‘Aggravated assault charges have been filed against a church deacon and University of Oklahoma Sooners fan after officials say he grabbed a University of Texas fan between the legs during a scuffle in an Oklahoma bar.
A couple of months before the annual Red River Shootout between the Sooners and Longhorns, words were exchanged at Henry Hudson’s Pub between Allen Beckett, 53, and Brian Thomas. Witnesses said it was because Thomas was wearing a UT T-shirt.
Neither Thomas or Beckett chose to comment, but the police report described what happened to the victim, including graphic details about his injuries that included a torn scrotal sack with partially exposed testicles.
Beckett’s attorney, Billy Bock, said his client’s actions were in self-defense.’
‘”Chutzpah” is a Yiddish word meaning “unbelievable gall or audacity”. An example of it would be the story of the kid who murders both of his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that he’s an orphan.
That’s chutzpah. So is this: multimedia giant Viacom is claiming that I have violated their copyright by posting on YouTube a segment from it’s VH1 show Web Junk 2.0… which VH1 produced – without permission – from a video that I had originally created.
Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!
The clip in question was pulled by YouTube earlier this morning, at Viacom’s insistence.’
‘This bong threat was legitimate.
The FBI has confirmed that a suspicious package that idled one of the largest ferries in the Washington state fleet for about an hour Wednesday morning was actually a water-pipe typically used for smoking marijuana.
“Someone found a bong,” said David Gomez, FBI assistant special agent in charge. [..]
State Patrol Sgt. Craig H. Johnson would only say the device was a “nonhazardous, nonexplosive item,” adding investigators carried it off the ferry for further examination.
No arrests were made and no identified individuals were being sought, but “we’d like to find the person who left it there,” Johnson said.’
‘Einstein’s predicted warping of space-time has been discovered around neutron stars, the most dense observable matter in the universe.
The warping shows up as smeared lines of iron gas whipping around the stars, University of Michigan and NASA astronomers say. The finding also indicates a size limit for the celestial objects.
The same distortions have been spotted around black holes and even around Earth, so while the finding may not be a surprise, it is significant for answering basic questions of physics, said study team member Sudip Bhattacharyya of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and the University of Maryland, College Park.’
‘A man who shows snakes and other reptiles at schools, festivals and libraries says a boy who told the man he hated snakes stomped and killed the man’s 10-foot-long python.
Scott Braunstein said he was showing Popcorn, a nonpoisonous albino Burmese python, Sunday at the St. Bernadette Festival near Cincinnati.
“The next thing I know … the kid raises his leg and stomps down on the snake’s head,” Braunstein said. “The snake started convulsing.”
Braunstein said he saw a man grab the child and say, “This is why I don’t take you anywhere,” before disappearing.’
‘Hordes of people flocked to a Queenstown ATM this week after the machine started doubling their money.
Police said a concerned taxi driver alerted them to the problem on Tuesday night after the driver saw queues of up to 20 people lining up at the Kiwbank ATM.
“There were queues of 15 to 20 people at any one time for a good six hours from about 10pm until 4am,” the taxi driver said.
“It was a backpacker bonanza.”
A KiwiBank spokesman Bruce Thompson said a contactor had incorrectly stacked the ATM with $20 notes in the $10 box and vice versa.’
She doesn’t seem happy to learn her son is an atheist. :)
(1.9meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘My senior year of college opened with the customary research projects, grad school applications, and the like. But that all changed two months ago. Some of you may have heard rumors of some bizarre accident that I was involved in. Here is the truth, unabridged, for those who actually want to know.
In the second week of school, the society of physics students held a roughly annual welcome back party. As tradition dictates, we made our own ice cream with liquid nitrogen, 77� Kelvin, as a refrigerant and aerator. We spilled a little liquid nitrogen onto a table and watched the tiny little drops dance around. Someone asked, “Why does it do that?” That may have been the point of no return.’
‘A British artist spoke tonight after an outcry over his portrait of US President George Bush made from porn magazines.
Jonathan Yeo, 36, defended his work of art in which he cut up more than 100 top-shelf publications to create.
He decided to do it after curators at the Bush Library in America backed out of a commission for him to do a proper portrait.
A spokesman for Republicans Abroad International attacked the artwork.
He said: “This will cause outrage in America. Some people will think it’s funny — but personally I think it is a cheap stunt.”‘
‘The last thing Andrea Fernandez recalls before being drugged is holding her newborn baby on a Bogota city bus.
Police found her three days later, muttering to herself and wandering topless along the median strip of a busy highway. Her face was badly beaten and her son was gone.
Fernandez is just one of hundreds of victims every month who, according to Colombian hospitals, are temporarily turned into zombies by a home-grown drug called scopolamine which has been embraced by thieves and rapists. [..]
The use of scopolamine by criminals appears to be confined to Colombia, at least for now, and it’s not clear why the drug is such a rampant problem in Colombia. [..]’
‘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, semisubmersible 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.
When the suspects realized they had been spotted by drug-surveillance aircraft patrolling the eastern Pacific, they scuttled the vessel but were unable to escape.’
‘Unscrupulous vendors in Thailand have been selling the flesh of the deadly puffer fish disguised as salmon, causing the deaths of more than 15 people over the past three years, a doctor said today.
Although banned since 2002, puffer fish continue to be sold in large quantities at local markets and restaurants, said Narin Hiransuthikul of Bangkok’s Chulalonkorn University Hospital.
“Some sellers dye the meat of puffer fish and make it look like salmon, which is very dangerous,” Dr Narin said.
Dr Narin said that over the past three years, more than 15 people have died and about 115 were hospitalised from eating the fish.’
‘A group of residents in Orange County fed up with drivers speeding through their neighborhood protested by standing and even lying in the road Wednesday night.
Neighbors said cars speed through their neighborhood at 70 mph and faster on a daily basis to avoid a nearby stoplight.
A group held signs and basically shut down traffic while pleading with people to slow down.
“The safety of our children is at stake here,” parent Kathleen Tenney said. “We need people to slow down and not cut through our neighborhood.”‘
‘The Navy accepts no theories of racial differences in inborn ability, but expects that every man wearing its uniform be trained and used in accordance with his maximum individual capacity determined on the basis of individual performance.
It is recognized, of course, that Negro performance in Naval training and tasks on the average has not been equal to the average performance of white personnel. Explanation of this difference by resort to some theory of differences in natural endowment, however, leads only to confusion in which the potentialities of individuals become obscured.
It has been established by experience that individual Negroes vary as widely in native ability as do members of any other race. It is the Navy’s responsibility to develop the potentialities of individuals to the extent that the exigencies of war require and permit.’
‘Tied to a lamppost, he stands with his head and upper body covered in tar and feathers. A makeshift placard hung around his neck with a piece of string announces the reason for his treatment.
It is a very public humiliation, and a medieval one. Almost ten years since Northern Ireland’s Troubles officially ended, this remains the crude face of justice on the streets of south Belfast. [..]
Locals had accused the victim, who is in his thirties, of being a drug dealer. And when police allegedly did not act, they took the law into their own hands.
Two masked men tied up the accused victim, poured tar over his head and then covered him in white feathers, apparently from a pillow case.’
see it here »
‘It didn’t take the sleuthing skills of a Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes to figure out who was peddling marijuana to teenagers in Market Square.
Police said 28-year-old Eric Hardcastle’s tattooed eyebrows, head and cheeks made him easy to identify.
Late Monday night, a teenager reported being approached by a man with a heavily tattooed face with three baggies of marijuana for sale. Officers said they found Hardcastle — who has a row of arrows over each brow, a tattoo on his forehead and scalp and matching markings on each cheek — soon afterward at a convenience store. [..]
Despite his run-in with the law, Hardcastle said he likes Portsmouth, where he landed two weeks ago after riding with a trucker.
“I want to make it here,” he said.’
‘Male drivers who paid $5 for a topless car wash ended up getting hosed. Young women held up signs along a parkway advertising the car wash on Sunday and telling the drivers where to go. But hidden behind a big blue tarp, it was shirtless male firefighters who were washing the cars.
“A little bit of a bait-and-switch,” Assistant Chief Donald Prince admitted. “All the guys back there are all topless.”
Female drivers didn’t seem to mind the shirtless firefighters. Male drivers, though, felt they were getting burned.’
‘Two pit bull terriers broke into a house through a pet door Tuesday and attacked a woman in her bed, mauling her badly, a Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman said.
The woman was able to grab a gun and try to shoot the dogs, then break away from the attack and lock herself in her car, where she called 911, sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.
The woman, who was not immediately identified, was taken to a hospital in Tacoma, where she was listed in serious condition.
Officers planned to talk to the dogs’ owner.’
‘Taliban fanatics terrorised the wife of an RAF officer by phoning her and saying: “You’ll never see your husband alive — we have just killed him.”
Rebels in Afghanistan are targeting British forces’ families with hate calls after tapping into Our Boys’ mobile phones.
The tearful wife rang the RAF fearing the worst after receiving the midnight call — and was told her husband was safe and well.
But the Taliban calls are a sick new plot to destroy morale, and British forces in Afghanistan have now been BANNED from using mobiles.
Army chiefs believe extremists are using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment to trace home numbers when forces call their loved ones in Britain.’
‘As a hot-air balloon burst into flames and plummeted into an RV park, killing two people, a horrific scene of chaos and a raging inferno ensued, witnesses said.
“I saw the balloon coming down on the front of the trailer and when it hit, it exploded,” said Karen Ashby.
“There were flames and fire, people running. Everybody was in a panic. It was a shock. It was like a war zone here.”
Family members of the two victims were among those who stood powerless on the ground Friday evening, watching as the flaming balloon crashed directly into a trailer.’
‘Without us on the earth, what traces of us would linger? What would disappear?’
‘A lightweight enemy could have helped speed up rusting on the collapsed Minneapolis bridge: pigeons.
Experts say corrosive pigeon droppings caked on the bridge could have made steel beams rust faster. Investigators still haven’t pinpointed what caused the collapse, and haven’t said whether the birds had a part in the disaster that killed at least 13 people.
But inspectors in a late 1980s report noted a “coating of pigeon dung” on the bridge. Pigeons have long been a structural pest, because their dung can eat through concrete.’
Followup to Divers suspend Minneapolis search.
‘A good night’s sleep may be a recipe for happy and healthy life, but an NI company is adopting the same creature comforts for cows.
Frazzled bovines down on the farm can now look forward to taking to their ‘cow beds’ at the end of a stressful day in the fields.
Wilson Agriculture in Coleraine has been given a government grant to support its production of Pasture Mats and Poly Pillows to ease the lives of cows forced to lie on uncomfortable concrete floors. [..]
However, animal welfare charity Compassion in World Farming cautioned against keeping cattle indoors permanently and not going out to pasture.
“Living indoors too much can increase lameness,” said a spokesman.’
‘A Melbourne schoolboy has cracked the Federal Government’s new $84 million internet porn filter in minutes.
Tom Wood, 16, said it took him just over 30 minutes to bypass the Government’s filter, released on Tuesday.
Tom, a year 10 student at a southeast Melbourne private school, showed the Herald Sun how to deactivate the filter in a handful of clicks.
His technique ensures the software’s toolbar icon is not deleted, leaving parents under the impression the filter is still working. [..]’
‘The BBC and Fox will collaborate on a Buffy The Vampire Slayer spin-off starring Anthony Stewart Head entitled Ripper, according to a report.
The Daily Star quotes a source as saying that Buffy creator Joss Whedon is “keen to work with the BBC” and that “they’ve got the green light to start filming”.
According to the alleged insider, Ripper, which has been mooted since Buffy finished in 2003, “will follow Bufyy’s mentor Giles (Head) after he decides to come out of retirement in his native England to solve ghost stories and other mysteries”.’
‘Reckless teenagers are leaping in front of moving cars on busy roads as part of a dangerous new stunt craze.
Darwin motorist Smokey Lyons said he and his wife were shocked when a young boy jumped at their car on Saturday.
“We didn’t even see him until it was too late,” he told the NT News. [..]
“He hit the windscreen, then bounced off and rolled along the left side of the car. It made a hell of a racket … bang, bang, bang down the side of the car.
“When I looked in the rear-view mirror he was on the ground and appeared to be hurt but then he got up and jumped on the next car coming along behind us.
“We couldn’t believe it.”‘
‘A Moscow man who ill-advisedly decided to sit watching telly in the nude in the flat he shared with his ex-missus earned himself a wedding-tackle-torching for his trouble, the Evening Standard reports.
The unnamed man’s former wife evidently took exception to his vodka-swilling TV viewing, and duly set fire to his penis. A police spokeswoman admitted it was “difficult to predict” if the human candle would make a full recovery from the ordeal which he described as “monstrously painful”.
He added: “I was burning like a torch. I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”
In case you’re wondering, the couple divorced three years back, but continued to cohabit, an arrangement “common in Russia where property costs are very high”.’
‘The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft is pressing ahead with its proposal to have internet service providers send warning notices to customers who have been identified as illegal downloaders, and disconnect the services of repeat offenders.
It has the support of the music industry, represented by the Australia Recording Industry Association (ARIA), and Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI).
AFACT says the ISPs are not doing enough to combat the illegal downloading of movies and music, which it says increases ISPs’ costs by chewing up bandwidth and robs income from those who sell the content legally.
A report produced last year by web monitoring company Envisional found the per capita rate of television show piracy in Australia was the highest in the world. It said Australians accounted for 15.6 per cent of all online TV piracy.’
‘During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting and trompe l’oeil to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.’
