Shaolin monks deny online tale of ninja that bested them, demand apology
China’s Shaolin Temple has demanded a public apology from an Internet user who claimed a Japanese ninja beat its kung fu-practising monks in a showdown, a lawyer said Friday.
An open letter from the temple posted on the Internet on Thursday denied the fight ever took place and called on the person who posted the claim under the name “Five minutes every day” to apologize to the temple’s martial arts masters.
‘White power’ chanted during immigration discussion at school
“On Tuesday in a Spanish-language class at Holy Family High School, a single handful of students used heated and inappropriate rhetoric in a discussion on immigration. In a class of approximately 30 students, fewer than six students voiced strong anti-immigration opinions. The remaining two-thirds of the class were silent or voiced support for immigrants. At the end of the discussion, one student inappropriately said “white power,” two or three times. Most of the students in the class did not hear the comments. Contrary to media reports, there were no chants by more than one student. Two students, who were offended, asked to leave the classroom and were given permission to leave. However, the discussion ended when other students realized how these students were affected and all of the students remained until the end of class.”
Scientists Debate Massive Spider Web Blanketing 200 Yards of Texas Park
Entomologists are debating the origin and rarity of a sprawling spider web that blankets several trees, shrubs and the ground along a 200-yard stretch of trail in a North Texas park.
Officials at Lake Tawakoni State Park say the massive mosquito trap is a big attraction for some visitors, while others won’t go anywhere near it.
“At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland,” said Donna Garde, superintendent of the park about 45 miles east of Dallas. “Now it’s filled with so many mosquitoes that it’s turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.”
Five-year-old drives drunk mother home
A woman has been charged with child endangerment and public intoxication after she allegedly allowed her five-year-old son to drive her car.
When Holly Schnobrich’s Mitsubishi car screeched to a halt near her home in Lafayette, Indiana, on Saturday night, neighbours said they discovered her son behind the wheel.
Miss Schnobrich, 24, was sitting in the passenger seat and her younger son, aged three, was sitting unbuckled in the back. Both children were in their pyjamas.
Teenager confesses to killing and eating room-mate
A teenager has confessed to murdering a man he met in a homeless shelter and eating parts of his brain and internal organs.
The 19-year-old, named only as Robert A, is alleged to have killed his 49-year-old room-mate by crushing his skull with a 20lb (9kg) iron bar, before using a butcher’s knife to remove the man’s intestines.
The murder is believed to have taken place at least three days ago and was discovered yesterday when a cleaner entered the shelter. The man allegedly told her about the murder and asked her to inform the police.
Officers who arrived at the ground-floor flat in the 15th district of Vienna found the body lying in a pool of blood, with body parts spread around the room. Half-eaten parts were found on a plate in the kitchen.
Hat tip to Kara!
Hurricane unearthed 18th-century cannons in Mexico
Hurricane Dean’s rampage over Mexico’s Caribbean coast last week unearthed three rusted 18th century cannons that had lain buried under a sandy beach for decades.
The cannons, around 1.80 meter (5.9 feet) long, were spotted poking through the sand on a beach near the arty resort of Tulum after Dean hit on August 21, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said on Wednesday.
Shanghaiist: Woman rescued from underground hole after 6 years
Zhejiang Satellite TV’s Citizens Take Action 《绿原公民行动》has uncovered the most extraordinary story of a woman, Wang Xiaocui (王晓翠) who has been rescued from an underground hole in Lin County, Lu Liang District, Shanxi Province. Barely 2 square meters in area, the hole was home for Wang, and this was where she would eat, drink, sleep and take care of ALL her bodily functions everyday for six long years.
As it turned out, Xiaocui was bought by her husband, Guo Runxiao (郭润小) from someone else for RMB6,700.
Lindsay Lohan doing drugs in rehab
Lindsay Lohan was reportedly caught taking drugs and having sex in rehab and has been warned she’ll be thrown out if she doesn’t stay clean. She was forced to take a drug test by the staff at Utah’s Cirque Lodge rehab facility and the results came back positive. A source says:
“Lindsay got called into the director’s office on August 15 and was questioned about drugs. When ordered to take a drug test, she reluctantly complied but screamed and cursed at the medical director before storming out the room. She was told that if she couldn’t conform to the programme she’d have to leave.”
Man in ‘tar and feather’ attack
A man was subjected to a so-called ‘tarring and feathering’ attack in south Belfast on Sunday.
It is thought the attack was carried out by two men wearing balaclavas as a crowd including women and children looked on.
The victim was made to wear a placard reading ‘I’m a drug dealing scum bag’.
Escaped emu corralled in Wisconsin Wal-Mart parking lot with shopping carts
Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers: the emu in the parking lot is not for sale.
West Bend, Wis., police say employees of a Wal-Mart Super center used shopping carts to corral a wayward emu outside the store. A manager fed the emu grapes and apples in an attempt to calm the bird inside the makeshift enclosure.
93-Year-Old Charged With Drug Dealing
A 93-year-old man was charged with cocaine-trafficking Thursday, the same day police netted three other people on charges of possessing heroine, opium and a slew of prescription drugs, police said Friday.
William C. Tinnen, also charged with possession of cocaine with intent to sell, was jailed before being released Friday on $200,000 bond, said Kammie Michael, spokeswoman for the Durham Police Department.
Motorist admits speeding at 172mph
A motorist has pleaded guilty to driving at 172mph on a rural A-road, making him the fastest speeder ever caught in Britain.
Tim Brady, 33, was caught in a random speed check on the A420 near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, driving a �98,000 3.6-litre Porsche 911 Turbo in January this year.
The current highest speed to result in a conviction is 156mph.
Hot Air Balloon Crashes in Canada
A hot air balloon caught fire and crashed in an RV park and campground Friday evening, injuring as many as 11 people, police and a witness said. Two other people were unaccounted for.
The cause of the accident wasn’t known. Weather conditions were clear at the time of the sunset flight. At least three 30-foot RVs caught fire, said Don Randall, a witness who lives in the RV park. No one was reported hurt in those blazes.
Witnesses said passengers screamed and jumped to the ground as the balloon’s basket caught fire. The balloon reportedly took off from a grassy field with 12 passengers.
Campers Tie Alleged Peeping Tom to Tree
A group of campers tied a peeping Tom suspect to a tree, keeping him bound until police arrived.
Richard H. Berkey, 63, was charged with private indecency, a misdemeanor, by sheriff’s deputies who were called to the Big Fan Campground near Bagby Hot Springs last weekend, according to Clackamas County Detective Jim Strovink.
Campers told deputies they recognized Berkey from a similar incident at the campground last year and wanted to make sure he didn’t get away.
Arm-wrestling game recalled for breaking arms
Japanese game maker Atlus said on Tuesday that it would remove 150 Arm Spirit arm-wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms while wrestling with the machine’s mechanized appendage.
“The machine isn’t that strong, much less so than a muscular man,” said an Atlus spokeswoman. “Even women should be able to beat it,” the company claimed, saying that it would check the machines for malfunctions as “a precaution.”
U.S. Customs Seizes Sub Full of Coke
A submarine-like vessel filled with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine was seized off the Guatemalan coast, U.S. officials said.
Four suspected smugglers were operating the self-propelled, semi- submersible vessel when it was located and seized on Sunday evening by officials from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, the Border Patrol said in a news release Wednesday.
Gingers extinct in 100 years, say scientists
REDHEADS are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years, according to genetic scientists.
The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than two per cent of the world’s population has natural red hair, created by a mutation in northern Europe thousands of years ago.
Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and producing little redheads of their own.
It takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger-headed babies, but two redheads obviously create a much stronger possibility.
If the gingers really want to save themselves they should move to Scotland.
Surfer Rides Alaska Glacier’s Giant Wave
As the newest extreme sport, it is more “Titanic” than Olympic. Ice surfing gives you the chance to dice with death while enjoying the planet’s ultimate chill-out.
It is not the easiest of pastimes to enjoy. First you have to find a glacier about to “calve,” then wait for up to two weeks for a house-sized iceberg to break off before catching the monstrous wake after it hits the water from 500 feet high.
The reward: Sixty seconds of sheer exhilaration as you ride a 25-foot wall of ice-cold water filled with millions of shards of razor-sharp ice, mud, boulders and debris.
Dwarf superglues todger to hoover
Staff at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh battled for an hour to disconnect the penis of Captain Dan The Demon Dwarf from a hoover after the diminutive Fringe performer inadvertantly superglued it to the vacuum cleaner’s “attachment”.
According to the Evening Standard, the hoover forms part of Captain Dan’s Circus Of Horrors act, in which he inexplicably pulls the device across the stage with his todger. On this occasion, however, “the attachment came loose before a performance so he tried to glue it back on”.
The 42-year-old misread the superglue instructions and, having allowed the adhesive a mere 20 seconds to dry rather than the required 20 minutes, duly found himself semi-permanently docked after attempting a premature test.
Pet camel kills Australian woman
A woman in Australia has been killed by her pet camel after the animal may have tried to have sex with her.
The woman was found dead at the family’s sheep and cattle ranch near the town of Mitchell in Queensland.
The woman had been given the camel as a 60th birthday present earlier this year because of her love of exotic pets.
The camel was just 10 months old but already weighed 152kg (336lbs) and had come close to suffocating the family’s pet goat on a number of occasions.
On Saturday, the woman apparently became the object of the male camel’s desire.
Drug lord invokes such fear, people won’t even utter his name
The shadowy figure who directed a Texas hit squad from 2005 to 2006 had a much bigger job on his hands — breaking a rival drug cartel’s murderous three-year siege of his territory in and around Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
He did it with ruthless efficiency. Residents of the Mexican border city have heard about Miguel Treviño Morales, nicknamed “El Cuarenta,” or “40″ — but they don’t talk about him.
He was well known to Mexican law enforcement officials, too. Yet he never appeared on the “most wanted” lists of Mexico’s federal or Tamaulipas state’s attorney general’s offices.
“No one mentions the name because they are afraid,” said a former federal Mexican police officer from Nuevo Laredo.
Bulgarian Nazi-Era Tanks Still Pointed at Turkey
Bulgaria’s southern Turkey is speckled with German army tanks that remain pointed at the fellow NATO member. After decades of service — from World War II to the Cold War — their days are finally numbered.
Taking a closer second look, a visitor to the village of Fakiya in southeastern Bulgaria can just make out a rusting cannon some 10 meters (33 feet) off the side of a narrow road.
It belongs to a tank built in 1943 for Nazi Germany, with which Bulgaria was allied during World War II. Inside, the tank is filled with spider webs and rust. The serial number, stamp of the imperial eagle and a Nazi swastika are still easily recognizable.
Not far away, atop a small hillock, there’s a second armored vehicle. Beneath some oak trees and overgrown with weeds, the tank perched on the edge of an abandoned vineyard has virtually merged into its natural surroundings.
There are still around 40 World War II tanks in the region next to the Turkish border, particularly in the towns of Sharkovo and Voden. The barrels are aimed at Turkey, only a few kilometers to the south.
Zimbabwe`s economy is sliding toward anarchy and could fall prey to warlords and violent tribal tensions by year`s end, it was reported Sunday.
Western diplomats fear Zimbabwe`s business, agriculture and financial industries will fail, triggering a collapse of the authoritarian government of President Robert Mugabe, The Sunday Telegraph reported.
Britain is reviewing plans to evacuate more than 20,000 British citizens should the government show imminent signs of falling apart, the British newspaper reported.
Forget biofuels – burn oil and plant forests instead
It sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fuelling cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead.
They recommend governments steer away from biofuel and focus on reforestation and maximising the efficiency of fossil fuels instead.
The reason is that producing biofuel is not a “green process”. It requires tractors and fertilisers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make “green” fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn – an alternative to oil – “it’s essentially a zero-sums game,” says Ghislaine Kieffer, programme manager for Latin America at the International Energy Agency in Paris, France
In one of the most turbulent weeks in the financial markets this year, there have been not only tears but also laughter as black humour have helped some of the world’s biggest banks and institutions come to terms with the prospect of huge losses.
…
Another dealer announced in a cheeky e-mail the creation of a new structured product: a Constant Obligation Leveraged Originated Structured Oscillating Money Bridged Asset Guarantee, or COLOStOMyBAG. One trader noted on the product – a parody of the increasingly bizarre acronyms that have become commonplace in the world of structured finance – “It’s basically full of shit.”
Size matters when croc meets shark
An extraordinary encounter between two of nature’s most fearsome man-eaters has been photographed by an amateur fisherman.
Indrek Urvet said that he watched in astonishment as a four-metre (13ft) saltwater crocodile made swift work of a much-smaller bull shark by the remote Daly River in the Northern Territory. “I just saw this big croc come charging out of the water with a shark flapping in its jaws. I turned my boat to take some photos. Suddenly the croc saw me. He turned around and came shooting towards me.”
Mr Urvet, who said that fishermen on the river frequently lost their catch to the bull sharks before they could reel it in, retreated and watched from a safer distance as the crocodile devoured the metre-long shark.
Mira: A Star with a Comet’s Tail
Astronomers using a NASA space telescope, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, have spotted an amazingly long comet-like tail behind a star streaking through space. The star, named Mira after the Latin word for “wonderful,” has been a favorite of astronomers for about 400 years, yet this is the first time the tail has been seen.
Galaxy Evolution Explorer–”GALEX” for short–scanned the popular star during its ongoing survey of the entire sky in ultraviolet light. Astronomers then noticed what looked like a comet with a gargantuan tail. In fact, material blowing off Mira is forming a wake 13 light-years long, or about 20,000 times the average distance of Pluto from the sun. Nothing like this has ever been seen before around a star.
Rating agencies hit by subprime probe
The European Commission is to investigate credit ratings agencies amid growing dismay over their slow response to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Officials in Brussels, and many other critics, believe the ratings agencies failed to act quickly enough to warn investors about the risks of investing in securities backed by US subprime mortgages – the sector whose troubles triggered the recent global market volatility.
In the US, Barney Frank, Democrat chairman of the House financial services committee, said he planned to hold hearings on the agencies’ performance next month. He said the agencies had “not done a good job” in the current crisis.
Banks first warned about a potential crisis in subprime last year. But it was only this spring that S&P and Moody’s started downgrading the ratings of mortgage-backed securities on a significant scale
Scott Beauchamp was the last straw. I realized that I need a scorecard to keep track of all the fallen journalists, journalistic mistakes and major and minor screw-ups in the media. I couldn’t find one already made, although Wikipedia came close, so I started my own. I apologize if there is a good list already out there, but I looked and could not find.
Offenses include lying and fabricating, doctoring photos, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, falling for hoaxes, and overt bias. Some are hilarious, such as an action figure doll being mistaken for a real soldier. Some are silly, such as reporting on a baseball game watched on TV. Some are more serious.
I leave it to you to judge whether the internet damaged “journalism’s ability to do its job professionally”, as Marvin Kalb accuses, or if the internet has in fact helped expose an already damaged “profession”.
As they say, read the whole thing…
Man aims at turtle, shoots self in foot
A northeast Ohio man was arrested after he allegedly fired a gun at a turtle and accidentally shot himself in the foot.
Massillon police say the 24-year-old man is recovering. He’s facing a count of discharging a weapon within city limits.
Did Life Begin In Space? New Evidence From Comets
Recent probes inside comets show it is overwhelmingly likely that life began in space, according to a new paper by Cardiff University scientists.
Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and colleagues at the University’s Centre for Astrobiology have long argued the case for panspermia – the theory that life began inside comets and then spread to habitable planets across the galaxy. A recent BBC Horizon documentary traced the development of the theory.
Now the team claims that findings from space probes sent to investigate passing comets reveal how the first organisms could have formed.
The 2005 Deep Impact mission to Comet Tempel 1 discovered a mixture of organic and clay particles inside the comet. One theory for the origins of life proposes that clay particles acted as a catalyst, converting simple organic molecules into more complex structures. The 2004 Stardust Mission to Comet Wild 2 found a range of complex hydrocarbon molecules – potential building blocks for life.
NYT Hard At Work Editing WSJ’s Wikipedia Page
I see now why the NYT is so prone to comical errors. Those vaunted multiple layers of painstaking editorial oversight are apparently being employed to edit an online fake-encyclopedia in order to denigrate a competitor.
The staff of America’s Paper of Record (TM) are also busy dicking around on the internet all friggin’ day childishly vandalizing Wikipedia entries on George W. Bush and Tom Delay.
One edit claims Delay was a “Grand Dragon” of the Republican Party.
Nuance.
Woman Calls Police About ‘Fake’ Cocaine
A woman was arrested after she called police to help “get her money back” after she was unhappy with the crack cocaine she purchased.
Juanita Marie Jones, 53, called Rochelle Police late Thursday night after she purchased what she thought was a $20 piece of crack cocaine, according to police reports.
Stingrays injure 14 over weekend in Galveston
The Galveston Beach Patrol reported 14 stingray injuries over the weekend, the largest number of painful wounds reported this summer.
The Beach Patrol reported 10 injuries Sunday and four injuries Saturday, caused by bathers stepping on stingrays and causing them to lash out defensively with their toxic-tipped spiny tails, Beach Patrol Chief Peter Davis said Monday.
Motorcyclist rides 2 km unaware of losing right leg
54-year-old man continued to drive a large motorcycle about 2 kilometers Monday after hitting the center divider on a national highway and losing his right leg below the knee in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, police said Tuesday.
Kazuo Osada, a salaried worker, was unaware of the loss of his leg until he drove the distance apparently because his attention was focused on the strong pain he felt from the crash, the police said.
Growing Concern Over Mutes In Entre Rios Argentina
Cattlemen from the department of Paran, Entre Rios, reported finding strangely mutilated animals in fields in this province.
The animals, all of them beef cattle, have had their genitals, tongues and udders removed, according to peasants.
The circumstance repeats itself relatively frequently in rural locations of this province and occurred this time in fields near Tabossi and Viale, to the northeast of the provincial capital.
Abel Gunter, one of the affected cattlemen, described the situation as “strange” and claimed that rural dwellers are displaying “concern” and intrigue over the mysterious animal deaths.
“We say that extraterrestrials are coming to mutilate our cows,” said the cattleman in an interview with a local station. He insisted that there is “something odd” in the animal deaths, because dogs and wild animals in the area generally feed off of the dead cow remains, but refuse to approach the mutilated specimens.
East German Shoot-to-Kill Order Is Found
Seventeen years after German reunification, archivists have found the first written proof that East German border guards had been ordered to shoot to kill anyone trying to escape to West Germany, including women and children.
The seven-page order, dated Oct. 1, 1973, was discovered last week in the regional archive office in the eastern German city of Magdeburg. Though unsigned, it shows that the Ministry for State Security, known as the Stasi, had told guards that they must “stop or liquidate” anyone trying to cross the border.
“Do not hesitate to use your firearm, not even when the border is breached in the company of women and children, which is a tactic the traitors have often used,” the document said.
Reptiles found in Saudi’s luggage
A Saudi man’s attempt to smuggle live reptiles out of Egypt in his hand luggage has been foiled by horrified security officers at Cairo airport.
Snakes, chameleons and baby crocodiles were found in the 22-year-old’s bags as he tried to board a Saudi-bound flight.
Police had become suspicious when X-ray machines at the departure gate gave odd readings. Among the reptiles they found was a cobra, squirming to escape.
The animals were confiscated and turned over to Cairo Zoo.
‘Tombstoning’ craze claims teenager’s life
NEW warnings about the dangers of “tombstoning” were issued last night after the death of a teenager who leapt off a bridge near Loch Lomond.
Sean McSkimming, 17, from Alexandria, drowned in the River Leven on Friday night after jumping from Balloch Bridge along with friends.
The incident has highlighted concerns about the current tombstoning craze, which involves jumping off cliffs, piers, or bridges into rivers or the sea, often in groups. The habit has spread across the UK from the south-west of England.
Drunken German joyrider kills 300 chickens
Three hundred chickens died in panic early on Sunday when a drunken German teenager on a joyride crashed a van into their shed, police said.
“Apparently some of the chickens were so desperate to get away that they ran into the wall and died,” the spokesman said. “Others suffered heart attacks.”
Surgically alters thumbs to better use iPhone
Thomas Martel, 28, of Bonnie Brae is a big guy. So he has a hard time using the features on ever-shrinking user interfaces on devices like his new iPhone. At least, he did, until he had his thumbs surgically altered in a revolutionary new surgical technique known as “whittling.”
“From my old Treo, to my Blackberry, to this new iPhone, I had a hard time hitting the right buttons, and I always lost those little styluses,” explains Martel. “Sure, the procedure was expensive, but when I think of all the time I save by being able to use modern handhelds so much faster, I really think the surgery will pay for itself in ten to fifteen years. And what it’s saving me in frustration – that’s priceless.”
“This is really, on the edge sort of stuff,” explains Dr. Robert Fox Spars, who worked on developing the procedure. “We’re turning plastic surgery from something that people use in service of vanity, to a real tool for improving workplace efficiency.”
Giant Lego man found in Dutch sea
A giant, smiling Lego man was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort on Tuesday.
Workers at a drinks stall rescued the 2.5-meter (8-foot) tall model with a yellow head and blue torso.
“We saw something bobbing about in the sea and we decided to take it out of the water,” said a stall worker. “It was a life-sized Lego toy.”
F2 Tornado Confirmed In Brooklyn
What was thought to be a violently windy thunderstorm that plowed through Brooklyn Wednesday morning turned out to be a weather event of historical proportions.
The National Weather Service confirmed that the storm brought with it Brooklyn’s first ever tornado since such weather events were recorded. Officials measured it to be an EF2 twister, characterized by winds of anywhere from 111 to 135 miles per hour.
A tornado warning had been issued in Brooklyn from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., and during that time a severe thunderstorm blew through the region, making for an incredible headache for morning commuters. Thousands of New Yorkers found themselves enduring hours of delays in the sweltering heat with subways shut down and vacant taxi cabs hard to come by.
I can confirm that it was quite a wild storm here this morning. Lightning was flashing like a strobe light and the thunder was booming like artillery from around 4am to 6am. Public transportation was in total havoc, with my subway line flooded and out of commission for the morning rush hour. Even now around the evening rush hour things are not quite back to normal.
Eight-million-year-old bug is alive and growing
An 8-million-year-old bacterium that was extracted from the oldest known ice on Earth is now growing in a laboratory, claim researchers.
If confirmed, this means ancient bacteria and viruses will come back to life as ice melts due to global warming. This is nothing to worry about, say experts, because the process has been going on for billions of years and the bugs are unlikely to cause human disease.
Kay Bidle of Rutgers University in New Jersey, US, and his colleagues extracted DNA and bacteria from ice found between 3 and 5 metres beneath the surface of a glacier in the Beacon and Mullins valleys of Antarctica. The ice gets older as it flows down the valleys and the researchers took five samples that were between 100,000 and 8 million years old.
Teen ‘closed eyes’ in six-story hotel fall
He was just trying to do a good deed: pluck a stranger’s fallen swimsuit from the edge of the balcony above.
Matthew Savage reached, jumped, felt his fingertips touch the shorts – and then felt himself tumble over the railing of the sixth-floor balcony of his Myrtle Beach hotel room.
“I just closed my eyes,” the 17-year-old said, recalling the Friday night fall. He was recovering Saturday in his Tropical Winds hotel room on Ocean Boulevard, nursing mere scrapes and bruises on his back and legs.
In a stunt that would have been a sure-fire YouTube hit, Savage, of Gainesville, Ga., bounced off the balconies on the way down, slammed onto a slanted rooftop covering the hotel’s lazy river and slid off into the bushes.
Panda attacks zookeeper in Chinaa
A zookeeper needed more than 100 stitches after a 3-year-old panda viciously bit and scratched him during feeding time at a zoo in northwestern China, a newspaper reported Monday.
The zookeeper, surnamed Zhang, was hospitalized after the attack Saturday at a zoo in Lanzhou, Gansu province, but his life was not in danger, the Lanzhou Morning Post reported.
Zhang was feeding the panda from outside the enclosure, sticking his arms through the wire, when the panda, Lan Zai, grabbed his arms and began biting them and then scratched his legs, the newspaper reported.
Hat tip to Kara!
IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.
But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings.
China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate
Tibet’s living Buddhas have been banned from reincarnation without permission from China’s atheist leaders. The ban is included in new rules intended to assert Beijing’s authority over Tibet’s restive and deeply Buddhist people.
“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1.
Virtual jihad hits Second Life website
Islamic militants are suspected of using Second Life, the internet virtual world, to hunt for recruits and mimic real-life terrorism.
Police and the intelligence services are concerned that it may have been infiltrated by extremists to proselytise, communicate and transfer money to one another. Radicals may also be responsible for “virtual” terrorist attacks in which buildings depicted on the website are blown up.
Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian government’s High Tech Crime Centre, said jihadists may also be using the virtual reality world to master skills such as reconnaissance and surveillance. “We need to start thinking about living, working and protecting two worlds and two realities,” he told a security industry conference in Sydney.
The concerns are shared by Europol, the pan-European police agency, which believes that Second Life provides a means to transfer money across borders in a way that is more difficult for the authorities to monitor. It has recruited security consultants to advise on the use of Second Life for fraud and terrorism.
Mahjong game ‘can cause epilepsy’
A study by doctors in Hong Kong has concluded that epilepsy can be induced by the Chinese tile game of mahjong.
The findings, publish in the Hong Kong Medical Journal, were based on 23 cases of people who had suffered mahjong-induced seizures.
The report’s four authors, from Hong Kong’s Queen Mary Hospital, said the best prevention – and cure – was to avoid playing mahjong.
Exotic dancer saves client with CPR in Port St. Lucie
A 25-year-old exotic dancer is being called a “hero” after performing CPR on a client who apparently stopped breathing during one of her performances, police said Friday.
While Karnesha Nantz danced Friday morning for Daniel Karpinski, 46, she “turned and faced away from him for approximately 20 seconds,” police stated.
When Nantz turned to face him, she noticed Karpinski slumped down on the couch and having problems breathing.
She called 911 and performed CPR on Karpinski because he wasn’t conscious or breathing and continued until paramedics arrived.
‘Radioactive Boy Scout’ Charged in Smoke Detector Theft
A man who became the subject of a book called “The Radioactive Boy Scout” after trying to build a nuclear reactor in a shed as a teenager has been charged with stealing 16 smoke detectors. Police say it was a possible effort to experiment with radioactive materials.
David Hahn, 31, was being held Friday on a $5,000 bond in the Macomb County Jail after he was arraigned Thursday on felony larceny charges. Clinton Township police Capt. Richard Maierle said Hahn denied the charges.
From the mugshot, it looks like he is suffering from radiation poisoning.
Update: Dateline NBC ‘mole’ outed, booted at Defcon
Dateline NBC Producer Michelle Madigan was publicly outed at the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas Friday after show organizers were tipped off that she was trying to film show attendees with a hidden camera.
Free IT resourceMadigan ran from the show after organizers publicly threatened to escort her from the event at the beginning of a 4 p.m. conference session by noted hacker HD Moore. “She literally kicked the door open,” said “Priest,” a show official who declined to be identified. “She made the mistake of running. Had she taken it like an adult, she would have been treated with kid gloves, treated with respect.”
Instead she left as Defcon organizer “Dark Tangent” (Jeff Moss) taunted her from the stage.
“It came to our attention that a reporter might be here with a hidden pinhole camera,” Moss told the crowd. He said that he had two options: to let her corner some 13-year-old and get him to admit to hacking, or to escort her away.
Intel apologises for ‘racist’ computer ad
Intel, the computer chip maker, has been forced to apologise for an advertisement which has been widely criticised as racist.
The ad, which was for a new generation of micro-processors, showed six black sprinters crouched in the start position in front a white man wearing a shirt and chinos in an office.
Above the image was a slogan which read: “Multiply computer performance and maximise the power of your employees.”
Growing ursine invasions becoming unbearable
In the 17 years the Hyde family has lived at the edge of a national forest, bears have broken into their garage three times, but nothing prepared them for what they found in July after returning from five days of wilderness camping.
The front window of their sturdy mountain home had been smashed, and when Danny Hyde, a school principal, opened the front door, he discovered that a bear and two cubs had taken up residence. They were still inside, having ripped out cupboards, emptied the refrigerator and feasted on molasses, Fig Newtons, Thin Mints, Cool Whip, ice cream, honey and chicken chow mein. After Hyde yelled, they bolted out an open window. It took seven people five hours to shovel out the mess.
The Lake Tahoe area is experiencing a rise in home invasions by bears. Years of humans’ feeding bears and available garbage have urbanized black bears, and a drought last winter has aggravated the problem. And some people fear that one of the measures intended to fend off the bears has actually helped increase the break-ins.
Manson Reportedly Bought Skeleton With Band’s Earnings
Shock rocker Marilyn Manson squandered his band’s earnings on “sick and disturbing” Nazi memorabilia and a skeleton of a young Chinese girl, according to court papers filed in Los Angeles.
Manson is being sued by his former keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy — real name Stephen Gregory Bier Jr. — for non-payment during his time in the singer’s band.
An Artist and His Sub Surrender in Brooklyn
At slack tide off Red Hook, Brooklyn, there are usually lots of things floating in the water, most of which you would not want to touch without the help of a good hazmat suit. But just after sunrise yesterday, something truly strange was bobbing there in the shallows near Pier 41: a submarine fashioned almost completely from wood, and inside it a man with an obsession.
The man, Duke Riley, a heavily tattooed Brooklyn artist whose waterborne performance projects around New York have frequently landed him in trouble with the authorities, spent the last five months building the vessel as a rough replica of what is believed to have been America’s first submarine, an oak sphere called the Turtle, said to have seen action in New York Harbor during the Revolutionary War.
Hat tip to Steve!
A six-day-old lamb at a veterinary clinic on New Zealand’s South Island bleats like any other newborn sheep, but is rather different in other ways.
This lamb has seven legs, local media reported today.
Two of the extra legs hang uselessly behind the lamb’s forelegs. The animal has three hind legs, one of them with two hoofs. It walks using its two forelegs and three hind legs, the Ashburton Guardian newspaper said.
Dog Shoots Owner in the Back in Memphis
A Memphis, Tenn., man is in critical condition Wednesday after his dog shot him in the back.
Police say King George, a 150-pound Great Dane, accidentally knocked a .22-caliber pistol off his owner’s end table around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. The gun went off, hitting his 21-year-old owner in the back, MyFOXMemphis.com reports.
Illegal and heading here: ‘Killer’ 20mph petrol-driven rollerblades
They look like great fun, and would certainly take the sweat out of skating.
But these motorised rollerblades could cause serious injury and death, safety experts warned last night.
The Chinese-made boots are illegal across the world, but trading standards chiefs fear the UK black market is about to be flooded with them.
With a 25cc engine attached to the right boot along with a small fuel tank, they carry the wearer along at up to 20mph.
