as well.
Deer knocks out pit bull, floods apartment
Family locks animal in bathroom with dog after it smashes through window
RACINE, Wis. - A spooked deer rampaged through an apartment Monday morning, leaving a flood, temporarily displacing a family and knocking the family dog unconscious.
Jerry Falkner said he "heard glass breaking" and "thought someone was breaking in," after the deer smashed through a window.
"The next thing I know, a deer is running toward my room," he said.
The animal ran into the bathroom, and the family locked it inside. The Falkners, however, did not know that their pit bull, Shadow, was inside the room with the deer.
The deer kicked on the water, flooding the apartment, and briefly knocked the dog unconscious.
Police, with the family's help, got the dog out of the bathroom, while Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources officials tranquilized the doe and took it away.
Police Officer Victor Cera said the deer apparently was behind the apartment building when it was spooked by dogs let out of a kennel. Falkner said he believed the doe came through the window to elude children who cornered it near two 7-foot-high fences behind the apartment.
"In the 16 years that I've been doing this, I've seen all kinds of stuff," Cera said. "But this is probably the most bizarre."
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13173503
canoilers
06-08-2006, 11:00am
Now thats something you don't see everyday. I've never ever in my life heard of anything like that remotely happening before. Thanks Andrew for the article.
How to get caught: Leave phone at scene. Call it
Suspect in Skittles, Starburst heist calls to arrange to retrieve cell phone
CRYSTAL, Minn. - Burglars who stole $30 worth of Skittles and Starburst candy from a Little League concession stand in this Minneapolis suburb left behind an incriminating piece of evidence. Police found a cell phone inside the building.
According to court documents, sometime after the theft on Saturday night, the phone's owner called the phone and identified himself. Officers arranged to meet him and return the phone, and a witness identified the man as one of the burglars.
Mitchell Scudder, 19, and Brian Current, 21, are charged in the theft. Court papers said a witness saw one suspect crawl out of the building's window and a second join him. Both dropped candy as they ran away.
Under questioning, Current allegedly told investigators he waited outside while Scudder entered the building. The complaint alleged the two filled a backpack with candy and ran when a car drove by.
When officers went to Scudder's door, he was chewing on some Skittles. Confiscated from the house were 20 bags of candy and another 20 packages found in a backpack, the complaint said.
Damage to the concession stand was estimated at $500 to $1,000.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13191175/?GT1=8211
Police: Mom asks son to sell pot for bail
Iowa woman’s phone call leads to added charge for her, one for offspring
SPENCER, Iowa - A woman who police say asked her son to sell marijuana to raise money to bail her out of jail faces an additional charge.
Elaine Baker is currently being held in the Clay County jail on two drug charges and child endangerment.
She made a call to her son, asking him to sell marijuana stashed in a refrigerator and post bond.
The call was monitored by police.
Authorities got a search warrant and found a small amount of marijuana in Baker's home on Monday.
Baker's son, Austin Tasich, was charged with possession of a controlled substance.
Baker was charged with possession of marijuana with intent to deliver.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13208503/
I din't understand it but because of the title I assure its something funny!:p
And thats why stupid people like her are in jail...what a dummy she got herself a longer stay. How lame...
Now I already understood!:p
canoilers
06-09-2006, 2:41am
I don't which is worse the fact they left the phone, or the fact they robbed a freakin candy store. :p
Clawless cat chases off bear
Orange-and-white tabby encountered the bruin in a N.J. yard
WEST MILFORD, N.J. - At least one bear doesn’t want to know Jack.
Jack is a ten-year-old orange-and-white tabby in West Milford, New Jersey. And when the cat spotted the bear in a neighbor’s yard earlier this week, the clawless kitty let the bear know who’s boss.
The bear scurried up a tree and eyed the cat for ten to 15 minutes, while Jack stared and hissed from the ground. The bruin inched its way down before jumping off and running away
But Jack chased the bear into the brush and up another tree.
That’s when Jack’s owner realized what was happening and called her cat.
Jack’s owner, Donna Dickey, tells The Star-Ledger of Newark Jack considers the area his turf and doesn’t want anyone in his yard.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13222962
Judge: ‘Rock, paper, scissors’ to decide dispute
If lawyers can't decide where to play, it'll be on courthouse steps
TAMPA, Fla. - A federal judge, miffed at the inability of opposing attorneys to agree on even the slightest details of a lawsuit, ordered them to settle their latest dispute with a game of “rock, paper, scissors.”
The argument was over a location to take the sworn statement of a witness in an insurance lawsuit.
In an order signed Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell scolded both sides and ordered them to meet at a neutral location at 4 p.m. June 30 to play a round of the hand-gesture game often used to settle childhood disputes. If they can’t agree on the neutral location, he said, they’ll play on the steps of the federal courthouse.
The winner gets to choose the location for the witness statement.
“We’re going to have to do it,” said David Pettinato, lead attorney for the plaintiff, Avista Management. “I guess I’d better bone up on ‘rock, paper, scissors’ rules.”
Last year, officials of the auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s engaged in the game to decide who would get to sell a $17.8 million collection of art offered by a Japanese electronics company. Christie’s won.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13221673/from/RS.1
canoilers
06-09-2006, 2:36pm
That had to have been a funny sight, I think would've paid money too see that. I don't think that would happen if it was a big ol' Grizzly, I think it would've swatted the cats 9 lives right out of it.
canoilers
06-09-2006, 2:37pm
:really: Thats just wacky.
SHANIANUTS!
06-09-2006, 2:47pm
One of our cats had his front claws removed because he was very destructive. He is 10 or so now and gets into the occasional fight outside with interlopers on our turf and fights like hell with them also and generally runs them off.:)
canoilers
06-09-2006, 2:50pm
Beware of cat, see who needs a dog. :p
Indian woman delivers rare identical quads
Fewer than 100 identical quadruplets in the world, doctors say
NEW DELHI - A 26-year-old Indian woman has given birth to rare identical quadruplets and the girls are healthy after their first six weeks of life, an Indian news agency reported Friday.
Shruthi Vivekanandan, a software programmer from the southern city of Madras, delivered Aditi, Aakriti, Akshathi and Aapthi on April 25, Press Trust of India said.
The babies were born 10 weeks early and weighed between 1.8 pounds and 2.2 pounds, said Dr. Meena Thiagarajan at Apollo Hospital, where the girls were born.
Despite their premature birth, the babies are healthy and swiftly gaining weight, doctors said.
Doctors have said there are fewer than 100 identical quadruplets in the world.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13230290/?GT1=8211
Two brothers are seriously ill in a Southampton hospital after a family barbecue exploded when it was doused with petrol.
A 13-year-old boy was burned on his face, arms, hands and stomach, and a six-year-old boy was burned on his legs and body. A 30-year-old man who burned his hands trying to extinguish the flames was stable in hospital, said a fire service spokesman.
The boys' 35-year-old mother also burned her hands and another young boy received slight burns to his throat in the incident.
Hampshire fire service said the tragedy happened when petrol was added to a barbecue in Priory Road, Southampton on Saturday night.
By the time a fire crew arrived the fire was out, and the casualties were taken to Southampton General Hospital hospital.
Hampshire Fire Service Community Safety Manager Rod Hammerton, said today:" "This is a tragic incident and our thoughts are with the family at this time.
"As people enjoy barbecues during this summer we would like to stress that petrol should never be used on barbecues and young children should be always be kept a safe distance away."
He said using petrol on a barbecue would result in a reaction "almost like a mini explosion".
"Petrol accelerates the flames resulting in something like a ball of flame.
"The flames rise very high, and anyone nearby is likely to get burned," added the spokesman.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-5878980,00.html
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - A professional wrestler claimed Friday that the state is intruding on her privacy by requiring her to provide proof from her doctor that she is not pregnant within a week of every match.
Julie Utley also said pregnancy testing is too expensive for many women to continue participating in the sport. She estimated it would cost her at least $60 a month for tests.
The rule took effect in November and is part of state requirements for licensing contact sports such as professional boxing, wrestling and martial arts.
Utley, 19, said she has not wrestled since March, when she first became aware of the rule, because she refuses to submit to a pregnancy test.
The Missouri Office of Athletics held a hearing Friday but made no decision on whether to change the rule. The office licenses about 900 boxers and wrestlers, about 100 of them women.
Misti Preston, a spokeswoman for the Department of Economic Development, which oversees the office, said the change did not result from a particular incident. Preston said state officials just wanted to be in line with requirements in many other states.
Opponents said if the state's motive is legal protection, it could make wrestlers sign a waiver saying they will not sue if they get hurt.
"There is a lot of punishment in professional wrestling. I knew the risk. I knew I was going to get injured," Utley said. "That was my personal responsibility. This rule takes control away from me."
Tony Rothert, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri, called the rule "an impediment to equality."
In particular, he said, requiring the test to be performed by a doctor, rather than allowing women to use tests sold over the counter, and demanding results so often are troubling.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060609/ap_on_re_us/wrestling_pregnancy;_ylt=AqrRsfZSKAJExAcEFdPHu7Cs0 NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg
Very interesting article David.
Boy pulled over driving 75 miles to grandma’s
Australian police nab 10-year-old driving brother, 6, down the highway
SYDNEY, Australia - A 10-year-old boy who was picked up by police as he drove his younger brother along a busy Australian highway to visit their grandmother has escaped with a warning.
Shocked motorists reported seeing the boy at the wheel of a station wagon as it traveled at speeds of up to 90 kph (56 mph) on one of the main roads between New South Wales and Queensland states on Saturday, police said.
Police said the boys had decided to drive the roughly 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the house where their grandmother was staying in the town of Moree to their grandfather's place in Boggabilla in northern New South Wales.
They had traveled about 80 kilometers (50 miles) before police caught up with them and signaled for them to pull over, at which point the boy calmly brought the car to a stop at the side of the road, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on its Web site.
The boys were taken to a nearby police station and their grandfather was called to pick them up, Moree Sgt. Matt Clifford told the paper.
Clifford said the children showed no sign they had done anything wrong. The 10-year-old was given a warning from police, but further punishment would be left to the family, he said.
"I'm sure granddad and grandma, if not mum and dad, might have their own little chastisement for them," Clifford told the paper.
He said he had no idea how the 10-year-old managed to see over the dashboard while operating the drive pedals.
"He wasn't an overly tall kid," Clifford said.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13268973/
Man Eats 47 Cheese Sandwiches In 10 Minutes
POSTED: 8:32 am EDT June 12, 2006
UPDATED: 8:33 am EDT June 12, 2006
LAS VEGAS -- There's a rising star on the competitive eating circuit. California man Joey Chestnut downed 47 grilled cheese sandwiches in ten minutes this weekend in Las Vegas to set a world record. That's eleven more sandwiches than the old record of 36.
Last month, Chestnut ate 50 hot dogs. Some say he's a threat to the reigning champ of food stuffing, Japan's Takeru Kobayashi.
Chestnut won the grilled cheese contest sponsored by the International Federation of Competitive Eating, the same group that runs the annual Fourth of July hot dog eating contest at New York's Coney Island.
Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.local6.com/news/9354488/detail.html
That had to have been a funny sight, I think would've paid money too see that. I don't think that would happen if it was a big ol' Grizzly, I think it would've swatted the cats 9 lives right out of it.
Here is another article with some pics of this story.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060610/ap_on_fe_st/cat_scares_bear;_ylt=AlKEYV8dLiL4R0C72EuHZ0cDW7oF; _ylu=X3oDMTBhZDhxNDFzBHNlYwNtZW5ld3M-
canoilers
06-12-2006, 2:37pm
Thank you Andrew, that looks so funny.
Students find ring tone adults can't hear
High-pitched ‘Mosquito’ originally created to disperse youngsters
NEW YORK - Students are using a new ring tone to receive messages in class — and many teachers can't even hear the ring.
Some students are downloading a ring tone off the Internet that is too high-pitched to be heard by most adults.
With it, high schoolers can receive text message alerts on their cell phones without the teacher knowing.
As people age, many develop what's known as aging ear — a loss of the ability to hear higher-frequency sounds.
The ring tone is a spin-off of technology that was originally meant to repel teenagers — not help them. A Welsh security company developed the tone to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected. The company called their product the "Mosquito."
Donna Lewis, a teacher in Manhattan, says her colleague played the ring for a classroom of first-graders — and all of them could hear it, while the adults couldn't hear anything.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13274669/?GT1=8211
SevenUp!
06-12-2006, 11:28pm
That's kinda funny... :D
SHANIANUTS!
06-13-2006, 12:39am
Britons pick teeth with screwdrivers, scissors ...
Survey: More than 60 percent use whatever’s handy to dislodge food
LONDON - More than 60 percent of Britons use items such as screwdrivers, scissors and earrings to remove food from between their teeth, according to a survey on Friday.
The National Dental Survey found that when it comes to oral hygiene, people use whatever is close to hand to pick their teeth.
More than 60 percent questioned by the British Dental Health Foundation said they used makeshift items, which included knives, keys, needles and forks.
The survey also found that 23 percent of people choose to leave food stuck between their teeth, increasing the risk of gum disease and bad breath, the foundation, which promotes oral health, said in a statement.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12763486/...I didn't realize the average Brit is so hard up for cash they can't afford toothpicks or flossers...
.... btw my wife uses the edge of a piece of paper in a pinch... lol...
countrylatina
06-13-2006, 12:52am
Students find ring tone adults can't hear
High-pitched ‘Mosquito’ originally created to disperse youngsters
NEW YORK - Students are using a new ring tone to receive messages in class — and many teachers can't even hear the ring.
Some students are downloading a ring tone off the Internet that is too high-pitched to be heard by most adults.
With it, high schoolers can receive text message alerts on their cell phones without the teacher knowing.
As people age, many develop what's known as aging ear — a loss of the ability to hear higher-frequency sounds.
The ring tone is a spin-off of technology that was originally meant to repel teenagers — not help them. A Welsh security company developed the tone to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected. The company called their product the "Mosquito."
Donna Lewis, a teacher in Manhattan, says her colleague played the ring for a classroom of first-graders — and all of them could hear it, while the adults couldn't hear anything.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13274669/?GT1=8211
why wasn't i aware of this?
well................
thats something to look forward to.... hear lost
.... btw my wife uses the edge of a piece of paper in a pinch... lol...
I have use paper as a toothpick.
canoilers
06-13-2006, 10:06am
So have I, but not a screw driver.
Is climate turning polar bears into cannibals?
U.S. and Canadian scientists report kills linked to shrinking ice
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.
The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.
Polar bears feed primarily on ringed seals and use sea ice for feeding, mating and giving birth
Polar bears kill each other for population regulation, dominance and reproductive advantage, the study said. Killing for food seems to be less common, said the study's principal author, Steven Amstrup of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center.
"During 24 years of research on polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea region of northern Alaska and 34 years in northwestern Canada, we have not seen other incidents of polar bears stalking, killing and eating other polar bears," the scientists said.
Environmentalists contend shrinking polar ice due to global warming may lead to the disappearance of polar bears before the end of the century.
Petition for endangered status
The Center for Biological Diversity of Joshua Tree, Calif., in February 2005 petitioned the federal government to list polar bears as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Cannibalism demonstrates the effect on bears, said Kassie Siegal, lead author of the petition.
"It's very important new information," she said. "It shows in a really graphic way how severe the problem of global warming is for polar bears."
Deborah Williams of Alaska Conservation Solutions, a group aimed at pursuing solutions for climate change, said the study represents the "bloody fingerprints" of global warming.
"This is not a Coca-Cola commercial," she said, referring to animated polar bears used in advertising for the soft drink giant. "This represents the brutal downside of global warming."
The predation study was published in an online version of the journal Polar Biology on April 27. Amstrup said print publication will follow.
Researchers in the spring of 2004 found more bears in the eastern portion of the Alaska Beaufort Sea to be in poorer condition than bears in areas to the west and north.
Finding the first kill
Researchers discovered the first kill in January 2004. A male bear had pounced on a den, killed a female and dragged it 245 feet (75 meters) away, where it ate part of the carcass. Females are about half the size of males.
"In the face of the den's outer wall were deep impressions of where the predatory bear had pounded its forepaws to collapse the den roof, just as polar bears collapse the snow over ringed seal lairs," the paper said.
"From the tracks, it appeared that the predatory bear broke through the roof of the den, held the female in place while inflicting multiple bites to the head and neck. When the den collapsed, two cubs were buried, and suffocated, in the snow rubble."
In April 2004, while following bear footprints on sea ice near Herschel Island, Yukon Territory, scientists discovered the partially eaten carcass of an adult female. Footprints indicated it had been with a cub.
The male did not follow the cub, indicating it had killed for food instead of breeding.
A few days later, Canadian researchers found the remains of a yearling that had been stalked and killed by a predatory bear, the scientists said.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13288936/?GT1=8211
Plumber finds a fix in the fixture
Mass. man discovers drug stash in bathroom vanity from Home Depot
SOUTHWICK, Mass. - A plumber who bought a bathroom vanity from a Home Depot store for a home renovation found something else in the box: a stash of 40 pounds of marijuana and three grams of cocaine.
Authorities say the vanity was bought at a Home Depot in Chicopee, Massachusetts, but gave few details about their probe.
"We are working on an investigation with Home Depot," said Tony Pettigrew, a spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration
A statement for Atlanta-based Home Depot said the company was cooperating with investigators. The company declined further comment.
Southwick Detective Lt. David Ricardi said at least one other vanity containing a drug stash had been discovered in Massachusetts, though he declined to say where.
Ricardi said the plumber discovered the drugs in Southwick on Monday after he bought the vanity. The man noticed the vanity top had not been included in the package and instead found two plastic bags containing the drugs stuffed inside.
"This would be classified as a smuggling operation," Ricardi said. "Someone was expecting something on one end of the line, and it didn't make it."
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13323941/
Man sends eight-legged surprise to colleague
British man admits delivering live, venomous tarantula
LONDON - A British man admits he delivered a package containing a venomous tarantula to a colleague from work.
Mahlon Hector made the admission in court in central Britain, saying he delivered the rare Mexican red-kneed tarantula in a box addressed to a woman at a branch of the store where they both worked. The intended recipient was not hurt. After discovering the spider, store staff alerted animal control officials, who took it away.
The spider is one of the most common spiders used in movies because of its scary appearance. With a hairy dark brown body, it has a leg span measuring up to ten inches. An official says it’s not the most dangerous species of tarantula but its bite could be fatal if someone has an allergic reaction.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13320623/
Sign for spelling bee finalist misspells name
Billboard congratulating girl for making city proud contains gaffe
AMARILLO, Texas - Honoring a hometown youngster who made it to the National Spelling Bee is a nice idea. Pity her name was misspelled.
But that’s exactly what happened in Amarillo, Texas, home of 14-year-old Caitlin Campbell.
A billboard went up downtown congratulating her for making the city proud by becoming one of 13 finalists.
Unfortunately, the “P” is missing from Campbell, whose name is spelled like the soup.
The billboard company, which donated the space, plans to fix it.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13372944/
How flies walk on ceilings
Wall-climbing insects leave behind sticky footprints, scientists say
Walking upside-down requires a careful balance of adhesion and weight, and specialized trekking tools to combat the constant tug of gravity.
Each fly foot has two fat footpads that give the insect plenty of surface area with which to cling. The adhesive pads on the feet, called pulvilli, come equipped with tiny hairs that have spatula-like tips. These hairs are called setae.
Scientists once thought that the curved shape of the hairs suggested that flies used them to grip onto the ceiling. In fact, the hairs produce a glue-like substance made of sugars and oils.
Sticky proof
A research team from the German Max Planck Institute for Metals Research recently studied more than 300 species of wall-climbing insects and watched them all leave behind sticky footprints.
"There are over one million insect species," team leader Stanislav Gorb told LiveScience. "We suppose that all of them have the secretion, but it is difficult to be 100 percent sure."
Gorb presented the findings at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology in April.
Flies need sticky feet to walk on ceilings, but not so sticky that they get stuck upside down. So each foot comes with a pair of claws that help hoist the gooey foot off the wall.
Flies use several different techniques to get unstuck: pushing, twisting, and peeling its footpads free.
"Methods involving peeling are always the best, because they require less energy to break the contact," Gorb said.
The combination of the feet hairs' rounded tips, the oily fluid, and a four-feet-on-the-floor rule help the inverted insect take steps in the right direction.
Lessons for robofly
Following in the fly's footsteps, robots are on their way to climbing walls.
Gorb's research team worked with a robotics group from Case Western Reserve University to design robotic feet that mimic a fly's footing.
On the bottom of the feet of a 3-ounce robot that's all legs, scientists tacked on a sticky, furry manmade material that resembles the hairy surface of a fly foot. The researchers also taught the robot how to gently peel its foot off a glass wall, just like a demure insect.
"It's the first time a robot has climbed glass in a way that was inspired by an animal," said mechanical engineer Roger Quinn.
© 2006 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13307121/?GT1=8211
Someone's been eating in my kitchen
Woman comes home to find bear snacking on oatmeal
WEST VANCOUVER, British Columbia - It was a real-life version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears — only in reverse — when a woman came home to find a young bear eating oatmeal in her kitchen.
The bear apparently entered through an open sliding glass door, broke a ceramic food container and started eating, West Vancouver police Sgt. Paul Skelton said.
“It sounds like a nursery rhyme, doesn’t it?” Skelton said. “At least we have a health-conscious bear on our hands.”
Three police officers who went to the home Thursday couldn’t get the bear to budge, so authorities let the animal finish its meal.
“The bear didn’t appear to be aggressive and wasn’t destroying the house, so they just let it do what it was doing and eventually the bear decided to make its way out of the residence and down toward a forested gully,” Skelton said. “It ended the best it could.”
Skelton said bears in the suburbs north of Vancouver have been coming out of hibernation as hungry as ever but later than usual but this spring because of a heavier than normal snowpack from the winter. The report Thursday was one of six complaints police said they received about bears in the area that day.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13426214/
Fla. restaurant sells $100 hamburger
BOCA RATON, Fla. - A hundred bucks might buy you more than six dozen burgers from McDonald's, but the swanky Old Homestead Steakhouse will sell you one brawny beef sandwich for the same price.
Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams could barely speak between bites as he devoured the 20-ounce, $100 hamburger billed as the "beluga caviar of sandwiches."
"Heaven on a bun," restaurant owner Marc Sherry said.
The burger debuted Tuesday at the restaurant in the Boca Raton Resort and Club, where a membership costs $40,000 and an additional $3,600 a year.
"We've never had a hamburger on our menu here so we really wanted to go to the extreme," Sherry said, calling it "the most decadent burger in the world."
At about 5 1/2 inches across and 2 1/2 inches thick, the mound of meat is comprised of beef from three continents — American prime beef, Japanese Kobe and Argentine cattle.
The bill for one burger, with garnishing that includes organic greens, exotic mushrooms and tomatoes, comes out to $124.50 with tax and an 18 percent tip included. The restaurant will donate $10 from each sale to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060621/ap_on_fe_st/100_burger;_ylt=Av7R7_tstSB6YcC0BDM8U7sDW7oF;_ylu= X3oDMTBhZDhxNDFzBHNlYwNtZW5ld3M-
Lightning strike kills motorcyclist on highway
Man was travelling during rush hour between Denver and Boulder
WESTMINSTER, Colorado - A motorcyclist died after apparently being struck by lightning while riding in rush hour traffic on a highway between Denver and Boulder, police said.
Witnesses reported seeing a flash of light shortly before the motorcyclist struck the highway's center concrete divider, Westminster police spokesman Tim Read said in a statement.
The man, whose name was not released, was pronounced dead at the scene Wednesday. His motorcycle came to rest about 150 meters from where lightning blasted an 18-by-8-inch crater 4 inches deep that blew chunks of asphalt across the highway and slightly damaged other vehicles.
The man was wearing a helmet.
The highway, U.S. 36, was closed for about two hours as police investigated.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13471386/
Tiny shells may be world’s oldest beads
Treasure hunt turns up ornaments that may be 100,000 years old
WASHINGTON - Three ancient shells that were forgotten for decades, hidden among rocks and bones in dusty museum archives, may be the world’s oldest known beads, according to a new study.
The shells, originally collected from Israel and Algeria, could be as many as 100,000 years old, and each has a hole through its center, suggesting it was worn as jewelry.
The researchers who rediscovered the shells say they add to a growing body of evidence that symbolic thinking emerged much earlier than previously thought.
In Western cultures today, jewelry may not seem like a fundamental type of cultural expression. But to archaeologists, ancient jewelry is much more than very old bling.
“Personal ornamentation is not trivial at all. Archaeologically, it’s quite important. It’s really a symptom of the emergence of modern culture,” said Francesco d’Errico of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Unité Mixte de Recherche (CNRS UMR) in Talence, France.
D’Errico and his colleagues describe their discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.
A revolution in Europe?
Over the years, archaeologists have unearthed a wealth of cave paintings, musical instruments, jewelry and other artwork from around 40,000 years ago in Europe. These finds seemed to represent a revolution of sorts, in which humans, who had long been biologically modern, developed modern behavior.
“Modern” in this sense involves thinking abstractly and understanding symbols. It also means living together in larger groups, making more sophisticated tools and shelters, and eventually, using language.
Throughout modern human history, people have worn jewelry to convey something about who they are, such as their ethnic origin, age or social status, according d’Errico.
“The common element among personal ornaments is that they convey meaning to others. They convey an image of you that is not just your biological self,” he said.
Beads from Blombos
But why should symbolic thinking have sprung up so quickly? Modern humans also lived in Asia, the Near East and Africa well before 40,000 years ago. And, it isn’t clear what exactly would have ignited the supposed “revolution” in modern behavior once humans arrived in Europe.
Though many researchers still think some important biological change occurred at the 40,000-year mark, they have begun to consider that at least some aspects of modern culture may have had a much earlier start.
“Earlier humans may not have had a material culture as rich as the one in Europe, but cognitive abilities and other expressions of modern culture may nonetheless have already been in place,” said study co-author Marian Vanhaeren of University College London and CNRS UMR in Nanterre, France.
In 2004, d’Errico, Vanhaeren and their colleagues made a discovery that gave a major boost to this idea. They found a collection of shells at Blombos Cave in South Africa that were dated to about 75,000 years ago. The shells had holes in their centers, and even showed evidence of wear caused by being threaded on a string.
As provocatively beadlike as the shells were, they had only turned up at a single site outside of Europe. The researchers would need evidence from other locations in order to draw any firm conclusions about an earlier origin for modern behavior.
Museum treasure hunt
D’Errico, Vanhaeren and their colleagues began sorting through museum collections in search of more evidence for early beadworking.
At the Natural History Museum in London, the research team found a pair of shells among the other remains collected from the Israeli site of Skhul in the 1930s by British archaeologists Dorothy Garrod and Dorothy Bate. The shells are from the same genus, Nassarius, as those from Blombos.
The researchers tracked down another perforated Nassarius shell at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. It had been tucked away in the same small tin since it was discovered at the Algerian site of Oued Djebbana in the late 1940s.
“It was so tiny and packed away with tons of [rock samples]. It could have easily been lost,” d’Errico said.
Oued Djebbana’s age is less clear than that of Skhul, but the technology and style of the stone tools found there suggest that the site could be up to 90,000 years old, according to the authors.
Three small shells, one big idea
D’Errico and his colleagues say that the two sites are so far inland that the shells must have been intentionally brought there.
“This implies that people went to sea and collected them, or more probably exchanged goods with coastal peoples. The indication is that we are dealing with well-structured human culture that attributed meaning to these things,” d’Errico said.
By studying modern Nassarius shells from Mediterranean beaches, they also determined that shells with single holes in the center are rare in nature and that Skhul and Djebbana inhabitants must have purposely perforated or deliberately picked out such shells.
The relatively large size of the shells from the two sites may also help confirm their old age, since this species was bigger 100,000 years ago than it is today, the researchers say.
However, three shells is a small sampling for such a big conclusion, and ultimately researchers will need to find more beads in order to say definitively when this aspect of modern behavior emerged. More discoveries will also allow researchers to investigate whether beadworking was a shared tradition, passed along across cultures, or whether it emerged independently in different places.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13483253
1,000 rats removed from California home
67-year-old man living in squalid conditions with animals
PETALUMA, Calif. - Animal control officers confiscated about 1,000 rats from the home of a 67-year-old man who they said was living in filthy conditions with the animals.
Some of the rats were running loose in the home, while others were caged, officials said.
Roger Dier, who lives at the Petaluma home, was issued a misdemeanor citation. The case is being investigated by the city's Animal Services department and the Sonoma County Environmental Health Division.
The rats were transported to the city's animal shelter in cages acquired from local pet shops.
In 2001, police arrested the Petaluma "cat woman," a former San Francisco real estate agent who was found with hundreds of cats crowded into a house she owned. Some of those animals were dead and others were sick or injured, authorities said.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13512129/
176-year-old ‘Darwin’s tortoise’ dies in zoo
‘Grand old lady’ Harriet may have been scientist’s find from Galapagos
SYDNEY, Australia - A 176-year-old tortoise believed to be one of the world’s oldest living creatures has died in an Australian zoo.
The giant tortoise, known as Harriet, died at the Queensland-based Australia Zoo owned by “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin and his wife Terri. Irwin said he considered Harriet a member of the family.
“Harriet has been a huge chunk of the Irwin family’s life,” Irwin said Saturday. “She is possibly one of the oldest living creatures on the planet and her passing today is not only a great loss for the world but a very sad day for my family. She was a grand old lady.”
Senior veterinarian Jon Hanger told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday that Harriet died of heart failure.
Harriet was long reputed to have been one of three tortoises taken from the Galapagos Islands by Charles Darwin on his historic 1835 voyage aboard the HMS Beagle.
However, historical records, while suggestive, don’t prove the claim. And some scientists have cast doubt on the story, with DNA tests confirming Harriet’s age but showing she came from an island that Darwin never visited.
According to local legend, Harriet was just five years old and probably no bigger than a dinner plate when she was taken from the Galapagos to Britain.
The tortoise spent a few years in Britain before being moved to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens in Australia’s tropical Queensland state in the mid-1800s. There she was mistaken for a male and nicknamed Harry, according to Australia Zoo, which later bought the 330-pound tortoise in 1987.
Harriet was believed to be the world’s oldest living tortoise, and one of its oldest living creatures. Despite her longevity, however, Harriet is not the world’s oldest known tortoise.
That title was awarded by the Guinness Book of World Records to Tui Malila, a Madagascar radiated tortoise that was presented to the royal family of Tonga by British explorer Captain James Cook in the 1770s. It died in 1965 at the ripe age of 188.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13115101/?GT1=8211
Woman swallows 320 heroin-filled condoms
Customs officers in Sydney have intercepted an Australian woman who swallowed 320 condoms full of heroin in an attempt to smuggle the drug into the country.
The 25-year-old Australian was stopped as she came off a flight from Singapore last Sunday, June 18, on suspicion that she was concealing drugs internally.
She was taken to hospital for a medical examination, which revealed a large number of items in her stomach, the Australian Federal Police said.
The woman has been in hospital under medical supervision while the condoms, containing approximately 300 grams of heroin, passed from her system.
She has been charged with importing a marketable quantity of a border-controlled drug and was due to appear in Parramatta Bail Court on Sunday.
The charge carries a maximum penalty of $825,000 and/or life imprisonment.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Woman-swallows-320-heroinfilled-condoms/2006/06/25/1151174055626.html
Weather makes Earth wobble
Scientists say Northern Hemisphere weather patterns affect small wobbles
Weather can have huge affects, from sinking a city to causing hillsides to slip away, but scientists say the weather might have an even larger impact — causing the whole planet to wobble.
As the Earth rotates, it wobbles on its axis like a spinning top. And like a top as it slows down, the planet develops a host of different wobbles, ranging in period from a few minutes to billions of years.
Some of the major wobbles are well studied, such as the 433-day Chandler wobble and the annual wobble, which together can tilt the Earth's axis up to 30 feet from its nominal center. One long-term change alters which point of light deserves to be called the North Star every few millennia.
Earth's axis of rotation is tilted about 23.5 degrees compared to the plane in which the planet orbits the Sun each year. The daily rotation of the planet creates a bulge at the equator, and the gravity of the Sun and Moon tends to pull this bulge back toward the orbital plane.
But Earth resists this pull. The result is that the axis moves in a cone-shaped pattern, called a precession, with the celestial North Pole describing a full circle every 26,000 years or so. Right now, the north celestial pole points towards Polaris, the North Star, but it used to point to Vega, and in 14,000 years it aim at Vega again.
Smaller variations, lasting a week or so, have proved difficult to study, partly because they're masked by the more prominent wobbles.
But from November 2005 to February 2006, the Chandler and annual wobbles essentially cancelled each other out. This allowed Sebastien Lambert of the Royal Observatory of Belgium and colleagues to study the minor variations and determine why they occur when they do.
Using newly-available GPS data that establishes the exact location of the poles, the team determined that weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere play a significant role small wobbles.
The location of high- or low-pressure centers and the relation of these systems to each other played a measurable role in generating small, short-term wobbles, the scientists report. Moving weather systems caused the pole positions to swing in small loops ranging from the size of a cell phone to a sheet of paper.
The motion of the ocean also affects short-term wobbles; the study showed that oceanic pressure variations also coincided with the polar loops. This is the first study to demonstrate that day-to-day changes in atmospheric pressure produce a measurable effect on Earth's rotation.
The study is detailed in the July 1 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
© 2006 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13559838/
80-year-old Malaysian takes wrong-way drive
Man drives vintage car against traffic for 30 kilometers on busy freeway
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - A villager drove his vintage car against the flow of traffic on Malaysia's main freeway for 30 kilometers (18 miles), apparently unaware he was on the wrong side, a news report said Tuesday.
When stopped by officials, the 80-year-old man had two questions: why there are so many cars on the road these days, and why they were they all flashing their headlights at him, the New Straits Times newspaper said.
It said the man, identified as Ah Pee, had made a wrong turn on his way home in the northern state of Kedah and got into the North-South Expressway — the first time he'd ever been on the six-lane road running the length of the country.
When he realized he was going in the wrong direction, he made a U-turn but stayed his side of the road divider, putting him in the fast lane and heading into oncoming traffic, the newspaper said.
It said police stopped Ah Pee about 30 kilometers (18 miles) after he'd made the U-turn, and his vintage Morris Minor car was steered into the emergency lane.
"He was driving between 60 and 70 kph (37 and 43 mph), and I could see the befuddled look in his eyes as the oncoming vehicles flashed their headlights at him," the Times quoted an unidentified policeman as saying.
Highway officials decided it was a "genuine mistake," since he had never used the freeway, and escorted him back to his house, the report said.
"I told him to ask for a lift from his children the next time he went for a drive," one official was quoted as saying.
Traffic officials in the area of the incident could not immediately be reached for comment.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13566329/from/RS.4
That’s one way to give ex-girlfriend the finger
Woman gets digit in mail with note: ‘This is my last chance to touch you’
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - Texas officials are seeking a woman's ex-boyfriend, after the mail brought her a severed finger and the message, "This is my last chance to touch you."
Corpus Christi police say they're not sure which finger it was or how it was cut off. But they say it "wasn't mangled" and was apparently washed before it was mailed Friday.
The woman had filed for an emergency protective order from the man last week.
Police say the man faces misdemeanor charges from a previous report of family violence this month. The threatening letter could bring more charges.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All right