`Coca-Cola has come under fire again for fuelling the childhood obesity crisis after Melbourne research found that adding caffeine — an addictive stimulant — does not enhance flavour.
Soft drink companies say caffeine adds flavour to cola, but a scientific taste test conducted by Deakin University found consumers could not tell the difference between caffeine-free Coke and a version with caffeine.
Head researcher Russell Keast said it was “unethical” for companies to use caffeine if it did not enhance flavour and could lead to young people becoming addicted to sugary drinks.’
`Saddam Hussein and his cousin “Chemical Ali” discussed how chemical weapons would exterminate thousands before unleashing them on Kurds in 1988, according to tapes played on Monday in a trial of former Iraqi officials.
“I will strike them with chemical weapons and kill them all and damn anyone who is going to say anything,” a voice identified by prosecutors as “Chemical Ali” Hassan al-Majeed is heard saying. [..]
“Yes, it exterminates thousands and forces them not to eat or drink and they will have to evacuate their homes without taking anything with them, until we can finally purge them,” the voice identified as Saddam answers.’
`A traditional circumcision ceremony in South Africa went awry over the weekend when a policeman had his nose bitten off.
The policeman had tried to put paid to an argument between a man and his family during the ceremony in the Eastern Cape province, when the man attacked him, biting off his nose.
The aggrieved policeman then shot the 30-year-old man in the chest, the SAPA news agency reported.’
‘These guys decide it would be funny to scare the garbage man during his pickup by hiding in a seemingly empty cardboard box. I guess he didn’t find it that funny.’
(1.8meg Windows media)
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`Health authorities in Madrid have acted to close a pro-anorexia website, accusing it of endangering the lives of teenage girls.
Four months after the city led the world in the Size 0 debate by banning ultra-skinny models from its catwalks, health officials are shining the spotlight on the growing number of “pro-ana” websites that glorify starvation diets.
Their first strike is against The Great Ana Competition, a website that awards a diploma to the girl who eats the fewest calories in a two-week period. They have filed a suit against the competition, which uses a scoring system that doctors said “would cause malnutrition in normal women”.’
‘An actual British government poster outside a London Metro station. And you thought talk of a police state was just fearmongering.’
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I’ve seen still photos of this sorta thing before, never a video tho. Give me a lever big enough and I can move anything, even a donkey.
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`But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it “the cough.” People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. [..]
The makeshift clinic at a church where Justice Eta was vaccinated and the flares spewing over Ebocha represent a head-on conflict for the Gates Foundation. In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.’
`Three people were killed, at least two of them decapitated, and one seriously injured when a helicopter crashed into a restaurant carpark in the Camargue region in southern France, a local source said Sunday. [..]
The incident happened in the hamlet of Villeneuve when the Alouette 2-type aircraft carrying four people crashed Sunday afternoon.
“It was 15h30. The helicopter crashed onto parked cars close to the restaurant. The victims were the parents of a five-year-old girl. At least two of them were been decapitated,” said the source, a former AFP journalist.
“The little girl cried out ‘My daddy doesn’t have a head anymore’. Everyone is in a state of shock,” he added. ‘
`An incident recently occurred at an outpatient imaging center in western New York State, in which a firearm spontaneously discharged in a 1.5-T MR imaging environment with active shielding. To our knowledge, this is the first documented case of such an occurrence. The event confirms previously reported theoretic risks of a firearm discharging in an MR imaging environment [1]. In this report, we examine the incident in detail from the official police and ballistic reports.’
`Iraq’s massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.
The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.’
That’s a surprise. It never even occurred to me that the US government might have some interest in Iraqi oil fields.
It’s a reasonably impressive sorta thing, I suppose. :)
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`British police said Friday they were hunting a man who stole a urinal from a pub toilet.
The suspect walked into the Royal Oak pub in Southampton, on the English south coast, ordered half a pint of beer and then made several visits to the men’s toilet.
There he carefully removed a white urinal from the wall, stuffed it into a rucksack and was captured on closed circuit television walking out with the bulging sack on his back.
“He made a very, very expert job of dismantling it from the wall and turning the water off. A very professional job,” landlord Alan Dreja said in a video posted on the Southampton Daily Echo newspaper’s Web site.’
I don’t know if there should be a comma in there or not. “If you see her, run” is just as valid a title. :)
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`A mother and son accused of stealing a snake from a pet store were arrested when they returned to the store and asked for books on how to care for the animal, police said.
Store clerks recognized the suspects from surveillance video taken during the theft and stalled them until police arrived.
The video showed the 15-year-old taking the 30-inch baby boa from its cage, wrapping it around his neck and hiding it with his jacket, while his mother acted as a lookout, police said.’
‘Although tales about men suffering severe burns to their genitalia (or even being electrocuted) through urinating on electric fences or electrified train rails are common in urban legendry, such occurrences are exceeding unlikely (if not outright impossible). Accordingly, the story accompanying the photograph reproduced above about a “Texas redneck” who met with an unfortunate injury after drinking too much and then “peeing on a 3-phase electric fence” — is a fanciful invention that has nothing to do with the picture’s actual origins.
This image accompanied an article authored by five Chinese doctors (from the Department of Urology at the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing) and published in the Asian Journal of Andrology, a case report from 2003 about a 38-year-old man who sought medical attention at a clinic for genital herpes simplex. A circumcision was performed and the patient was treated with short-wave diathermy that proved excessive, producing a severe burn to the penis that resulted in necrosis and gangrene.’
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`Experts think a Carolina Beach couple owns a real Pablo Picasso masterpiece.
Pete Bivens and his fiancé had the painting analyzed last week by art historians. They think the painting could be an original piece.
Now they have to begin the lengthy process of having the painting carbon dated and authenticated.
Bivens and his fiancé bought the painting at a yard sale more than a decade ago for one dollar.’
‘Professional man giving a power point presentation had a technological miss-hap which showed one of his particular fetishes.’
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`Forget learning lines or polishing jokes – having sex may be the best way to prepare for giving a speech.
New Scientist magazine reports that Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley, found having sex can help keep stress at bay.
However, only penetrative intercourse did the trick – other forms of sex had no impact on stress levels at all.’
`After seven years of toiling, scientists at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Harvard School of Medicine report they have isolated stem cells from a new source: amniotic fluid. The researchers not only succeeded in separating the progenitor cells from the many cells residing in the watery fluid in the placenta surrounding an embryo, but were also able to coax the cells to differentiate into muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, liver and nerve cells.
According to lead author Anthony Atala, director of Wake Forest’s Institute of Regenerative Medicine, 99 percent of the U.S., population could conceivably find genetic matches for tissue regeneration or engineered organs from just 100,000 amniotic fluid samples. [..]’
That he finds dead on the plains. Without bothering to cook it. After he scares some vultures off.
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`An English women’s rugby team have had a strip torn off them after performing a topless haka.
The girls from the Canterbury women’s rugby team in Kent went topless in their version of the sacred war dance for their raunchy 2007 calendar.
But Maori academics have labelled their interpretation of the All Blacks’ Ka Mate haka as racially ignorant.
“It looks like misuse of the haka to me,” said Dr Poia Rewi, senior lecturer in the School of Maori Studies at Otago University.
“I think Maori would be offended by this,” he said.’
‘By putting chunks of raw graphite in the microwave with a clear dome to capture the plasma…’
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‘Home video of a costumed Tigger character apparently punching a boy in the face and knocking him back at a Walt Disney World theme park has prompted an Orange County Sheriff’s investigation into the incident and led to the suspension of the cast member, according to a Local 6 News report. [..]
“The general manager apologized to me,” Monaco Sr. said. “Everybody will come up and apologize to me but Tigger. He won’t be a man about it and get out of the costume and come out and apologize to my son. I didn’t want VIP treatment. I didn’t want an extra day at Disney. I didn’t want any of that. I wanted him to apologize and that is the one thing that they won’t do.”‘
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From the French Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Possible answers are the moon, the sun, mars and venus.
People are retards. :)
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‘The deputy is on paid leave.’
Heh.
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`The leading certifier of US electronic voting systems, Colorado outfit Ciber, Inc., is no longer permitted to issue certifications, after federal investigators discovered appallingly haphazard testing regimes, the New York Times reports.
Ciber, which certifies the majority of US election devices, was unable to document how it supposedly tested the machines for accuracy and security. Due to the oddities of US elections regulations, no government agency is assigned this role; rather, device manufacturers pay whoever they wish to rubber-stamp their kit.’
`A former World War II fort in the North Sea off England, which was settled 40 years ago and declared a state with its own self-proclaimed royal family, is up for sale.
The Times newspaper reports the tiny Principality of Sealand, which began life as Roughs Tower in 1941, is a 550 square metre steel platform perched on two concrete towers 11 kilometres off the coast of Harwich in eastern England.
It is accessible only by helicopter and boat but according to its owners, who want offers of eight digits or more, boasts uninterrupted sea views, guarantees complete privacy and is a tax haven.’
