`Masked Palestinian gunmen have briefly taken over a European Union office to protest a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons deemed insulting to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
The 12 drawings – published last September by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and republished in a Norwegian paper this month – included an image of the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse.
Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet, even respectful ones, out of concern that such images could lead to idolatry.’
`An alleged thief was hit for six by a flying tackle after a group of Palmerston North cricket players chased him down on Saturday.
The 17-year-old man, accused of stealing a car stereo, was knocked off his bicycle when United Cricket Club premier three opening bowler Jonny Kawana put in his king hit. [..]
“He squealed like a little girl when I hit him.
“I picked him up and threw him on the footpath and he froze. I had to hold myself back.”‘
‘Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend. [..]
There are three specific events that these scientists describe as especially worrisome and potentially imminent, although the time frames are a matter of dispute: widespread coral bleaching that could damage the world’s fisheries within three decades; dramatic sea level rise by the end of the century that would take tens of thousands of years to reverse; and, within 200 years, a shutdown of the ocean current that moderates temperatures in northern Europe.’
`A frustrated doctor has closed his medical practice in a small northern New Zealand seaside settlement and plans to reopen his surgery as a brothel next month.
Neil Benson closed his Cooper’s Beach practice last year, complaining of a lack of support from health authorities, other doctors and the community. [..]
“It’s about providing a private service and maintaining confidentiality, which is what my medical practice was about – so it’s not a big leap, really,” said Benson.’
`Rare video footage shows a giant octopus attacking a small submarine off the west coast of Vancouver Island.
Salmon researchers working on the Brooks Peninsula were shocked last November when an octopus attacked their expensive and sensitive equipment.
(courtesy SubOceanic Sciences Canada Ltd )
The giant Pacific octopus weighs about 45 kilograms, powerful enough to damage Mike Wood’s remote-controlled submarine.’
with video. (1.6meg Quicktime)
‘A dominatrix was acquitted of manslaughter Monday in the death of a man who prosecutors say suffered a heart attack while strapped to a replica of a medieval rack. [..]
Barbara Asher, a 56-year-old woman who called herself Mistress Lauren M, was also cleared of dismemberment. [..]
Asher had her boyfriend chop up the body of the 275-pound retired telephone company worker, and they dumped it behind a restaurant in Maine, prosecutors said. His remains have never been found.’
followup to Lawyer Dons Dominatrix Mask in Trial.
Update: Found a site with a picture of the prosecutor in a leather mask. Amusing. :)
`Nobody was ever arrested for leaking the secret source code for parts of the Windows operating system in 2004, but a hacker who sold a copy online afterward was sentenced to two years in federal prison Friday. [..]
Like many others, Genovese downloaded a copy. Unlike others, he posted a note to his website offering it for sale.
According to court records, an investigator hired by Microsoft took Genovese up on his offer and dropped two Hamiltons on the secret source code. The investigator then returned and arranged a second $20 transaction for an FBI agent, which led to Genovese’s indictment under the U.S. Economic Espionage Act, which makes it a felony to sell a company’s stolen trade secrets. After consulting with his public defender, Genovese pleaded guilty last August.’
`Users of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s (AMD’s) microprocessors may want to think twice before looking for technical support on the company’s Web site. Customer support discussion forums on the forums.amd.com site have been compromised and are being used in an attempt to infect visitors with malicious software, an AMD spokesman confirmed Monday. [..]
Attackers have figured out a way to use AMD’s forums to deliver maliciously encoded WMF images to visitors, which are then used to install unauthorized software on the unpatched systems, he said. [..]
How the attackers were able to compromise the AMD forums is unclear. [..]’
‘Airhead Paris Hilton has revealed she did not know London was in the United Kingdom.
The daft blonde blurted out the admission in a statement for a £5.7million US libel case.
Her catalogue of dumb answers in the witness box gave a fascinating insight into the tiny mind of the hotel heiress, who stands to inherit £30million.
Paris revealed she can’t name some of her friends, and thinks everyone in Europe speaks French.’
`A swastika drawn on a sleeping inmate’s forehead as a prank escalated into a fight between members of a white supremacist gang and other prisoners that left eight inmates and two guards injured, a report says. [..]
The violence culminated in the Dec. 27 fight at Pickaway Correctional Institution in which five members of the Aryan Brotherhood battled the prankster and five others with locks hooked to belts and a sharpened broomstick.’
`A man plummeted 130 feet from a helicopter Monday but escaped injury because deep snow cushioned his fall.
The 42-year-old was suspended from the helicopter by a rope to make repairs when the knot came undone and he slipped free, police in the Upper Austria town of Hallstatt said in a statement.’
`A new provision tucked into the Patriot Act bill now before Congress would allow authorities to haul demonstrators at any “special event of national significance” away to jail on felony charges if they are caught breaching a security perimeter. [..]
The measure has civil libertarians protesting what they say is yet another power grab for the executive branch and one more loss for free speech. [..]
But not everyone agrees that rights are being trampled on by the additional provision. In fact, some say the ACLU is the problem when it comes to protecting national security.’
‘A school has decided that showing the R-rated movie “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” is not an appropriate high school Spanish lesson.
Fernando Del Pino was suspended with pay Tuesday for showing the movie to students at Lexington�s Tates Creek High School a day earlier, said Lisa Deffendall, spokeswoman for Fayette County Public Schools. He resigned Thursday. [..]
The movie is about a 40-year-old single man whose friends try to help him gain experience in sex.’
`Britney spears reportedly went speeding after her husband Kevin Federline after he stole their son Sean Preston to have his ears pierced.
Pop tart Britters was horrified at the thought of their four month old baby having his ears pierced.
Kevin, who has pierced ears thought it would look cool, but Britney thought earrings would make Sean look like a girl!
She allegedly dispatched bodyguards to stop her husband reaching the beauty parlour where he plans to pierce his baby.’
`A former substitute teacher was sentenced to one year in jail and five years probation for encouraging several young boys to lick whipped cream off their toes as part a game he filmed.
Michael Codde, 44, will have to register as a sex offender and will no longer be able to teach as the result of Friday’s sentence handed down in Santa Cruz County Superior Court.
Codde admitted to felony child molestation and misdemeanor possession of child pornography. Even though no one alleged Codde touched the boys, Judge John Salazar said he clearly directed the game for sexual arousal.’
`Scientists in the UK have made 2D arrays of particles that are held together by nothing except light. The “optical matter” arrays developed by Colin Bain of Durham University and Christopher Mellor, now at the National Institute for Medical Research, consist of polystyrene nanospheres that are trapped by light that has been scattered off a prism. The arrays provide a new way of assembling matter on the nanoscale, and could also shed light on processes inside crystals that take place at even smaller scales [..]’
`Bulgarian customs stopped a 75-ton shipment of beef meat from Ireland that may have been frozen since 1984, local media reported on Monday.
The meat was sent for testing after officials at the Kulata border pass with Greece noticed that the meat had a bluish colour. Among the papers with the shipment was a 22-year-old health certificate.’
`Thinks the federal government is too intrusive? You ain’t seen nothing yet. An FCC mandate will require that all hardware and software have a wiretap backdoor that allows the government to tap into all your communications.
The mandate expands the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), and requires that every piece of hardware and software sold include the backdoor.’
`A clumsy visitor to a Cambridge museum has destroyed a set of priceless 300-year-old Chinese vases after tripping on his shoelace.
The three Qing vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had stood on a windowsill at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, southeast England, for at least 40 years. Their prominent position made them among its best known artefacts, the UK Daily Telegraph reported today. [..]
Steve Baxter, another visitor who saw the accident, was quoted as saying: “We watched the man fall as if in slow motion. He landed in the middle of the vases and they splintered into a million pieces.’
`A lovestruck judge could be jailed for offering to have a woman’s boyfriend sent to prison so they could pursue an affair.
The judge, known only as Wolfgang W, was presiding over a robbery trial when he met the defendant’s girlfriend, a 30-year-old Albanian woman known as Fatime L.
The pair reportedly had dinner together during the trial and the 63-year-old judge then took to texting Ms L with suggestive messages such as “I’m kissing you awake” and “Alone with you in bed. I want to drag you into bed before breakfast and sleep with you”.’
`An Australian state plans to ban students from wearing denim.
According to state officials, the ban will be brought in because the fabric is linked with having fun.
“It is associated with weekend wear, with recreational time,” a spokesman for Western Australia state Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich said.
“It’s just unacceptable at schools and we are trying to lift the standards.”‘
`Shock and disbelief in Brownsville where a man is behind bars accused of videotaping himself having sex with a child and an animal. [..]
Police say his girlfriend was looking for a video tape taken at Christmas when she found a tape that showed De Leon forcing a nine-year-old girl to perform oral sex. Police say De Leon recorded the sex act.
To add to the shock of the tape, police say De Leon also video taped himself exposing himself and having sexual contact with a dog.’
`A 52-year-old rocket enthusiast suffered minor injuries when a motor exploded as he packed powder into the casing, blowing his garage door off its hinges in Oceanside, authorities said Saturday.
Firefighters were called to the man’s home in the 3700 block of Nectarine Circle at 7:38 p.m. Friday, Oceanside fire battalion Chief Peter Lawrence said.
They found a trash can smoldering, the garage door split in half and smoke filling the cul-de-sac where the home is located, Lawrence said. [..]
Firefighters suggested Reiner find a safer hobby. Reiner told them that “God has a plan for me and apparently it was not supposed to end tonight,” Lawrence said.’
`PC users have been urged to scan their computers before 3 February to avoid falling victim to a destructive virus.
On that date the Nyxem virus is set to delete Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Acrobat files on infected machines.
Nyxem is thought to have caught out many people by promising porn to those who open the attachments on e-mail messages carrying the virus.’
`Children as young as 10 could be strip-searched in public by police of the opposite sex without their parents’ knowledge under Victoria’s proposed new anti-terrorism laws.
Draft rules state that strip-searches of children aged 10 to 18 — and of the intellectually impaired — must be conducted by a person of the same sex, in private and in the presence of a parent or guardian, “unless it is not reasonably practicable”.’
Fun little side scroller.
`A $37 million jet fighter belonging to the United States military has been lost at sea during a training exercise in Queensland. The jet was attempting a night landing on the flight deck of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan on Saturday.
The pilot ejected safely and was rescued by the ship’s helicopter, but the FA-18 Hornet strike fighter was unlikely to be retrieved from the ocean, US officials confirmed.
The accident happened when the aircraft carrier was 400 kilometres south-east of Brisbane, ABC television reported.’
`The troubled trial of Saddam Hussein collapsed into chaos moments after resuming as the former Iraqi president and his defence team stormed out and guards dragged his half-brother from the courtroom.
Saddam’s lawyers threatened to boycott future sessions unless the chief judge apologised, and called for the trial to be moved abroad, saying a fair hearing in Iraq was impossible. [..]
“I am the judge and you are the defendant,” Abdel Rahman told Saddam as he checked an outburst by the former Iraqi president, who complained: “This is an American court and it’s rules are American … you cannot force me to stay in court.”‘
‘Too bad Bin Laden does not have an Amazon.com Affiliate Account. With a bit of planning, Osama could have been raking in the dough.
Earlier this month, Bin Laden issued another audiotape single where he threatens the US. In case you thought Osama was evil AND illiterate, you were WRONG. Not only does he read, in his speech, he recommended that Americans read a book called Rogue State by liberal author William Blum.
The result of Osama’s “book club”? As I write this, the book is a top seller on Amazon.com. It is currently #32 on Amazon’s top selling book list. Yesterday it was at #51.’
I have an Amazon associates account, so if you don’t have ads blocked you can buy this book from me. :) Don’t fund terrorism, fund moonbuggy. :)
