Archive for June, 2009
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Two dead, 118 injured in toy factory brawl
A brawl at a toy factory in China has ended with the deaths of two people and a further 60 hospitalised after a dispute flared between workers of different ethnic backgrounds in the Muslim Xinjiang region.
More than 400 police were called to break up the fight involving hundreds of people at the factory in Shaoguan, in the southern province of Guangdong, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
A total of 118 people were injured in the fight. It was not clear what triggered the dispute, but the two dead were both members of China’s Uighur minority, the South China Morning Post reported, adding that 81 of the injured were also Uighurs.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent | No Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2009
Drunk man killed trying to saw through live power line
New York authorities say a man was fatally electrocuted early Saturday when he tried to cut through a downed power line with an industrial saw.
Authorities say the 64-year-old Pond Eddy man was drunk and ignored repeated orders to stay away from the cable.
The accident happened in the presence of firefighters who had been guarding the fallen line.
The Sullivan County public safety commissioner says officials chased the man away from the line several times before he fetched the saw from his house.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity | No Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2009
WHoardes of hungry grasshoppers invade Utah
An ambitious director might look at Mitch Halligan’s property and see an instant B-movie classic: “Invasion of the Grasshoppers.”
The place is overrun with the greasy little bugs. With each step you take on his property, the squirmy inch-long grasshoppers jump for cover in every direction.
Those that don’t crunch under foot perch themselves atop tall grass stalks, crawl up pant legs or munch through gardens. Across the road isn’t much better. Grasshoppers blanketed the neighbors’ entryway a few days ago and forced them to come in through the back door.
“I’d call this the closest that I’ve seen to a plague in a long time,” Halligan said.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update, End of the World Update, Yuck! | No Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2009
Chips And Dip
Meet Lahoma Sue Smith. The Oklahoma woman, 36, copped a plea last week to a prostitution charge for accepting a box of Frito-Lay chips in exchange for oral sex.
According to the below Oklahoma City Police Department report, john Faron Johnson told cops that he informed Smith that he did not have any money, but that she “agreed to give him a ‘blow job’ meaning oral sex, for a box of chips.”
Johnson, a Frito-Lay employee, provided Smith with a case of chips he valued at $30.
Posted in Sex | No Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2009
MICHELLE OBAMA BOOZE BINGES
Michelle Obama – cracking under the pressure of being First Lady – is drinking way more than she should, friends fear.
Longtime pals have been keeping a close eye on her White House booze intake for months, sources told The ENQUIRER, and her husband President Barack Obama even stepped in when she recently consumed too much alcohol.
“When Barack saw Michelle drink more than she should at a recent dinner, he hit the roof. He told her, ‘This is NOT going to turn into a problem!’” a close source told The ENQUIRER.
“Barack is overly sensitive to the issue because of his own past drinking and substance abuse problems. But he also feels guilty because of the pictures taken of him drinking beer at an NBA game recently.”
The President also feels he may have contributed to his wife’s alcohol issues by not stopping her from overindulging during their date night in New York City on May 30.
Michelle, 45, knocked back “a glass or two of champagne” while the couple flew to the Big Apple on a private jet, according to the close source, and published reports said she downed two martinis during dinner at the Greenwich Village restaurant Blue Hill.
“It was clear that Mrs. Obama was having a VERY good time,” a restaurant employee told The ENQUIRER.
Posted in Fun with Alcohol, Idiot Celebrities | No Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2009
Aide’s tale of John Edwards sex tape:
Former presidential candidate John Edwards is out of luck if he hoped that the extramarital affairs of Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign would take people’s minds off his own cheating scandal.
Former Edwards aide Andrew Young says the ex-senator and his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, once made a sex tape, according to someone who has seen Young’s book proposal. St. Martin’s Press just inked a deal with Young, who also says in his proposal that, contrary to his public statement last year, he is not the father of Hunter’s infant daughter — Edwards is.
Edwards has denied that. Young says that his belief in Edwards ran so deep that he agreed to take the fall for the candidate, inviting the pregnant Hunter to live with him, his wife, Cheri, and their three children. Later, after Hunter delivered the baby, Young and his family moved to a different home in California.
While he was unpacking, Young discovered a videocassette, according to the book pitch. Hunter had been hired by the Edwards campaign to videotape the candidate’s movements, but this one is said to have shown him taking positions that weren’t on his official platform.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Politico Follies, Sexual Deviants | No Comments »
Sunday, June 28th, 2009
‘I’m better off dead. I’m done’: How Michael Jackson predicted his death six months ago
Whatever the final autopsy results reveal, it was greed that killed Michael Jackson. Had he not been driven – by a cabal of bankers, agents, doctors and advisers – to commit to the gruelling 50 concerts in London’s O2 Arena, I believe he would still be alive today.
During the last weeks and months of his life, Jackson made desperate attempts to prepare for the concert series scheduled for next month – a series that would have earned millions for the singer and his entourage, but which he could never have completed, not mentally, and not physically.
Michael knew it and his advisers knew it. Anyone who caught even a fleeting glimpse of the frail old man hiding beneath the costumes and cosmetics would have understood that the London tour was madness. For Michael Jackson, it was fatal.
Posted in Greed is Good, Human Oddities | No Comments »
Friday, June 26th, 2009
Monkey urinates on Zambian president
A monkey urinated on Zambian President Rupiah Banda during a press conference outside his office in the capital Lusaka.
President Banda took the unfortunate incident in good humour.
“You have urinated on my jacket,” a startled Mr Banda told the monkey, looking up at a tree.
The monkey was one of a colony that has made the its home in the trees outside Mr Banda’s offices at Lusaka’s State House.
“I will give this monkey for lunch to Mr Sata,” he joked, referring to the opposition leader Michael Sata, who Mr Banda defeated in last year’s elections.
Mr Banda somehow managed to continue his press conference, only the second of his presidency.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update | No Comments »
Friday, June 26th, 2009
Child Porn Images Found At Park Bathroom
More than a dozen Polaroid pictures of graphic child pornography was discovered by a cleaning company in the bathroom of a local park.
Workers at R.B. Satkowiak City Sewer Cleaners of Carrollton Township found the photographs while clearing a sewer drain at Imerman Memorial Park in Saginaw Township on May 27.
Pat Kinney said his crew pulled about 15-30 pictures portraying sex acts between a middle-aged woman and a boy from a suction cleaning pump after the tool became clogged.
“They were tied together with a string,” Kinney said. “Just about everything you could think of was shown in the pictures.”
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Sexual Deviants, Yuck! | No Comments »
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
India plans hot chilli grenades:
Indian defence scientists are planning to put one of the world’s hottest chilli powders into hand grenades.
They say the devices will be used to control rioters and in counter-insurgency operations.
Researchers say the idea is to replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilise people without killing them.
The chilli, known as Bhut Jolokia, is said to be 1,000 times hotter than commonly used kitchen chilli.
Posted in Idiot Authorities | No Comments »
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
Chinese woman boiled man’s head to cure daugther’s psychiatric problems
Lin Zongxiu, from the southwestern province of Sichuan, heard in 2008 that soup made with a man’s head could help cure her daughter who had suffered from psychiatric problems for years, the Chengdu Commercial newspaper reported.
Lin and her husband decided to enlist the help of a man in December who knocked unconscious a drunk 76-year-old passer-by before beheading him, the paper claimed.
The couple then gave their 25-year-old daughter soup made from the man’s head, and duck. A local court sentenced the murderer to death with a two-year reprieve on Monday, and Lin was convicted of helping to destroy evidence that included the culprit’s bloody clothes and shoes, the paper said.
The murderer’s reprieve means that his sentence will likely be commuted to life in prison as long as he commits no further offences in the next two years.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Kara's Classics, Medical Monstrosities | No Comments »
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
Girl Who Does Not Age, Brooke Greenberg Baffles Doctors
Brooke weighs 16 pounds and is 30 inches tall. She doesn’t speak, but she laughs when she is happy, and she clearly recognizes the people around her. She has three sisters: Emily, 22; Caitlin, 19; and Carly, 13. All three are bright, active and of normal size and development. They say that Brooke has ways of expressing herself like the teenager she is. “She looks like a 6-month-old, but she kind of has a personality of a 16-year-old,” Caitlin said. “Sometimes we joke about how she rebels.”
Brooke will resist and refuse activities that don’t appeal to her by vocalizing her displeasure, not with words, but with sounds typical of an infant. “She makes it known what she likes and what she doesn’t like,” sister Emily said. Carly said it no longer seems strange to have an older sister who is still essentially an infant. “As I got older, she was just like another little sister to me,” she said.
Posted in Human Oddities, Medical Monstrosities | No Comments »
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
‘Stoned wallabies make crop circles’:
Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around “as high as a kite”, a government official has said.
Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine.
She was reporting to a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops. Australia supplies about 50% of the world’s legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
Arkansas Inmate Nearly Dies After Left in Feces
An Arkansas prisoner nearly died after guards left him lying naked in his own feces for a weekend, and while investigating the incident corrections officials found that guards received lap dances while on the job, documents obtained by The Associated Press show.
The prison system fired Lt. John Glasscock, who supervised guards on duty at the maximum-security Tucker Unit prison. One sergeant was fired, another was demoted and three others received written warnings, according to a report stamped “Sustained (Allegation is True).” The report said Glasscock gave false information to investigators and did substandard work “resulting in injury and/or property damage.”
The disclosure of the inmate’s near death comes after two convicted murderers escaped a different state prison by wearing guard uniforms and officers at the Tucker Unit fatally shot a man who officials said fled from a contraband checkpoint.
Combined, the incidents raise new questions about a troubled state prison system described by a federal judge 40 years ago as a “dark and evil world.”
Posted in Idiot Authorities | No Comments »
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
Girl with tattooed face admits she wanted all 56 stars
A TEENAGE girl who claimed 56 stars were tattooed on her face while she slept has admitted she lied and was awake the whole time.
London’s Daily Telegraph reported Kimberley Vlaminck, who said she fell asleep after asking for only three stars, lied because her father was “furious”.
She initially insisted she dozed had off after asking the tattooist for just three small stars – then woke in horror to find her face was covered.
Posted in Doh!, I hate it when that happens, Teen Antics | No Comments »
Saturday, June 20th, 2009
Tiger Woods taunted at 10th hole; Fred Funk’s name becomes obscenity:
Beer-sodden fans and rain combined for an ugly finish to a long day of golf yesterday, with Tiger Woods and other golfers subjected to drunken heckling as the action at Bethpage Black came to a close.
At 6:42 p.m., dozens of drunken spectators at Hole 10 taunted Woods as he prepared to start his third round in the rain.
“We’re on Long Island, baby, where men are men!” one fan yelled. “Put that umbrella down!” The taunts were mixed with cheers from the majority of the crowd.
Woods did not respond to the people who were heckling him but tried to quiet the crowd with a “sshh” hand gesture, putting his finger to his lips, as golfers prepared to tee off on the adjacent 12th tee.
“Suck it up, you’ve got your own video game!” someone shouted at Woods. Some fans, apparently disgusted by the hecklers’ behavior, walked away from the hole.
Others told the vocal contingent to quiet down, which had no effect on the verbal abuse.
Minutes later, a group of fans greeted Fred Funk at the 10th hole by shouting his last name as an obscenity.
Posted in Fun with Alcohol | No Comments »
Saturday, June 20th, 2009
Police: Woman skinned puppy to make belt
A 23-year-old woman who got a friend to kill her Jack Russell terrier was charged with skinning the puppy to make a belt out of its hide.
Krystal Lynn Lewis and Austin Michael Mullins, 26, were being held Friday in the Muskogee County jail on $25,000 bail each. They were charged with one felony count of cruelty to animals. A Muskogee County judge ordered a mental competency hearing for Lewis.
Lewis wanted the puppy, named Poplin, killed because it was a gift from a female ex-lover with whom she doesn’t get along, said Muskogee County sheriff’s deputy George Roberson.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Kara's Classics, Yuck! | No Comments »
Friday, June 19th, 2009
Postmen boycott deliveries after Royal Mail worker is attacked… by a kitten
A family has been warned their mail could be halted after postmen refused to deliver to their house – because of a vicious kitten.
Royal Mail chiefs wrote to Ken Ridge claiming that six-month-old Illy had attacked a postal worker.
Mail deliveries to the house could now be suspended as a result of the attack on the woman, he was told.
Mr Ridge, 65, who lives in Clapham, South London, with his 30-year-old son Bradley, said: ‘We were not around when this happened, but it seems some mail was put through the letterbox and their hand was scratched.
‘Illy is only a kitten and I am sure she was just playing. ‘Then we got a letter from the mail delivery office warning our deliveries could be stopped.’
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update, Idiot Authorities | No Comments »
Friday, June 19th, 2009
Detroit man confession: ‘I kill people for money’
Hours after police plucked him out of a suburban alley, Vincent Smothers dropped a bombshell confession: “I don’t have a profession,” he told an investigator. “I kill people for money.”
Then, police say, he laid out details of how each of eight hired hits happened. He stalked his victims before shooting them at close range. He killed some while talking on his cell phone and fired on others even when they appeared to lay lifeless on the ground.
Even in Detroit, which had more than 300 slayings last year, Smothers’ case is notable: Rarely is one person charged in so many deaths. On Friday, his lawyers planned to ask a judge to have the confessions thrown out, arguing he was worn down while in custody. Police deny it.
”He’d been accused of doing so many, he just wanted to get it over (with),” said Detective Sgt. Ken Ducker of the Michigan State Police.
Police say the work paid $60,000 over two years, although Smothers did one job for as little as $50. All but one of his victims were involved in drugs. The exception was a police officer’s wife.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality | No Comments »
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
A Sonic Boom In The World Of Lasers:
It was an idea born out of curiosity in the physics lab, but now a new type of ‘laser’ for generating ultra-high frequency sound waves instead of light has taken a major step towards becoming a unique and highly useful 21st century technology.
Microwave Scientists at The University of Nottingham, in collaboration with colleagues in the Ukraine, have produced a new type of acoustic laser device called a Saser. It’s a sonic equivalent to the laser and produces an intense beam of uniform sound waves on a nano scale.
The new device could have significant and useful applications in the worlds of computing, imaging, and even anti-terrorist security screening. Where a ‘laser’,(Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation), uses packets of electromagnetic vibrations called ‘photons’, the ‘Saser’ uses sound waves composed of sonic vibrations called ‘phonons’.
In a laser, the photon beam is produced by stimulating electrons with an external power source so they release energy when they collide with other photons in a highly reflective optical cavity. This produces a coherent and controllable shining beam of laser light in which all the photons have the same frequency and rate of oscillation. From supermarket scanners to DVD players, surgery, manufacturing and the defence industry, the application of laser technology is widespread.
The Saser mimics this technology but using sound, to produce a sonic beam of ‘phonons’ which travels, not through an optical cavity like a laser, but through a tiny manmade structure called a ‘superlattice’. This is made out of around 50 super-thin sheets of two alternating semiconductor materials, Gallium Arsenide and Aluminium Arsenide, each layer just a few atoms thick. When stimulated by a power source (a light beam), the phonons multiply, bouncing back and forth between the layers of the lattice, until they escape out of the structure in the form of an ultra-high frequency phonon beam.
Posted in End of the World Update, Mad Scientists | No Comments »
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
Mexico: Almost 1 ton of cocaine found in sharks:
Mexico says it found nearly one ton of cocaine hidden inside frozen shark carcasses.
Prosecutors say hundreds of packages stuffed in the bellies of dozens of dead sharks seized in the Gulf port of Progreso contained 1,965 pounds (893 kilograms) of cocaine.
The Attorney General’s Office says the sharks were found in two containers on Tuesday.
The containers had been shipped from Costa Rica. There was no immediate information on its intended destination.
The 870 packages were found wrapped in plastic and inserted in the sharks.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Drugs | No Comments »
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
Oregon woman obsessed with rabbits arrested again
Washington County’s “Bunny Lady” is back in the hutch after violating a court order banning her from owning animals for five years. Miriam Sakewitz, 47, was arrested Tuesday at a hotel in the Portland suburb of Tigard after an employee reported finding rabbits hopping around in her room.
Problems for Sakewitz started in October 2006 when police in Hillsboro, about 15 miles west of Portland, found and confiscated nearly 250 rabbits in her home, including about 100 dead ones in freezers and refrigerators.
Police said she broke into the facility where the survivors were being cared for in January 2007 and stole most of them back. Authorities found her a few days later in Chehalis, Wash., with eight live rabbits and two dead ones in her car. Another 130 rabbits were recovered at a nearby horse farm.
Sakewitz was sentenced in April 2007 to five years probation and was banned from owning or controlling animals. She also was told not to go within 100 yards of a rabbit.
Hat tip to Jinny!
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
9,200 Uncounted Vials Found at Army Biodefense Lab
An inventory of deadly germs and toxins at an Army biodefense lab in Frederick found more than 9,200 vials of material that was unaccounted for in laboratory records, Fort Detrick officials said Wednesday.
The 13 percent overage mainly reflects stocks left behind in freezers by researchers who retired or left Fort Detrick since the biological warfare defense program was established there in 1943, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, deputy commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
He said the found material included Korean War-era serum samples from patients with Korean hemorrhagic fever, a disease still of interest to researchers pursuing a vaccine.
Other vials contained viruses and microbes responsible for Ebola, plague, anthrax, botulism and host of other ailments, Kortepeter said in a teleconference with reporters.
Posted in Doh!, Idiot Authorities, War | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
What did she expect? Incredible face revealed of the man who tattooed girl with 56 stars when she only asked for three
A teenage girl is suing a tattoo artist for £10,000 after she allegedly asked him for three stars on her face – but ended up with 56.
Eighteen-year-old Kimberley Vlaminck paid £55 for ‘the graffiti that has ruined my life’ in her Belgian home town of Courtrai.
She claimed the Romanian tattooist who performed the artwork misunderstood her French and English. She claims she fell asleep while he was doing his work… and awoke to ‘this nightmare’.
But today, Rouslan Toumaniantz – himself covered from head to foot in tattoos and piercings – said he would help pay for treatment to remove the tattoos.
‘I maintain that she absolutely agreed that I tattoo those 56 stars on the left side of her face,’ he told newspaper La Derniere Heure. ‘
A witness, a woman who was present, has already been questioned by police, and she confirms it.
Kimberley says the tattoos have ruined her life
Rouslan Toumaniantz, who runs the tattoo parlour, says Kimberley asked for 56 stars.
‘But be that as it may: Kimberley is unhappy and it is not my wish to have an unsatisfied client. There is a way to remove the tattoos with the help of a laser. I accept to pay for half the cost.’
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Doh!, Teen Antics | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
Battle for hearts — and screens — of the world
#iranelection
Apparently, the song was right: The revolution will not be televised. It will be thumbed.
With traditional reporting silenced and with Iranian e-mail and Web services shut down by the government Tuesday, much of the information about the election protests in Tehran was coming through social media sites such as Twitter.com and Facebook.com.
Many users of social media sites access them through cell phones and messaging services, which use different pathways from the World Wide Web circuits that Iranian censors have labored to shut down.
“They’ve cut off telephone, e-mail, texting, and for foreign press issued a letter saying nobody can report without permission,” the Center for Arab and Iranian Studies in London said in a statement. “Twitter is the one thing being used.”
Posted in T.R.O.P., Unintended Consequences | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
Moaning German soldiers an ‘embarrassment’ say chiefs
German soldiers are softies who lack discipline, hate responsibility and show an inadequate desire to serve their country, according to the army’s chief inspector.
General Wolfgang Schneiderhahn, the general inspector of the Bundeswehr, told the German parliament that depite their positive contribution in Afghanistan, complaints from troops about their conditions were an “embarrassment”.
“We have given a good account of ourselves in Afghanistan, but we cannot guarantee an all-round feel-good feeling for soldiers,” said the general, before going on to detail the less dignified side of the country’s armed forces.
He cited complaints reaching him about the quality of sleeping bags used in a deployment in the Congo. “Are our soldiers too soft?” asked the best-selling daily German newspaper Bild.
Gen Schneiderhahn told politicians in Berlin on Monday that the descendants of the country’s mighty military machines of the past needed to have “a better feeling for discipline and to show a greater readiness to serve the state”.
Posted in War | No Comments »
Monday, June 15th, 2009
Cambridge students vomit and collapse after wild party
A DRUNKEN Cambridge University student staggers home after a wild party – dubbed Suicide Sunday – ended with revellers collapsing and throwing up.
Passers-by were shocked and disgusted after a notorious end-of-exams party lived up to its reputation with students binge drinking.
The party saw bikini-clad students struggling to stand up and vomiting at midday on a Sunday afternoon. The party was organised by the Wyverns – an all-male Magdalene College drinking society.
It had to be held in a new location for the first time in 80 years after officials banned students from holding the event on university land.
The controversial decision was made after a 23-year-old student was last year arrested during the infamous jelly-wrestling contest for punching a spectator.
Posted in College Antics, Drugs, Fun with Alcohol | No Comments »
Sunday, June 14th, 2009
Scientists Say ‘Super Volcano’ May Be Brewing Beneath Mount St. Helens
A team of scientists say they have evidence that a “super volcano” may be brewing underneath Mount St. Helens, NewScientist.com reports.
Researchers say indicators suggest Mount St. Helens and other northwest volcanoes are plugged into a huge subterranean pool of magma that could one day burst to the surface in a “super” eruption.
If what they believe is true, the structure beneath the mountain would be comparable in size to the biggest magma chambers ever discovered, such as the one below Yellowstone National Park.
Scientist Graham Hill led a team of researchers that set up magnetotelluric sensors around Mount St Helens.
The measurements revealed a column of conductive material that extends downward from the volcano which they found to connect to a much bigger zone of conductive material.
Posted in Weird Science | No Comments »
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Man ‘cooked’ to death in Australian prison van:
The family of an Australian Aboriginal elder who died after being “cooked” in the back of a prison van on a scorching hot day is considering suing, they said.
A coroner Friday dismissed treatment of the 46-year-old man as inhumane and a “disgrace,” saying he would ask prosecutors to consider criminal charges over his death from heatstroke in Western Australia in January 2008.
The elder, known only as Mr Ward as his first name was withheld for cultural reasons, was transported 360 kilometres (225 miles) to jail in temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 F) in a van with faulty air conditioning.
Ward, who was arrested a day earlier for drink driving, spent four hours in the searing heat between the mining towns of Laverton and Kalgoorlie, suffering third-degree burns where his body touched the metal floor, the inquest heard.
Western Australia Coroner Alastair Hope found that Ward was effectively “cooked” to death and heavily criticised the state prisons department, the private security firm that operated the van and the two guards who escorted Ward.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Idiot Authorities | No Comments »
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Baby Born On NYC Mass Transit For 2nd Straight Day
For the second day in a row a newborn girl has been born on New York City’s mass transit system. A Brooklyn bus became a makeshift delivery room on Friday morning. A woman passenger helped the mother deliver the baby that just couldn’t wait to come aboard.
Paramedics took the new mother and baby to a hospital. Their names were not released.
On Thursday, conductor Bretta Sykes helped a mother deliver a girl in a subway car. The mother of two says she used information from her own chilbirth classes to coach the woman through her seven-minute delivery.
A New York City Transit spokesman says it could be the system’s first consecutive births on a subway train and a bus.
Posted in Most Mysterious | No Comments »
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
‘Imelda’ Strikes Again: Thieving Fox Amasses 120 Shoes
A vixen has stolen more than 120 shoes from doorsteps in the German town of Föhren over the last year, amassing a collection that would impress even Imelda Marcos. Little bite marks on the laces suggest they’re intended as toys for her cubs.
For more than a year, the people of Föhren, a small town in the wooded Eifel hills of western Germany, wondered who was going around stealing shoes from their doorsteps and garden terraces at night. Well over 100 muddy hiking shoes, wet Wellingtons, steel-capped workman’s boots, flipflops and old slippers went missing.
The mystery has now been solved after a forestry worker discovered an Imelda Marcos-scale collection of footwear in a fox’s den in nearby woods. The bushy-tailed culprit, believed to be a vixen with a family of cubs, is still at large, and locals have two explanations for her kleptomania. Either she amassed them as toys for her children, or she simply likes collecting shoes, or both. So far 120 stolen shoes have been retrieved.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update | No Comments »
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Gorilla attacks man in brief zoo escape:
A 177-kilogram gorilla grabbed low-hanging bamboo to scale a wall at a zoo in South Carolina, escaping his enclosure and tackling a worker before returning to his pen about five minutes later. The gorilla at Riverbanks Zoo and Gardens ran into a pizza-stand employee who curled up and played dead to try to avoid further injuries during Friday’s incident, officials said. The man was taken to hospital and released a short time later with cuts and bruises. Zoo executive director Satch Krantz said the worker heard a strange sound, saw the gorilla outside the enclosure and turned to run. “Then the gorilla did what gorillas do,” he said.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update | No Comments »
Friday, June 12th, 2009
US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive
Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic “shrink to survive” proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.
The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature. Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.
The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint. Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.
Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.
Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.
Posted in And then they came for..., Cultural Oddities | No Comments »
Friday, June 12th, 2009
US government securities seized from Japanese nationals, not clear whether real or fake
Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland.
They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each. Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones.
What caught the policemen’s attention were the billion dollar securities. Such a large denomination is not available in regular financial and banking markets. Only states handle such amounts of money.
The question now is who could or would counterfeit or smuggle these non-negotiable bonds.
Posted in Most Mysterious | No Comments »
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Boy Hit On Arm By White-Hot Meteorite From Outer Space Travelling At 30,000mph
A teenager was hit by a meteorite travelling at 30,000mph – and lived to tell the tale.
The meteorite struck Gerrit on the hand, and buried itself in the road Gerrit Blank was on his way to school when he saw a massive fireball heading straight towards him from the sky.
The white-hot meteorite bounced off the schoolboy’s hand and hit the ground so hard it left a foot-long crater in the tarmac – as well as a three-inch scar on his hand.
Gerrit, 14, said: “At first I just saw a large ball of light and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. “Then, a split second after that, there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder.”
“The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.
“When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself in the road.”
Scientists are now studying the pea-sized meteorite, which crashed to Earth in Essen in Germany. Chemical tests on the rock have now proved it is from outer space.
Ansgar Korte, director of Germany’s Walter Hohmann Observatory, said: “It’s a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists.”
Chances of being struck by a meteorite are around one in 100 million.
Posted in Space, You lucky bastard | No Comments »
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Jyoti, the world’s smallest girl set to make it big on British TV at barely two feet tal
Her tiny form is disarming. But Jyoti Amge’s dreams are as big as those of her friends. At 15 she stands just 1ft 11½in tall and weighs less than a stone, giving her one very big claim to fame – as the smallest girl in the world.
Doctors believe Jyoti is a pituitary dwarf but have never been able to pinpoint her condition. Such dwarfism is caused when the body fails to produce enough growth hormone.
Specialists have told her she will remain the same size for the rest of her life.
‘When I was three I realised that I was different to the rest of the kids,’ she said. ‘I thought that everyone was bigger and I should get bigger too.’
Jyoti has her own mini grey uniform and school bag and even a tiny desk. But she looks like a doll next to her teenage classmates.
She said: ‘I am proud of being the smallest girl. I love all the attention I get. I’m not scared of being small, and I don’t regret being small.
Posted in Human Oddities | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
Sky ‘rains tadpoles’ over Japan
Residents, officials and scientists have been baffled by the apparent downpour of tadpoles in central Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture. Clouds of dead tadpoles appear to have fallen from the sky in a series of episodes in a number of cities in the region since the start of the month.
In one incident, a 55-year-old man who was caught in a tadpole downpour described hearing a strange sound in the parking lot of a civic centre in the city of Nanao.
Upon further exploration, he found more than 100 dead tadpoles covering the windshields of cars in an area measuring 10 square metres.
Dead tadpole downpours were also reported by local officials 48 hours later in the city of Hakusan in the same prefecture.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
Dog Playing Fetch in Germany Delivers Live Grenade to Owner
A dog playing fetch in Germany has found and delivered to its owner a U.S. hand grenade from World War II.
Police in the western town of Erkrath said Monday they were called by the dog’s 40-year-old owner who stopped walking her pooch when she recognized the “rusty” object it was carrying was a weapon.
Police summoned a munitions expert Sunday to identify and defuse the grenade.
Posted in Oops | No Comments »
Monday, June 8th, 2009
European elections 2009: BNP in line for £4 million cash boost in Euro success
The British National Party is in line for a £4 million cash boost as its European election breakthrough was widely condemned as a “shaming” for Britain.
The far right group won its first two seats in the European Parliament as the Labour vote collapsed, sending shock waves through Westminster and the country. Leader Nick Griffin, one of the successful MEPs, said it meant a “huge change in British politics”. Critics lined up to condemn the result.
Mr Griffin and his new MEP colleague, Andrew Brons, will now be able to take advantage of EU expenses and allowances worth up to £395,000 a year each over their five year term. Mr Griffin and Mr Brons will each have access to an annual salary of £80,443, an annual staff budget of £190,000, phone and postal allowances of £45,000 a year and a daily attendance allowance worth up to £80,000 a year, with no receipts required. In comparison, in 2007, the BNP raised just £500,000 and in the first five months of this year are said to have raised £650,000.
Posted in Politico Follies | No Comments »
Monday, June 8th, 2009
Crossbow-Wielding Stalker Attacks Actress
A stalker obsessed with a young Spanish actress shot at her with a crossbow before being wrestled to the ground and arrested outside a Madrid theater, police said Monday.
The official says the arrow from the crossbow aimed at Sara Casasnovas hit a male bystander, who was not seriously hurt in the attack Sunday evening.
The suspected attacker is a 39-year-old German, who became obsessed with Casasnovas after seeing her a year and a half ago on Spanish National Television’s international channel.
The official told The Associated Press the man had been sending the 25-year-old actress love letters and attacked her outside a theater where she had just finished a performance of “Night of the Iguana,” after she told him she wanted nothing to do with him.
The man was carrying a military-style backpack that contained a second crossbow, arrows with harpoon-style tips, a can of gasoline, handcuffs, rope, a canister of mace and a poster from a play in which Casasnovas had performed a few months ago, the official said.
Posted in Crazy is as Crazy Does | No Comments »
Monday, June 8th, 2009
Hacker named to Homeland Security Advisory Council
Jeff Moss, founder of the Black Hat and Defcon hacker and security conferences, was among 16 people sworn in on Friday to the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
The HSAC members will provide recommendations and advice directly to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.
Moss’ background as a computer hacker (aka “Dark Tangent”) and role as a luminary among young hackers who flock to Defcon in Las Vegas every summer might seem to make him an odd choice to swear allegiance to the government. (Although before running his computer conferences, Moss also worked in the information system security division at Ernst & Young.)
I’d like to hear some of the banter as he rubs elbows with the likes of former CIA (Bill Webster) and FBI directors (Louis Freeh), Los Angeles County sheriff, Miami mayor, New York police commissioner, governors of Maryland and Georgia, former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, and the president of the Navajo Nation.
In an interview late on Friday, Moss, who is 39, said he was surprised when he got the call and was asked to join the group.
“I know there is a newfound emphasis on cybersecurity and they’re looking to diversify the members and to have alternative viewpoints,” he said.
“I think they needed a skeptical outsider’s view because that has been missing.”
Posted in Hackers and Hacking | No Comments »
Monday, June 8th, 2009
Sweden’s Pirate Party captures Euro seat
Sweden’s Pirate Party, striking a chord with voters who want more free content on the Internet, won a seat in the European Parliament, early results showed on Sunday.
The Pirate Party captured 7.1 percent of votes in Sweden in the Europe-wide ballot, enough to give it a single seat.
The party wants to deregulate copyright, abolish the patent system and reduce surveillance on the Internet. “This is fantastic!” Christian Engstrom, the party’s top candidate, told Reuters.
“This shows that there are a lot of people who think that personal integrity is important and that it matters that we deal with the Internet and the new information society in the right way.”
Previously an obscure group of single-issue activists, the party enjoyed a jump in popularity after the conviction in April of four men behind The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s biggest free file-sharing website.
Posted in Hackers and Hacking | No Comments »
Friday, June 5th, 2009
Feds Search for Man Allegedly on ‘Mission to Kill the President’
Federal authorities in Utah are searching for a man who allegedly made threats against President Obama.Daniel James Murray has been charged with making threats against President Obama, after telling a bank teller he was part of a “mission” to kill the president.
The Secret Service says Murray has at least eight registered firearms. His whereabouts are unknown. Murray entered Zion’s First National Bank in St. George, Utah on May 19, to open a savings account with an $85,000 check, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Salt Lake City today.
Murray allegedly asked if the bank was solvent and then stated, according to the complaint, “With all this mess going on under President Obama with banks and the economy, I’m sure if citizens happen to lose their money, they will rise up and we could see killing and deaths.”
…
Murray told the teller during that visit, the complaint added, “We are 94 million miles from the sun, and are in-between the sun and moon, and the eagle that flies between them, and it’s a giant step for mankind. … I have traveled thousands of miles to be here and know things that are going to happen. … The banking system will fail and people will die. … There will be chaos in the world.”
The next day, according to the complaint, Murray withdrew the remaining $72,000 and closed his account.
Posted in Crazy is as Crazy Does, Idiot Criminals | No Comments »
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
Kung Fu star Carradine found dead:
Kill Bill and Kung Fu star David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room on Thursday.
Thai police told the BBC the 72-year-old was found naked by a hotel maid in a wardrobe with a cord around his neck and other parts of his body.
The US star was in Thailand filming his latest film, Stretch, according to his personal manager Chuck Binder. Mr Binder said the news was “shocking”, adding: “He was full of life, always wanting to work… a great person.”
A US embassy official confirmed the actor’s death, but added that the cause of death had not yet been established.
Posted in Oops, Sexual Deviants | No Comments »
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
Mouse steals food from African leopard
A mouse diced with death when it stole some food from under the nose of a leopard at the Santago Rare Leopard Project in Hertfordshire.
Instead of pouncing on the the mouse, the 12-year-old African leopard, called Sheena, simply watched as it fed on scraps of meat thrown into its enclosure.
At one stage she tried to nudge the mouse away with her nose, but the mouse carried on eating regardless.
The extraordinary scene was captured by photography student Casey Gutteridge, a photography student.
The 19-year-old, from Potters Bar, Herts, who was photographing the leopard for a course project, was astounded by the mouse’s behaviour.
“I have no idea where the mouse came from – he just appeared in the enclosure after the keeper had dropped in the meat for the leopard.
“He didn’t take any notice of the leopard, just went straight over to the meat and started feeding himself. But the leopard was pretty surprised – she bent down and sniffed the mouse and flinched a bit like she was scared.
Posted in Animal Weirdness | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Labour MPs tell Brown to quit for UK’s sake:
GORDON Brown was last night on the brink of being overthrown in an unprecedented Labour uprising.
Around 100 Labour MPs were ready to sign a letter circulated by email, urging the Prime Minister to quit – for the sake of the country.
The brutal coup attempt began to snowball earlier yesterday after the vengeful shock resignation of Cabinet Minister Hazel Blears.
She quit the Government on the eve of today’s critical Euro and local elections in a calculated bid to cause the maximum damage to Mr Brown, becoming the fourth minister to resign in a sensational 24 hours.
Communities Secretary Ms Blears made clear her desire to destabilise Mr Brown by hitting the campaign trail yesterday wearing a brooch bearing the words “Rocking The Boat”.
In an increasingly febrile atmosphere of plotting at Westminster, Labour rebels claimed at least 80 backbenchers had already promised to sign the message urging the Prime Minister to go.
Posted in Greed is Good, Politico Follies | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Westville man charged with fouling Gloucester Township building with fire and feces
A Westville man who reportedly couldn’t pay his bar tab wound up being charged with using his own feces to draw on the walls and set fire to a bathroom in the police station.
Police were called at 2:55 a.m. Sunday when Jason Detora, 24, couldn’t pay his bar tab at Skeeters Pub on the Black Horse Pike in Blenheim.
Detora told officers his girlfriend was on her way with money so he could pay, police said. Nicole Leadbeater, 22, of the same address as Detora, arrived at Skeeters.
Officers spoke with her in the parking lot and charged her with driving while intoxicated and on outstanding warrants from Pitman, said police.
She was taken to police headquarters to be processed and Detora was taken, too, as a courtesy, police said, so he could wait there for another ride.
Once at the police station, Detora allegedly used a rest room, but when he came out, a patrolman noticed an odor coming from the men’s room.
Police found toilet paper and paper towels had been piled up and set on fire in the bathroom. Detora allegedly had defecated on the floor and used his own feces to draw on the walls, said police.
Detora was charged with arson and criminal mischief and committed to the Camden County Jail in Camden in default of $35,000 bail.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Fire, Kara's Classics, Yuck! | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Allderdice student faces charges for swinging snake:
Pittsburgh police say a high school student will be charged with animal cruelty and theft for swinging a snake around in a biology class.
Police say the incident occurred Monday at Allderdice High School. Police aren’t identifying the 17-year-old suspect because he’s being charged in juvenile court.
The snake survived and was being treated by a veterinarian.
According to Ebony Pugh, a spokeswoman for Pittsburgh Public Schools, the student removed the snake from its cage and twirled it several times, like a “windmill.”
The teacher ordered the student to put the snake back in its cage and then told the student to go to the office. The school referred the matter to police.
Posted in Teen Antics | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Michael Jackson fears nose will fall off
MICHAEL Jackson is allegedly in constant fear of dying and is terrified his nose will fall off.
Close friends of the star said the singer is in a fragile state after being diagnosed with skin cancer, reports The Sun.
“Michael has become convinced that his nose is going to fall off,” a friend is said to have told the newspaper.
“The doctors have reassured him that this won’t happen,” another friend allegedly told The Sun.
“But Michael believes that the skin cancer will kill him and lives in constant fear of dying.
Posted in Idiot Celebrities | No Comments »
